terminology
This might be first in a weekly series on the topic of Deliverability Terminology. Let me know in email or in the comments if you find this useful — that’ll help guide my future efforts.In today’s Deliverability Terminology blog post, allow me to explain the Return-path address.This is also called the envelope sender address/domain, bounce address or domain, or the 5321 FROM or MFROM.What is it: Not to oversimplify it too much (hopefully), but email message have two from addresses. There’s what you normally think of as the from address – this is specified in the “from:” header in your email message and it shows up in your email client, webmail client or mobile email application. There’s also a second from address, called the return-path or envelope sender address. After selecting “view all headers” or raw email source, search for “return-path” to find this header and its contents.Mail servers transmit this…
I don’t really know who first coined the term deliverability. Was it me? Possibly not. It’s a shame J.D. Falk isn’t still around, because he would know, and then he would also mock me for thinking too much about it. And you know, it might have been he who coined it.When I first started in a deliverability role, my title was actually “consumer privacy manager.” That was in 2001. Later, when I switched companies in 2006, the term “deliverability” had already been out there and established for a few years, so I became a Director of Deliverability. Meaning that sometime between 2001 and 2006 is when I (and the email industry) started using the term deliverability. But when?For fun, I decided to try to find the oldest mention of the word “deliverability” on my blog. That seems to be dated May 18, 2003, captured by the Internet Archive on June…