Pottery warriors are standing by…
19 October 2009
…but they’re impotent and broken. On Saturday, I took the kids to the Houston Museum of Natural History to see its exhibit of the famous Chinese Terracotta Army. One of the things that I keep stressing to my kids as we have started homeschooling them is that history is all about the stories, not the
Something that authentication can’t help
9 October 2009
The email said, “Our last mailing had 30 complaints at AOL. Will signing with DKIM and SPF help with our reputation there?” In some ways, that is a fair question. We do talk about reputation a lot and how authentication ties into that. But, really, this is something that authentication can’t help because, for all
Listen to your unsubscribers
30 July 2009
When was the last time that you took a good, long listen to the people who are asking you to stop sending them email? If your ESP doesn’t provide an opportunity for your unhappy subscribers, you should ask them to create one. Your now-former subscribers have a story to tell that can help you retain
List Rental Is…
28 July 2009
Peter Roebuck of AllWEBeMail (a division of All Web Promotion, Inc.) recently left a comment on Laura Atkins’ blog: rented email addresses, if done properly, should be no different from renting physical mailing addresses. With over 25 years in direct mail catalog experience, we know that catalogers are sending fewer catalogs and moving from print
Confirm to unsubscribe?
21 July 2009
A question comes in this morning: Requiring the confirmation of an email address in an unsubscription is not CAN-SPAM compliant, right? While I’m not a lawyer, to my understanding that is absolutely correct. The current implementing rules for CAN-SPAM state: Neither a sender nor any person acting on behalf of a sender may require that
The Email Marketer’s Syllogism
10 July 2009
I get to see a number of things on a daily basis which indicate that people may not have the best ideas when it comes to understanding how engaged their subscribers are. One such example reads: There are tens of thousands of people in our database with whom we communicate and who clearly want to
IP relisted despite no more mail being sent
25 June 2009
On June 6, 2009, a client sent a mailing. After it was sent, their (static, only-used-by-them) IP was listed by a particular list that is generated by the creator of a large, well-known anti-spam appliance and seems to be used by default in that appliance. I didn’t notice the issue until I started checking all
SORBS Closure Imminent
22 June 2009
SORBS wasn’t best DNSBL in the world. For instance, they listed all of one ESP’s net space because the maintainer had personal issues with the contact point at the ESP. As I recall, on their explanation of those blocks, they said that they were listing the space and that the contact point “is not an
Quotable quotes
16 June 2009
That’s a great question: Would you bother to open your own mail if you had a choice, or would you toss it out with the rest of your spam? But, wait! That’s not all! If there is one reporter on the marketing beat who gets it (and gets hammered for it — and I’ll let
A CAN-SPAM Checklist
1 June 2009
Today, we will create a checklist of things required for CAN-SPAM compliance. So, you want to ensure that you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and not just say that you do. This post isn’t for you. You might learn something here; if you do, that’s great. But, instead, this post is really for