The Dynamics of Deliverability

My colleages and I have dispensed a lot of deliverability tips on this blog throughout the years. But wouldn't it be nice to have the most useful nuggets of delivery-related wisdom compiled for easy reference? Well, your wish is our command.

Over the next few posts, we will, ahem, "deliver" the top ten tips to get your email campaigns to subscribers' inboxes in today's email ecosystem Let's start it off with the first two tips ...

Tip #1 - Subscriber Engagement Is Critical to Email Success
In years past, permission was seen as the key to having mail accepted. But we know things are changing. As...

A useful update was posted today by Lili Crowley on AOL's postmaster blog indicating that they have recently tweaked their anti-spam filters. As a result, they will be issuing more CON:B1 errors for senders who exhibit "a spike in unfavorable e-mail statistics." (The CON:B1 error is defined by AOL here.) It certainly sounds like the filter change aims to increase their spam catch rate as it relates to a sender's reputation.

While mailbox providers like AOL routinely update their anti-spam defenses, it is uncommon for them to give notice to the email community of such a change. This official...

As a follow-up to my post in February about Hotmail transitioning to Outlook.com, Microsoft announced last week that the move is complete. Users who have hotmail.com addresses still get to use them on Outlook.com, but gone is the Hotmail webmail experience that millions of users worldwide have come to know over the years.

Instead, users will now be upgraded to the feature-packed Outlook.com email service, which comes with a streamlimed, modernized user interface. The Oultook.com blog post and FAQ page offer interesting and useful information about the transition process, feature changes,...

Email addresses are not permanent. In fact, a historically active email address may suddenly croak—without warning or a farewell note—much to an email marketer's dismay.

Such email addresses that vanish into the ether do come with a somewhat bland obituary, though, in the form of a non-delivery report (NDR). The NDR generally indicates a useful yet enduring error, such as: "no such user";  "mailbox not found"; "the mailbox has been deactivated"; "the recipient has moved on so please stop mailing". (OK, I may have made up the last one.) These are what are known as hard bounces.

Hard bounces...

All legitimate commercial emails have an unsubscribe link or two in the message body to enable recipients to stop receiving future messages if they so choose. Ideally, most unsubscribe requests from recipients are facilitated by this direct mechanism.

As email marketers know, however, there are many other ways by which recipients can directly or indirectly choose to stop receiving periodic emails: e.g., by replying with the word "unsubscribe" (or some similar variant) in the subject or the message body, or by hitting the "This is spam" button which generates a feedback loop report, creating a...

Sky Broadband, an Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the UK, announced last year that they were migrating their Sky Email service (historically powered by Google Mail) to Yahoo! Mail. The ISP sent out an initial message to their customers last November offering them the chance to opt-in early to the new service, which is set to launch in April 2013.

Earlier this month, Sky launched their official migration site, offering users more information about the transition. Users have to agree to the new Terms and Conditions to continue using Sky Email after the yet-to-be-specified transition date this...

The online masses were first introduced to the wonders of webmail in the mid-90s, and one of the pioneers in that space was a service dubbed HoTMaiL, which launched to the general public in 1996. Their moniker’s odd use of letter case called out the technology that powered the service: HTML. From that point on, the market and landscape for webmail has immensely proliferated and evolved. (Microsoft eventually acquired HoTMaiL in 1997.)

Out with the old, in with the new. In July 2012, Microsoft launched a preview of Outlook.com, their new email service that’s the planned successor to Hotmail....

Yesterday, news came out about a Yahoo! Mail vulnerability that supposedly compromised a large set of their users' accounts. The exploit's approach was typical of email-borne attacks: the potential victim gets a suspicious email in their mailbox with a URL in it, which, if clicked on, directs the user to a Web page operated by the hacker. In this case, the hacker's page then stealthily captures data from the user's active Yahoo! Mail session and uses it to start a session of their own, using the victim's account to send emails with malicious links to the contacts in the account's address book.

H...

Recent comScore data has seen a shakeup in the rankings of the big three email providers in terms of worldwide usage: Gmail has now ascended to the top spot; Hotmail tumbled to number two; and Yahoo! Mail settled in at third place.  It is no surprise then that there has been a rumored revamp coming to Yahoo! Mail as they try to revitalize their service to retain existing users and attract new ones. While the latest version of Yahoo! Mail just rolled out to the general public in the middle of last year, new leadership at the company has renewed the focus on one of their most popular services....

Looking for tips to help you hit the inbox as the Black Friday/Cyber Monday kickoff to the holiday season approaches? You’ve come to the right place. In Part 1 of this series, we took a look at the unique challenges facing seasonal senders. In Part 2 and continuing in today’s post, we offer some guidelines for a successful sending season.

• Encourage recipients to add your email address to their Address Book. Every marketer should be doing this already. If you can get your subscribers to do this, not only will your emails have a higher probability of landing in the inbox, it may also contribute...

As the Black Friday/Cyber Monday kickoff to the holiday season approaches, we’re happy to offer some tips to help seasonal senders hit the inbox. In Part 1 of this series, we took a look at the unique challenges facing seasonal senders. In today’s post and Part 3, we’ll offer guidelines for a successful sending season.

• Create a consistent sending environment. This is one thing you have direct control over.  Year over year, you should maintain the same "From" address, sending IP, and DKIM domain so that ISPs who look at long-term reputational data will have an idea of your sending reputation...

Florists approaching Valentine’s Day… hotels and airlines as summer vacation nears… and perhaps most notably, retailers between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There are parts of every year where email sends spike for certain businesses. This is even more pronounced for niche companies who only send during one particular time of the year.

There’s no denying it: seasonal senders face unique deliverability challenges. If you're one of them, understanding these challenges is the first step to making the most out of your busy season.

In Part 1 of this three-part series, we’ll explore these...