Email Blogs
Here’s your fun fact for today: Rapper Rick Ross has never had an email account. Finally, you can answer the question, “Was that email I just got that claimed to be from the famed hip hop artist known for Hustlin’ legit or not?”The more you know.
Last week I explained who Spamhaus is, and today I share a link to a guest blog post over there, authored by Alice Cornell, Director of Email Deliverability at Change.org, explaining her deliverability journal and how she helps guide Change.org to maximize inbox placement and minimize deliverability challenges. It’s worth a read!
DELIVTERMS: The (almost) weekly series here on Spam Resource that defines deliverability terminology. Today, I’m going to talk about Spamhaus.Spamhaus, in the context of my day-to-day role as a deliverability consultant, is perhaps best described as a publisher of anti-spam blocklists.They publish a multitude of blocklists:SBL: Their primary IP address-based blocking list. Spamming companies and ISPs are listed here both manually, based upon review and investigation by somebody at Spamhaus, and also in an automated fashion using logic that results in “CSS” listings on the SBL. Entities listed on the SBL (for reasons other than CSS) typically have to contact Spamhaus to discuss potential resolution to an issue before Spamhaus will remove (“delist”) an IP address. Spamhaus generally (but perhaps not always) wants to talk to the service provider or sending platform more-so than the end client.DBL: Their primary domain-based blocking list. This is run in a fashion more automated…
European Internet industry group eco is looking to hire a Customer Success Manager for the CSA.What is eco? Founded in 1995, it is the largest Internet industry association in Europe. Together with the Deutschen Dialogmarketing Verband (DDV – aka the German Dialogue Marketing Association, eco founded the “Certified Senders Alliance” in 2004. The CSA “successfully sets quality standards for commercial e-mailing that have established themselves on the market,” publishing a widely-used whitelist.And they’re hiring! They’re looking for a Customer Success Manager — an “e-mail expert with a very good technical understanding,” who will help qualify incoming CSA inquiries, coordinate relevant customer processes with legal and technical teams, strategic further development of CSA through intensive maintenance of customer relationships and the identification of customer needs, in cooperation with the marketing team, and more.The position is European-based and any applicant should be a German speaker. For more details and/or to apply, click here.
Every once in a while we’ll see a rejection from Yahoo that says RFCs 554 5.0.0 Message not accepted due to failed RFC compliance. What does that mean and what can we do about it? It really does mean exactly what it says on the label: there’s something about the message that is not in compliance with any number of RFCs and are not going to accept the message in its current state. When trying to help a colleague diagnose the issue I came up with a list of things to check. Troubleshooting in the email Is there any high ASCII without quoted printable or Base64 encoding in the body or the headers?Is there a Date header? Is there any duplication in header fields?Is there a bare IP address in a link somewhere?Are the line lengths inside the message shorter than 998 characters?Are lines correctly terminated with CR/LF?Is the DKIM…
I’ve talked about unsubscribe practices in more detail before, but I think it’s important enough to call this one out on its own.If your email send platform, CRM, or newsletter tool, includes a “one click unsub” link, you’re going to end up with false positive unsubscribes, and at some point, it’s going to drive you bonkers. I’ve had to deal with stuff like a client’s angry CEO wondering why they’re not getting copies of their own newsletter, only to find that their Barracuda or Microsoft email security service is causing the unsubscribe action, by clicking (following) the unsub link, when checking all the links in every email received, to look for bad stuff. Or if you’re trying to do seedlist-based inbox placement testing and your testing vendor/partner has link checking functionality — when this happens you can end up with false positive indications of spam blocking because of accidentally unsubscribed…
Spoiler: It’s when Icelandic horses respond to your work emails for you.The blog Government Technology explains in more detail.
Validity manages ISP feedback loops for a whole bunch of ISPs (30+) all around the world. They’ve got a signup and management interface for this “Universal Feedback Loop Service” at fbl.validity.com. And they have just announced that they’ve added SFR and Gandi to the list of ISP Feedback Loops that they have coordinated into this management interface.The current total list of ISPs and mailbox providers supported via this Universal Feedback Loop Service now includes: BlueTie, Comcast, Cox, Fastmail, Gandi, ItaliaOnline, LiberoMail, Virgilio, Laposte.net, Liberty Global, UnityMedia, UPC, Locaweb, Mail.ru, OpenSRS, Rackspace, Seznam.cz, SFR, SilverSky, Swisscom, Synacor, TIM, Telenet, Telenor, Telstra, Terra, UOL, Virgin Media, XS4ALL, Yandex, and Ziggo.Senders, if you register for your own feedback loops (some ESP/CRM platforms handle this for you), you’ll want to head over to the Universal Feedback Loop Service website and see about signing up. Feedback loops are an extremely valuable deliverability mechanism that helps you…
“Is this message transactional, or is it commercial?” That’s a question I get asked quite regularly as a deliverability consultant. Note that I am not a lawyer, so I can’t give you legal advice. I can, however, provide my layman’s interpretation and encourage you to investigate for yourself, suggest to you where you need to look, and you can throw it all to your legal counsel, for a final ruling on the matter, if needed.Assuming you are based in the US and are sending (only) to US-based recipients, the US federal CAN-SPAM law applies. The text of the law itself (section 3) provides a fairly straightforward definition of what constitutes a transactional message, and the FTC later published even more helpful clarifying definitions — which is what you should read, memorize, and bookmark for future reference. It starts with this. It’s transactional, if the primary purpose of the email message is:to facilitate, complete,…
Adobe is hiring! They’re looking for a Professional Services Deliverability Consultant. Could that be you? In that role, you would: “Work with Global Deliverability Consulting clients to promote email best practices, oversee detailed investigations and communicate with internal and external customers regarding deliverability issues, provide guidance during new client onboarding & IP ramp-up process, support client delivery issues, inquiries, and tickets and provide recommendations for corrective action, understand and apply industry policies and procedures related to email deliverability issues, create and present deliverability reviews, reports, and presentations,” and more! Click through for more details or to apply.