delivterms

Today, let’s define the acronym BIMI, aka “Brand Indicators for Message Identification.”Let’s go straight to the folks who have created the BIMI specs, the Authindicators Working Group. From their website: “Brand Indicators for Message Identification is an emerging email specification that enables the use of brand-controlled logos within supporting email clients.”What? It’s a way to publish a logo that will show up next to email messages you send.Why? To increase branding, increase customer confidence that your emails are legitimate, and it can increase engagement.How? First, you must secure your domain with DMARC (and that DMARC policy must be a “strong” one, aka “quarantine” or “reject”). You must purchase a “verified mark certificate” (required by some BIMI-supporting mailbox providers, though not all) to prove that your logo is properly trademarked, and then you need to publish a version of your logo in a special limited vector graphics format. BIMI is supported by

Today, let’s define the term “fully qualified domain name,” aka FQDN.It can seem like a bit of a complicated term for a simple thing. What’s an FQDN? It’s a whole internet address. Sometimes it might be called a subdomain (I’m guilty of this), or an internet hostname. Think of it as the server name or host name + the domain name. For www.spamresource.com, www would be the hostname or server name, and then spamresource.com is the domain name. So www.spamresource.com is an FQDN, a fully qualified domain name.If somebody asks you if you have a DMARC record for the FQDN email.spamresource.com, you would specifically enter “email.spamresource.com” in a DMARC record lookup tool. This could be called checking for a DMARC record at the FQDN level or at the subdomain level.In the case of sending from a subdomain, like email.spamresource.com, that subdomain would also be considered an FQDN, for purposes of

Today: Let’s talk about domain warming.You might have heard about IP warming. I’ve talked about it before (and my Kickbox colleague Jennifer Nespola Lantz has covered the topic in great detail). TL;DR? IP warming is, when you’re newly sending from a particular dedicated IP address, you build up your sending reputation, to maximize your chances of solid inbox placement, by slowly building up your email send volume over the first thirty days or so of email sending. In other words, you don’t just show up and start blasting millions of emails a day. You limit your volume until internet service providers (ISPs) and mailbox providers (MBPs) know who you are.Domain warming is a very similar concept. When you introduce a new domain name, either because you’re launching anew, or because you’re rebranding, domain warming means starting out with low volume sends referencing that domain, and building up volume over the

Founded in 2006, the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG) is a messaging industry working group comprised of sending and receiving platforms, security companies and more come together to collaboratively address spam and internet security issues.Initially, the group was called “MAAWG” and focused on email and anti-spam. Over the years, their focus has expanded, thus the “3” reflecting growth from just “messaging” to “messaging, malware and mobile” in their mission. Anti-spam and security best practices for both senders and receivers (things like the right way to send mail without being a spammer, and the most appropriate ways to block spam) are just one of the common areas of discussion. Folks within M3AAWG also work together to address technical issues around email and messaging technology and emerging threats. (I say “email” a lot here as it’s really my personal focus. I’ve got friends who specialize in other areas as M3AAWG members

DELIVTERMS: The (more or less) regular series here on Spam Resource that defines deliverability terminology. Unlike some other series out there in the world, this one has neither hot questions nor even hotter wings. But I do hope to help shore up gaps in your email and deliverability-related knowledge. Today, I’m going to talk about MTAs and MUAs, mail transfer agents, and mail user agents.MTA means “Mail Transfer Agent.” The acronym MTA is basically interchangeable with the term “mail server.” An MTA or mail server is an software application running as server software to handle processing and transmission/receipt of email messages. It’s an MTA that responds to a connection on port 25 and answers with “220” and an SMTP banner and accepts or sends inbound or outbound email, transmitted via SMTP. When I look up the MX record for a domain, and I connect to port 25 of that MX

DELIVTERMS: The (almost) weekly series here on Spam Resource that defines deliverability terminology. Today, I’m going to talk about Smart Network Data Services, commonly called Microsoft SNDS.SNDS is a Microsoft sender reputation data portal. It provides senders feedback on their deliverability reputation based on the stats around their sends to the Microsoft consumer mailbox domains — aka Outlook.com, aka Hotmail.This reputation dashboard provides data based on sending IP addresses. To be able to view SNDS reputation data, you’ll need to work your way through the SNDS IP registration process, where Microsoft will send an email address to a certain address to verify that you own (or have exclusive access to) a given sending IP address. This means that if you use an ESP or CRM platform, that platform may receive that verification request and may have to confirm it for you. Most seem willing to do this, in my experience.Note

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is one of two primary types of email authentication mechanisms used by email senders today (the other being DKIM). SPF is a “simpler” protocol than DKIM, in that SPF is based around a text record for your domain name that contains the IP addresses of the mail servers that are allowed to send mail on your behalf.You can lookup the SPF record for Spam Resource here, using my XNND DNS Tools website. As of this writing, that SPF record looks like this:ip4:213.138.100.131 ip6:2607:f2f8:a760::2 ip4:206.125.175.2 include:_spf.google.com -allIt contains two regular IPv4 IP addresses, one IPv6 IP address, and an “include” mechanism that references Google’s SPF record. Decoding this tells us that I want those three servers (with those three IP addresses) to be able to send mail using my domain name spamresource.com, and the “include” for Google is because I am a user of GSuite/Google for Business

DELIVTERMS: The (almost) weekly series here on Spam Resource that defines deliverability terminology. Today, I’m going to talk about Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Mailbox Providers (MBPs).ISPs and MBPs: Talk to any deliverability consultant and you’ve likely heard the two terms thrown around. What do these acronyms actually mean?ISP means Internet Service Provider, and you’ll find me guilty of using this as a catch all term for any place that a big email sender would be sending email messages to. Even though I include Gmail and Yahoo, on this list, for example, that’s a bit inexact in that true ISPs are companies that provide internet access to their subscribers. Think Comcast and Spectrum.MBP means Mailbox Provider, and that is perhaps a bit more accurately used as a catchall term for any service that provides email addresses for users to receive mail at. How you measure who the largest provider is

DELIVTERMS: The (almost) weekly series here on Spam Resource that defines deliverability terminology. Today, I’m going to talk about DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM).What is DKIM? DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is an email authentication protocol. It is one of two different types of email authentication, the other being known as Sender Policy Framework (SPF).  It uses a public/private key pair to generate a cryptographic signature for an email message, and the signature information is stored in a hidden “DKIM Signature” email header. The signature allows a receiving mail server to confirm that the message body (and various email headers) were not modified (that is to say, this is truly what was sent by the sender), and they also effectively identify the sender, when the domain name of the sender is the domain name used in the signature.A public/private key pair involves both a private key, which is a bit of information

DELIVTERMS: The (almost) weekly series here on Spam Resource that defines deliverability terminology. Today, the term and topic is CAN-SPAM.CAN-SPAM, aka “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act of 2003” is the US federal anti-spam law. It doesn’t explicitly prohibit spam, but it applies various requirements to commercial email messages sent in the US, and it includes provisions that do help (in my opinion) to push email senders toward opt-in as a best practice.Here on Spam Resource you’ll find a whole section of articles relating to CAN-SPAM, including why you should adhere to the prior affirmative consent standard (because then you don’t have to label your email as an advertisement), what constitutes a transactional message under CAN-SPAM, and I’ll also help you break down four common CAN-SPAM myths. Here I’ll also include links to the full text of the law and the US Federal Trade Commission’s CAN-SPAM