As previously mentioned here on Deliverability.com, as of last month, Yahoo! Mail no longer participates in Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail program. For CertifiedEmail senders, this means CertifiedEmail messages no longer receive enhanced privileges such as guaranteed inbox placement, images displayed by default, or the CertifiedEmail icon.

On March 24th, we will decommission the MX record for ‘gms.mail.yahoo.com’, the dedicated domain to which senders have been routing CertifiedEmail for Yahoo! Mail recipients. To ensure no disruption of email delivery to Yahoo!, we recommend clients consult with Goodmail and make any necessary changes to their email systems in advance of this date.

Senders may contact our postmaster team via this form should any deliverability issues arise around the transition deadline. Our goal is to facilitate a smooth transition and to help ensure the best email experience for our users as always.

In Inbox Reserve parts one and two, we discovered how socially centric preference centers and subject lines will lead to dramatically higher engagement and lower spam complaints. In part III below, we'll identify challenges that are inherent with acquiring a subscribers social data points and what the benefits are to your brand once harnessed.

Challenge:  Develop a Preference Center Marketing Program

The challenge for today’s brand marketer is to find ways to seductively charm subscribers to fully or partially divulge their social media credentials through an intuitive preference center.  Some subscribers will immediately acquiesce, while others will be more sensitive and allow the brand only a partial glimpse into their social networks.  For example, B2B focused subscribers may prefer to provide only credentials of their LinkedIn network and not necessarily Facebook or Twitter.  Future preference centers will allow you to prioritize which social networks you want linked to a given brand.

For this concept to work, marketers must demonstrate to subscribers the value of this initiative. Those subscribers who opt-in will glean more value and insight through their network associated with a given brand, because knowing what transactions are taking place with their social networks is in most cases desired.  Once brands amass these nuggets of data; designers, engineers and email marketing specialists will collaborate to produce instinctive methods of engagement while furthering your brands credibility.

Brands must take a proactive approach with subscribers to induce them to release this essential data.  A strategic marketing program targeted towards this master preference center with strong calls-to-action should be integrated into your marketing mix.  This marketing program should primarily focus on the features, benefits and value of updating socially centric preferences.

 

Emphasize Value and Benefits

One way to galvanize a brands subscriber base is to highlight reasons “why” updating your preference center is so valuable.  In your email marketing program, dedicate sends that emphasize the real value of managing and sharing social media credentials.  Market your preference center through other channels as well. Read Stephanie Miller's stellar post on why earning permission is divine.

Future marketing programs for updating preference centers should illustrate value–based notifications of activity within a subscribers given network: For example, in the email message itself give subscribers the option to choose from a host of alert notifications such as:

• Alert me when a member of my network makes a purchase from this brand
• Alert me when a member of my network signs up to receive newsletters from this brand
• Alert me when a member of my network reviews a product from this brand

This type of socially centric messaging will echo well with subscribers and will develop an affinity not only your brand but just as importantly your preference center.  These notifications will go "prime-time" and will replace the current generic “marketing messages” we currently receive.  Messages of this nature could be an excellent resource for winning back dormant subscribers.  

Furthermore, your subscribers might want to be immediately notified if a person from their network reviewed a nearby restaurant?  By giving your subscribers “night-vision” into their social networks, brands will have a simpler time summoning subscribers to release this coveted information.   Benefits to brands include far fewer defections from list segments, increased engagement, an awakening to dormant subscribers and significantly fewer “spam complaints.”

Immediate Benefits to the Brand

Credibility- As discussed throughout this series, socialized messaging of this nature provides a more intimate user experience.  It permits a subscriber to feel that the message is about their social ecosystem first and about the brand second.  It authorizes subscribers and their network to indirectly promote your brand, through a more relaxed conversation. 

Reduced Costs- Socialized messaging, will significantly reduce a brands’ overall operating expenses, because of a higher engagement index, fewer spam complains and better inbox placements rates.  Socialized messaging will increase sender reputation which reduces message handling costs including more relaxed human filtering steps with a given brand.  

Validation through Engagement- The ability to quickly connect with your peers before clicking the purchase button will soon be the “de facto” model for how to validate a purchase through a given brand. Acquiring validation from your trusted network means that an emotional and financial investment has been made on behalf of your friends and colleagues.  With a swift chat session with members of their network, your subscribers will discern information about a featured product/service, which accelerates immediate gratification for the purchaser.  Building a subscriber centric brand will add considerable value to your existing customer base and through crosshairs will magnify brand integrity.  Your feedback on this series is valued.

Fred Tabsharani

Port25 Solutions, Inc.

@tabsharani

My friend Morgan Stewart has said it all publicly that either a few of us have thought to ourselves at one time or another or have said out-loud in a secret behind closed door email coalition session. "Why do Email feedback mechanisms ONLY focus on the negative and not ever the positive"?

I couldn't agree more with what Morgan put into his article. Why aren't the email client makers and web email providers interested in improving email to its fullest extent. Yes, Yes, Yes, I know that marketers are only <1% of abuse desk issues while they fight the real battles of spam, bots, phishing, etc, but really how hard can it be to create a button to remove a negative from the reputation score or filter count when some does something right?

I constantly hear at these secret behind closed door email coalition sessions where ISP's or filtering companies give a good ole' pat on the back to those senders who participate in email best practice discussions and ensure their customers are doing the right things, but to me that should also come in the form of something more measurable. It's odd that all I ever hear from the email client makers, web email providers, and email filtering companies is reputation rules when it comes to getting your email delivered properly and that if they see negative measurable compliant's via a spam button you'll surely will be in the dog house, but no one to date seems to support the notation of sending good email will get you back into the bigger house via a not-spam button. Why is it that ISP's, web email providers, and email filtering companies make senders plea their way out of false positive spam issues via a phone call, web forms, or a secret email list on behalf of their customers when the end-users, whom they already listen to about spam issues, should be the ones voting positively about their good experiences in email?

 

Most here know metrics are a good thing for senders to see so they can identify what the issues really are and can correct things on their own without a call or web form. I can also safely say from experience that most senders RARELY call someone/something on the receiver side these days if they have a clear overview in thanks partly to data we can see via negative feedback loops. So why not give a FULLER or more complete picture of how end-users see email? To me and what I read from Morgan here is that we are only seeing half the picture when it comes to metrics. So I agree with Morgan! How can we turn email for the better in 2010?

Good article Morgan!

 -Dennis
Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

This is a paid job posting.

WhatCounts is looking to hire an Email Delivery Manager. Do you know someone who might be a good fit? Please help spread the word or contact jobs [at] whatcounts.com for more info.

About the Job

The Email Delivery Manager is responsible for helping our customers achieve and maintain high email deliverability rates to the inbox, detect and analyze delivery issues, as well as educate our customers on email best practices.  This position will also manage the customer experience for those enrolled in the SmartStart Plus and Delivery Plus programs. 

Responsibilities

Day-to-Day Operations:

• Consult with customers and provide guidance with email authentication, reducing abuse complaints, and send strategy
• Provide support to customers and educate them on email best practices
• Investigate and address email delivery issues
• Review inbox audit results and make suggestions on how to improve delivery through changes in infrastructure, server optimization, product interface, practices, and policy
• Help create internal training documents, e.g., FBL enrollment, Whitelisting, and submitting unblock requests

Manage the customer experience for those enrolled in the SmartStart Plus program:

• Assist the customer in building a positive and sustainable sender reputation
• Provide the customer with the knowledge and tools to maintain IP reputation beyond the program
• Provide Best Practices training that pertain to the SmartStart Plus program

Manage the customer experience for those enrolled in the Delivery Plus program and provide the following tasks:

• Campaign Delivery Monitoring
• Delivery Results Audit and Best Practices Consultation
• Reputation Report and Consultation
• Delivery Strategy Consultation and Email Infrastructure Audit

Cross-functional Engagement:

• Work in partnership with internal teams, e.g., Account Managers, Dev, IT and Sales Teams, to help raise the visibility of deliverability within WhatCounts, and be of assistance to these various groups as they interact with prospects and customers.
• Support product development team as they improve deliverability functionality within the platform.

Qualifications / Requirements

A tech-savvy people who can help our customers send better email and achieve high delivery results.

• 3-5+ years experience, preferably in a similar role
• Advanced knowledge of email authentication and other technological factors affecting email delivery
• Strong understanding of ISP/domain-specific delivery policies such as spam scoring heuristics and bounce handling rules
• Proven track record of building and maintaining whitelisting and feedback loops with ISPs
• Experience in large scale email operations (sender and receiver)
• Knowledge of SMTP protocol and DNS
• Ability to communicate recommendations for improving email strategy and operations clearly and professionally
• Self-directed and self-motivated; Must be able to prioritize effectively in a fast-paced environment
• Must have a passion for analysis and troubleshooting
• Expert knowledge of “best practices” for email creation, sending, list building and list management
• Experience using Return Path is a plus

Please help spread the word or contact jobs [at] whatcounts.com for more info.

---

This is a paid job posting. 

If you would like to reach tens of thousands of email deliverability professionals with a job posting on this blog and on the @Deliverability Twitter account, please email your inquiry to jobs2010 [at] deliverability.com

Good news for those who are on the Return Path’s Certification program. RPost and Return Path announced a partnership today where Return Path’s Certification clients will now be able to access an integrated offering where your outbound messages can incorporate RPost’s proof of delivery technology with the Return Path’s Certification service.

For those who don't know them, RPost provides the sender legally valid and court admissible evidence of email correspondence occurring directly from the sender’s desktop email client or from other applications which will provide a sender with evidence of delivery, content, and timing of any document or notice sent by email, without requiring recipients to download any software, click links, or visit special websites to open and read messages.

--MORE--

-Dennis
Eloqua

Don't Just Sender, Deliver

Spamhaus is announcing this week that they are launching their Domain Block List (DBL). The Spamhaus DBL is a realtime database of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), typically web site domains found in spam messages. Mail server software capable of scanning email message contents can use the DBL to identify, classify or reject spam containing DBL-listed domains and other URIs.

What's this mean for you? Not only are your IP's a thing to watch over when it comes to reputation, but now your domains in your email are also.

Does this count as reputation for domains? In my eyes, YES!

They plan on launching this March 1, 2010.

For those who don't know, The Spamhaus Project is an international nonprofit organization whose mission is to track the Internet's spam operations, to provide dependable realtime anti-spam protection for Internet networks, to work with Law Enforcement Agencies to identify and pursue spammers worldwide, and to lobby governments for effective anti-spam legislation.

Spamhaus maintains a number of realtime spam-blocking databases ('DNSBLs') responsible for keeping back the vast majority of spam sent out on the Internet. These include the Spamhaus Block List (SBL), the Exploits Block List (XBL), the Policy Block List (PBL) and the Domain Block List (DBL). Spamhaus DNSBLs are today used by the majority of the Internet's Email Service Providers, Corporations, Universities, Governments and Military networks.

-Dennis
Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

As some of you know, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been hosting a series of roundtable discussions to explore some of our most recent privacy challenges.  These challenges are being exposed more and more each day by the ever evolving technology base and combination business practices that help us to collect and use consumer data.

The FTC hopes to hold these roundtables and then use the information gleaned from them to determine how to best protect consumer privacy moving forward while still supporting the uses of new technologies within marketing.

Without realizing it, many of you may be in the midst of these issues identified by the FTC, as you use social networking, cloud computing, online behavioral advertising, mobile marketing, and the collection and use of information by retailers, data brokers, third-party applications, and other diverse businesses.

To date, the FTC has already held two (2) roundtables.

• December 7, 2009 in Washington, D.C.: They focused on data collection and use online and offline. They also discussed consumer expectations and the state of self-regulation. 
• January 28, 2010 in Berkeley, California: They focused on how technology can affect consumer privacy positively and negatively.  

A third event will be held on March 17, 2010 in Washington, D.C.   It is expected to focus on several things including how to safeguard health data and other sensitive consumer information

Unfortunately, the findings from the roundtable thus far have been alarming.  It appears that most consumers are grossly unaware of what happens to the data they submit to marketers.  The majority of the time it seems as if they are providing their information to virtual strangers without any regard for their own protection.  The public’s understanding of the need for privacy and security of personal information is sorely lacking, and when overlooked, can have startling consequences.  

Ultimately, the FTC is investigating the possibility of creating a U.S. Privacy framework to give powers to consumers.  This would involve regulations for businesses regarding the collection, processing, transfer, and protection of consumers’ information. 

This could result in a process that would require marketers to become hyper-transparent.  In this case, as the amount of data the consumer provides increases, so does the number of choices the marketer must allow for the said consumer.  The consumer would be provided with more information about what will be done with the personal details they are disclosing as the sensitivity of the information rises.  This means the more data that you need to perform your job of catering your marketing plan to them, the more you will have to tell them about how you are going to safeguard and effectively use their information. (read: Your Privacy policy isn't enough anymore.)

In addition, if an FTC Privacy process were to be instituted, marketers would have to be increasingly diligent in protecting their consumers’ information because these consumers’ should be much more aware of how their information should be used.  The consumers’ expectations would be more prevalent in deciding who was wronged if a negative event  such as a theft, occurred.

Whatever framework the FTC creates in 2010, we can certainly be assured that it will be much broader than today’s form of self-regulating "notice, access, and choice."  The FTC has said that the current forms and processes have been helpful in giving customers knowledge about what will happen to their data if given, but as you have heard me say in the past, it has also resulted in privacy policies that only a lawyer may understand.  In many cases, the knowledge provided was lost on the average consumer because of its overwhelming scope and language.  Given that, you need to be sure that your company’s privacy policy is well-written and geared towards consumers.  This policy stands to be a strong marketing opportunity, provided it is treated as such.

Tips for writing a good policy:

1. Write it for consumers. (Bearing in mind, most do not have a law degree.)
2. Keep it short.
3. Index it, or give it headers so readers can find what they want quickly.
4. Audit the policy at least once a year (and have non-lawyers read it for clarity).
5. Add “contact us” features in relevant sections of your policy so people with questions can get answers quickly and easily.
6. Inform customers about policy changes, but be sure to do so before the changes go into effect.  Give them a chance to change preferences prior to launch. 
7. Highlight the policy throughout your website and on forms.
8. Make the information (notice, access, and choice) available as more than just a “read the fine print” option.  Use the opportunity to build their confidence.
9. Do not try to think for the customer. Do not assume that subscribers or visitors will want new information or want you to share their information.

Keep in mind that the customers’ trust and loyalty will grow when you give them some control over their own information.

In the course of the next week, take the time to look into your data collection practices and programs.  It is important to understand what sort of U.S based framework would best suit your legitimate business needs, while protecting your consumers’ data. Consider attending the next FTC roundtable to make your voice on this subject heard.

-Dennis, CIPP
Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver! 

I suspect that some email broadcast vendors (ESPs and MTA providers) struggle with how much inbox placement data to make transparent to their clients (marketers).  On one hand, the data is extremely valuable, and it can help marketers and senders understand subscriber satisfaction and optimize inbox placement. After all, if you don't reach the inbox, you don't earn a response. 

On the other hand, perhaps sometimes having more data just raises more questions - and questions are a cost center for vendors.

One ESP that serves the small to mid-market is making inbox deliverability data available - with very good results.  I spoke with Natalie Nagele at Newsberry about how using this data gives her more ammunition to help marketers follow best practices.

"For one of our clients, we saw a wide variance in open rates across message types. When we exposed the inbox placement data, we realized that some of the marketing messages were simply not reaching the inbox at all," she says.

On the same day a targeted email tips newsletter would achieve 100% inbox rates to domestic ISPs, while a generic even promotion would deliver only 60-80%, she says.  The IP reputation was the same based on Sender Score, but clearly there is a difference.  "After a month of data review, we concluded that the event promotions were less welcome due to content and low user engagement - as measured by higher complaints," she says.

Nagele worked with the client to improve targeting and relevancy. They asked subscribers to update their email preferences and reconfirmed those in the marketing segment. "The list size for that segment shrank dramatically," she reports, "But open rates went up, as did inbox placement rates. Today, they are delivering between 96-100% across all of their campaigns for domestic ISPs. Those event marketing emails directly represent revenues based on attendance, which went up when people started receiving emails."

Newsberry makes this data available to all clients with a dedicated IP address.  "We've found that senders who use and appreciate this data are also willing and interested in taking responsibility for their email delivery," she says.  The inbox deliverability tools are included in our monthly plan price, available to small and medium businesses. "They don't need to spend enterprise-level funds to view important delivery data," Nagele says.

Newsberry doesn't offer the inbox delivery monitoring tools (or a dedicated IP address) for those with files smaller than 10,000 subscribers. "Based on conversations with Return Path and our own experience, we've identified 10,000 as a good point where you start building a reputation significant to ISPs," she says.

Of course, if the file is 10K strong, but the mailing frequency is low, that also can harm a sender's ability to build a reputation.  "The ideal candidates for a dedicated IP are those with 10,000 or more subscribers who send multiple times a month. We even recommend they split their list and send multiple times per week instead of one campaign (when possible)," she says.

"Those with smaller lists can still depend on Newberry’s overall reputation to maintain high inbox rates," she adds.  Most marketers understand that they don't have the volume (or budget) for a dedicated IP, but it still makes them nervous to be on a shared IP. There is a loss of control over their destiny.  Certainly, some ESPs have a better reputation with the ISPs, and some vet their clients better than others (and fire them when they exhibit poor sending practices).  Until we have widespread domain reputation and authentication, senders must be vigilant to understand who is in their Shared IP neighborhood and thus affecting their reputation and inbox placement.

Many senders (large and small) consider the bounce rate "good enough" for tracking delivery.  Of course, bounce rate is not the same as inbox placement, and the two numbers are not necessarily indicative of each other, although they tend to track together.  "The way we see it, it's all about your return on investment and time for email marketing," Nagele says.

"If you have inbox rates of 60%, consider yourself throwing 40% of your money and time out the window. Bounces will only show you if you are blocked, at which point your list is already in bad shape. Inbox placement helps you identify much deeper issues where marketers can take direct action," she advises.

For example, she says, a customer learned through tracking inbox results that their single-image emails were getting blocked by Yahoo! and Hotmail (among others). When they changed the text to image ratio, the inbox rates went up, which in turn increased open rates and subscriber response.  "How would they have known that if they were only tracking bounces?" she asks.

All senders must take responsibility for their own sender reputation. A good ESP will provide technical support, solid infrastructure and guidance on best practices. But no ESP can make up for poor list hygiene, weak sourcing, high frequency or low relevancy.  Sender reputation is a partnership between the email broadcast vendor and the marketer. 

"While we think overall IP reputation is really important too," Nagele says, "A good reputation does not guarantee delivery. Getting as much information as possible is the best way to ensure your money is well spent."

We are always looking for new technologies and industry partners that support our commitment to delivering a high quality experience to Hotmail customers. To this end, before committing to a certain technology or provider we conduct rigorous testing and pilot programs to ensure that our internal standards are met. Until that bar is met, we have no partnership announcements to make.

Current and future partners who represent senders of high quality can expect improved and or preferred delivery including enabled links and graphics as well as bypassing content filters. However, Hotmail will always reserve the right to deny mail based on user feedback of perceived quality issues. Hotmail might introduce UI elements or badges intended to imply sender quality – these will be applied very selectively based on the quality and security of the mail. Any such badge will be generic and not specific to any single industry partner.

John Scarrow
Microsoft General Manager - Safety Services

Today I received a spam message from a saleperson. It was like many others that I receive, except that I immediately noticed how respectful the tone was. Then at the end of it, he tells me that I should reply to his email so that he can show his boss that his respectful spam is more effective than the other spam I get. 

I know for a fact that this guy purchased my name off a list. I never contacted him or asked to receive anything about his services.

I thought to myself, "This is clever. I'm not going to fall for it, but I bet a lot of people feel guilty and write back to this guy."

From: ***** ******
To: Joshua Baer
Subject: Please answer a quick question for me.

Dear Josh,

As promised it's been a while since I contacted you and a lot has happened here at Layered Technologies. But my own respectful approach has not changed. I certainly do not want to waste your time, or annoy you with lots of cold calls.

[more about their services]

Out of respect and a desire not to spam, you will be the only recipient at your company. Help me prove to my own management that this respectful approach is what people want by shooting me a quickie email letting me know if you do or do  not have projects in these areas.

Thank you in advance and have a great year,

*****

***** ******
Enterprise Sales Executive
Layered Tech

I wrote back to him with a simple reply:

Take my name, phone, and email off your list.

He wrote back to me offended, and in not so few words called me an asshole:

Josh I looked up my records to be sure I haven't over contacted you. It looks like the last time was 7/09. Since it's a very respectful note and it's been 7 months since I last made a contact attempt I wonder are you always so friendly or do I just bring out the best in you?

You have been removed from my list.

This is the first time I've ever felt like I was being reprimanded for not being polite in how I unsubscribed!

This morning a tweet came across the wire announcing that Goodmail will begin offering Certified Email services to all Microsoft Mailboxes starting on or around February 17th. This should be good news in light of the service changes for Certified Email at Yahoo! announced on January 29th.

Goodmail announced the start date of the Certified Email program at Hotmail/MSN to all of their clients today; what was previously rumor has manifested into a fact with a start date. According to Wikipedia Hotmail users number 270 Million as of 2008 which will represent a significant increase in the number of people receiving and using certified email on a day to day basis.

The adoption of Certified Email at Hotmail/MSN will guarantee inbox placement and enable links and images for marketers using the service. The inclusion and rendering of the Certified Email icon will most likely take place later this summer but in the mean time marketers utilizing Goodmail’s CE will begin to see immediate privileges when sending to Microsoft domains.

Cheers!
-Len Shneyder
Director of Partner Relations
& Industry Communications
www.pivotalveracity.com

Sharing a good bottle of wine with friends is simply a much richer experience than consuming one alone. Additionally, a mutual appreciation for the same types of wines you and your friends consume creates a far more substantial sharing experience. In this two part series, I’ll explore why mutual associations with brands will dramatically increase open rates and drastically reduce spam complaints, paving the way for better deliverability metrics, engagement and brand reputation.

As marketers, we put too much pressure on our subscribers.  First, we insist they recognize the label on our wine bottle, (The From: Name) then we expect them to read our subject line, and subsequently we hope subscribers actually “taste” (open) the email and glance at what we’re peddling.  If we haven’t lost their attention by now, we continue to plague them by asking them to share the given email using a functionality called SWYN (share with your network).  If that isn’t enough, we still yearn for a conversion…..and it all gets to be too much, ultimately, perhaps, pushing the subscriber away. 

Messaging of this nature is still outbound.   

What lies ahead is a significant evolution in email marketing which will work in concert with social networks to “reverse engineer” the social characteristics of email and bring social directly to your inbox.

Email offers will drastically change in the near future.  Next-generation emails will benefit from a deeper level of peer transparency. This new level of transparency will be earmarked by advanced or universal preference centers and highly intuitive sign up processes. By selectively capturing social media credentials of your subscribers, several layers of data points will become immediately available to harvest.  These socially focused data points will change ordinary subject lines to engaging peer notifications from a given brand.

Consider this:  you are far more inclined to “friend” someone on Facebook if you have mutual friends, correct?  And, you are more inclined to become a fan of a Facebook page if other members and colleagues of your social network are fans of that same page.  So, why not apply this same concept to email?

Industry statistics from Bazaarvoice illustrate that 74% of online shoppers who receive advice from their friends on social networks allow that advice to influence their purchasing decisions. Also this article by Shiv Singh supports that statistic with its discussion of when and why we trust our peers when determining types of online purchases. Furthermore, in a recent Purchaser Influence Survey by EXPO, featured today in emarketer.com, over 90% US Moms trust peer reviews more than manufacturer information. (Special Thanks to Anthony Schneider of Mass Transmit and Jeffrey Rohrs of ExactTarget for that snippet.)  With that said, we must reverse-engineer the current dynamic of outbound marketing based emails and bring our social networks to the coveted inbox.  At its core, should be a socially focused “über-email” program which acts as your brand’s private reserve.

Shoppers of a given brand instinctively want to know what “a subset of their trusted friends” bought online.  Similarly, shoppers also want to know what their friends think about those same products before they decide to purchase them.  Our marketing based email messaging should produce unbiased, first-hand knowledge of how our social networks “feel” about a product, not a subjective marketing message from your brand with ordinary subject lines.  Moreover, user-generated content is comprised of written and/or video testimonials of a product or service.  But, these testimonials which are often placed in an email, or on a brands landing page come from random people we don’t necessarily know. These testimonials although sincere in nature, don’t reverberate.

Reverse engineering social email

Would you like to know if any of your friends subscribe to the same brands as you do?  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see which of your friends reviewed that new trendy restaurant on Yelp? Would receiving immediate notifications from peer actions with the brand build trust, directly after that review?

Currently, dynamic content in email allows us to customize a message to a particular segment or to an individual on your list, based on attributes in their profile.  We’ve learned that FedEx has as many as 144 attributes for a given record, which allows for granular customization of each email communication for each given email stream.  With increased Social Media data points culled together through an evolved master preference center adds an increasingly richer dimension for email marketers.  With these richer dimensions comes pinpoint information about your friends’ recent actions associated with a given brand. 

Savvy marketers will ameliorate the quality of such social media data points by dynamically inserting social attributes into a given email program. This concept completely reverses the current outbound system which is somewhat dysfunctional, because marketers still rely on subscribers outbound actions. The evolution of such a program will bring these messages to the inbox and will have far superior return on your email marketing investments, because this messaging adds increased value for the subscribers.  More value equals a more relevant email. With more relevant messaging comes drastically reduce spam complaints and dramatically increased open rates.

Let’s say you received an email from Barnes and Noble.  And, Barnes and Noble has been granted permission by you and many members of your social network, to publish information about actions your social network is undertaking with Barnes and Noble. Images of your friends may be dynamically and creatively populated in the creative, so when you open up your email, not only will you see friends’ images with links to their social media pages, you’ll also know which of them are subscribers, and which ones purchased that new Stephan King book Barnes and Noble is featuring.  What’s more is that the subject line will be highly engaging because it’s about your network “first” and not about the item being featured.

Part II of this series will discuss the challenges associated with this concept and why future marketing based subject lines will no longer matter. Subject lines will become highly relevant notifications, and how these “relevant notifications” will increase open rates and dramatically reduce spam complaints.

Fred Tabsharani 
Port25 Solutions
@tabsharani

 

Yahoo! posted a notice this morning that the MTA connectivity problems have returned. Here's the latest missive from Yahoo!

_____

At around 6am PST, we again started experiencing low connectivity on our MXes, and we have since been working incessantly to improve the situation. As before, the SMTP error message being generated by the issue will generally be the following:

"420 Resources unavailable temporarily. Please try later <insert Y! MTA
hostname"

However, some senders may see our other "421" SMTP error messages as well, as listed here:

http://postmaster.yahoo.com/errors/

Ensuring that email is delivered in a timely manner is of the utmost importance and priority for us, so we appreciate your patience while we work on the issue.

_____

-Len Shneyder
Director of Partner Relations
& Industry Communications
www.pivotalveracity.com

 

I was digging through my closet today and found this hat. The hats were given out as chachka at a unique email industry meetup hosted by the Berkman Center at Harvard University on a very cold winter day in January, 2004. I think Trevor Hughes was responsible for the hats.

I believe this meeting was one of the first times that SPF, Sender-ID and Domain Keys were revealed publicly. I remember Hans Peter Brøndmo speaking about the vision of Project Lumos a lot of passionate debate about the future of email and the need for Authentication, Accreditation and Reputation systems.

My how far we've come! 6 years later SPF is gone, Sender-ID is predominantly used by Microsoft, and DKIM has been adopted by Google, Yahoo! and many others. Authentication is real. Return Path is the de-facto reputation system and also provides accreditation services along with Goodmail and others.

Back then all reputation was IP based. Now we're finally seeing significant movement towards domain based reputation authenticated with DKIM.

Did it "solve" the spam problem? Certainly not. I do think it has helped the overall ecosystem and it surely has made it easier for legitimate senders to get reliably email deliverability.

Were you at that meeting on the cold January day in 2004? What do you remember? What do you think about how far we've come?

What is with the month January this year? Seems that a few celebrity marriages have taken a turn for the worse and caused them to separate. I'm not trying to make fun of someone's misfortunes, but wow.

To make things more interesting in our terms of email, sometime this week a bunch of new buzz stirred up around Goodmail's and Yahoo! relationship. Are they breaking up? Taking a little break from each other? Who knows, but the chatter around the industry is that Goodmail has made phone calls or sent the below email to it's ESP partners and customers notifying then of such. You decide.

My viewpoint? I'm not so sold on this information just yet. Just doesn't make sense... UPDATED: as I think more about this, is it because Yahoo! doesn't see a big enough benefit over the hassle of keep up the infrastructure? Someone also said to me maybe the Goodmail stuff was in the way during the recent Yahoo! inbound outages? or caused it? is pay for email really worth it?

Effective February 1: There will be a reduction in privileges granted to CertifiedEmail messages sent to yahoo.com and other domains controlled by Yahoo:

1. The CertifiedEmail icon won’t be displayed for CertifiedEmail messages sent to these domains.
2. Delivery rates to Yahoo mailboxes will be very high but Goodmail can no longer assure delivery, as messages will be subject to filtering by Yahoo.
3. Images will be displayed for most CertifiedEmail messages but not for all.

We are in discussions with Yahoo and hope to restore full privileges to CertifiedEmail but there is no firm timeline for that at this time. We will advise on any developments as soon as we can.

Effective February 1: CertifiedEmail coverage will expand to include Verizon.net and all Mail.com mailboxes.

Goodmail remains committed to its CertifiedEmail platform, the only solution for senders, receivers and consumers who expect the highest level of security, best email practices and Inbox functionality. During 2010, CertifiedEmail will grow its ISP footprint and we will launch new exciting products.

If you have any questions, please contact our Customer Service group via email at customerservice (AT) goodmailsystems.com

-Dennis
Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

We're seeing reports at OtherInbox of spam emails sent to email lists that are hosted at iContact. Our users give each website a different email address so it's easy to see when they get abused. I received an email with the subject "Pharmacy Best Product Vicodin.Viagra!!!!!" to an email address that was only given to Shoeboxed.com (a great service that I love). 

Other users are reporting emails to other companies that have no affiliation to Shoeboxed - but the one common thread seems to be that they all use iContact. Another list that is hosted at iContact and seems to be stolen is eApps.com. We know of at least 8 different companies affected by this so far.

Marek Isalski did a great job documenting the breach here. 

There may be another explanation, so we've reached out to iContact on Twitter and are watching their blog for more info but so far they have not responded. Understandably, they are probably doing their own research before they make any announcements. (update: iContact has updated their blog acknowledging the issue but with few other details.)

Is your list hosted at iContact? Do you have any unique seeds on it? If so, leave a message in the comments and tell me if you received this same spam email.

Yahoo! is having some MTA connectivity problems, from the Postmaster Blog:

If you're seeing some queuing in your outbounds today when sending to Y! users,
we're currently experiencing low connectivity across our MTAs, which started
this morning. We're working to get things back to normal.

The SMTP error message being generated by the issue should be:

"420 Resources unavailable temporarily. Please try later <insert Y! MTA hostname>"


Our apologies for the inconvenience.

____________________

In addition to the 420s it appears as though 421s are increasing so expect to see a few flavors of message deferred in your logs.

Sincerely,

-Len Shneyder
Director of Partner Relations
& Industry Communications
www.pivotalveracity.com

RE-POSTED from Fresh Business Thinking

Email Health Checking

By Dennis Dayman, Chief Privacy and Deliverability Officer at Eloqua

The rapid pace at which email has developed means that criminals and spammers are constantly looking for new ways to make money and bypass the law. Consequently, email technology and regulators are being forced to keep up. In the past, the threats posed by spam were prevented using fairly basic measures that would block untargeted emails. Content filters were set up to protect inboxes from messages that contained certain keywords. 

For a while this worked, but despite the initial success, filters of this kind caused two main problems. First there are false positives, where legitimate companies, marketing a valid product, were limited in their outreach if one of their key terms was blocked by the spam filter. For example, Pfizer was unable to communicate material around the product Viagra, despite having a legitimate right to market its content. The other was around interfering with personal emails and the result of excessive filters placing emails from family and friends into spam folders....

--MORE--? Click here!

-Dennis
Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

"Permission is not enough; list engagement list is the key to deliverability. ISPs have stated they’re measuring such things as viewing time."

"Over-mailing = complaints = negative reputation at ISPs. Diversify less critical messages using Social Media. Save the good stuff for email."

"Drop the noreply@. Gmail’s begun testing turning on images for senders who have received two replies from a user; other ISPs should follow."

"Let the customer drive. From the onset and through Preference Centers let them dictate how much and what sort of email they want to receive."

"Stop marketing, at least occasionally. Actual content is likely to score better as ISPs look at engagement and complaints when filtering."

"Test, test, test. Day of the week, time of day, and level of personalization and segmentation will all improve engagement and pay dividends."

"Authentication will continue to be a major factor. Senders who have not adopted DKIM as their auth method of choice should do so this year."

"Just like DKIM, domain-level reputation is on the rise. For portability’s sake, make the From: and Friendly From as consistent as possible."

"Even though engagement, DKIM, and domain-rep may be on the rise they’re not the only factors. IP-based reputation still matters -- a lot."

"ESPs can do many things but your content and frequency aren’t among them. What/when/how you mail is largely dependent on your deliverability."
 

- Scott Hardigree | Indiemark | @indiescott

REPOSTED from mad.co.uk

When email was first developed, it was primarily used as a channel to exchange research between universities, the government and to share military information with targeted parties. Today the landscape is quite different, and  email is now a fully-fledged method of communication. As is typical however, as its popularity has grown, so has its appeal to criminals. This has created both a challenge in terms of how to prevent this criminal activity, as well as an opportunity, particularly for marketing services companies who strive to support organisations that dispatch targeted emails as part of their marketing communications activities...

MORE? Click here: http://technologyweekly.mad.co.uk

-Dennis
Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

The email industry's latest buyout happened a few days ago and we witnessed a highly reputable email monitoring and deliverability reputation company Pivotal Veracity agree to buyout terms from Unica, an Email Service Provider with  gunpowder. Unica is attempting to be a "one-stop shop" for marketers that utilize their suite of services and with the acquisition of Pivotal Veracity, Unica may have completed it’s mission of also providing email reputation and deliverability services to its core clients.

What amazes me about this transaction is that Pivotal Veracity was really making strides in becoming a thought-leader in this small field,  and was competing closely with archrival ReturnPath.  I believe the buyout could potentially alienate a number ESP's from eventually partnering with Pivotal Veracity.  As a result of the buyout, ESPs will be very cautious in their approach to working with Pivotal Veracity. However, this by no means diminishes Pivotal Veracity's tremendous accomplishment and a huge congratulations is in order to everyone associated with Pivotal Veracity including but not limited to Deirdre Baird, Michelle Eichner, Jordan Cohen and Len Schnyder.  It certainly looks like Pivotal Veracity accomplished their goal and executed on their exit strategy perfectly.  For many successful companies, "stage five" constitutes an exit strategy of some kind. This process usually happens after key executives and members of the board vote on such an initiative.  I just think that stage five might have come a bit early for Pivotal Veracity.

All evidence seems to show that the real winner in this transaction is ReturnPath.  ReturnPath no doubt also has an exit strategy, but they appear unwilling to divulge a strategy or partner with an ESP at this point, given their unique leadership position and respected voice in the industry.  Although Pivotal Veracity has many well spoken and thought provoking leaders on their staff, I think ReturnPath and their consummate staff are the real superheroes here.  From  Stephanie Miller, the passionate and relentless email advocate to the outspoken J.D. Falk, whose innate knowledge of email technology and deliverability illuminates us all.  Then, of course, there is the self-proclaimed spamfighter himself, Neil Schwartzman. Without a doubt, ReturnPath’s luminaries saturate the industry with reliable and balanced messaging every time.

Furthermore, with leading services in place that are more robust than ever (such as the latest from Sender Score outlined here by Spencer Kollas), and definitive plans in place for maximizing and monitoring domain reputation for senders, the future looks promising.  When you take emails bright future into account, it appears that  ReturnPath is poised for many quarters of strong growth.  I don’t want to sound like an analyst here, but I really think ReturnPath has what it takes to raise the bar for the entire email community and further develop its existing reputation services.

With these developments, ESPs will now will look to ReturnPath as the consummate leader in the email reputation monitoring space and see one fewer rival, one fewer choice to make.  Senders and ESPs will find that ReturnPath is the only high level and sovereign conduit for stellar email deliverability monitoring and reputation.  The allure of ReturnPath is its stout independent position in our space (a positon that only those in our space truly appreciate.) Certainly Matt Blumberg, George Bilbrey and their hardworking crew can now navigate the email reputation landscape exclusively.

At some point in the future, I’m sure ReturnPath also has an exit strategy in mind and that strategy is not for us to surmise. I would venture to guess that as the industry continues to mature and consolidate, ReturnPath may consider filing for an IPO, especially as we see continued consolidation in this space.   I think what matters most is to enjoy the exciting journey that ReturnPath is paving for our industry.  We now have two choices: we can either watch or we can help them build a company of which we can all be proud of. 

Fred Tabsharani

Port25 Solutions, Inc.

@tabsharani

Bounces in email marketing are inevitable, but I often wonder how many marketers in email truly watch their bounces on a regular and consistent basis.

Enter UBER email marketing geek like me. 

At Groupon where I work, our frequency is high and we send a tremendous amount of segmented email.  Some may think that managing and reacting to bounces in this type of environment seems like a daunting task.  One of the requirements that I have as professional is that I am fed a constant stream of information on all areas relating to running an email program.  I hate being caught off guard and want to know if there is a problem before anyone tells me that we have a problem.

I spoke to my ESP and told them of my requirement to be notified when we are having a bounce problem.  I specifically wanted to know if we were having any block bounce issues with my top domains so that I can be proactive in solving them.

They responded quickly and are now generating a bounce report every 3 hours (7 days a week) indicating all of my bounce rates across domains.  I scan almost every report as they come in looking for patterns or trends in the percentages and notify my ESP peeps if I see issues.

My point in all of this is that if you are the manager or director of an email program, this means you own the  whole shebang....bounces and all.  Don't rely on anyone but yourselves to manage the tough stuff like this.  Take control of your bounces, specifically those block bounces which can wreak havoc on your program if an early warning system is not in place.  Is every 3 hours overkill?  Perhaps, but in some programs it might be necessary especially if your program relies on email as its main source of revenue.

A fellow colleague and outstanding contributor of this great blog Dennis Dayman has had some posts centered around bounces and if you haven't read them, I encourage you to do so.

Long live email marketing.

Many of you will have heard the news already - AOL plans to layoff approximately 1,400 staff members in the next day or so, the process has already started in some locations... Grim news indeed.

But this could happen to any ISP, and in times like these it makes the importance of following the escalation and support process all that more important... Less bodies does not mean less work for people - in fact quite the opposite. The individuals that do end up making it past the latest round of layoffs and buyouts will now have a major increase in work load.

Here is what you can do to help the people that help you:

1. Review your mailing metrics before opening a ticket (bounces, low opens/clicks, etc...) and read the error codes being returned in your mail logs - generally the error codes will tell you what your issues are - see sample errors codes from AOL and Comcast. High bounces, low opens, poor coding can all easily be fixed on your own.
2. If your not able to resolve this alone and need help - Consider hiring an email delivery consultant to help you (I know several that are always looking for new clients). They have seen it all and can possibly identify and help resolve an issue you didn't even know you had.
3. Consultant not in the cards and your going to try it alone... Follow the escalation process detailed on the Postmaster pages for many ISPs, no postmaster page - then try sending an email to Postmaster@ISP. Word to the Wise has a great list to reference and bookmark. Be sure to include all the information you have when asking for help from an ISP - IPs, error codes, email samples (with headers), full contact information, trace routes, manual mail server connection tests. Confused yet? See #2
4. Possibly the most important part of this is Be patient and Understanding - The postmaster/abuse desk receiving your email is already working on a dozen other items ranging from; internal network abuse mitigation to bot nets to helping resolve false positive issues to name just a few of the things they are doing on a daily basis.
5. Give Respect, Get Respect - Give attitude, and you can wait at the bottom of the support queue. Don't flood the support queues with dozens of messages, most support systems work on a first in first out process - they will get to you when it's your turn.
   
   
6. Monitor your mail logs... as abuse desks get busier their ability to reply may decline, but you may see the issue suddenly resolve without receiving a confirmation message or without an explanation of the cause of the issue (this is frequently experienced now with some ISPs).

These are a few simple things that you can consider when looking at issue, and asking for help resolving these problems. Sound daunting and confusing... See #2 - it might just be the best thing you do this year to get your program back on track, even if your not currently experiencing any delivery issues.

Original Post on EmailKarma.net

Waltham, Mass. – January 13, 2010 - Unica Corporation (Nasdaq: UNCA), the recognized leader in marketing software solutions, today announced that it has acquired privately-held Pivotal Veracity, a leading provider of tools that enable companies to optimize the deliverability and reputation of their digital communications, for approximately $17.8 million in cash....

--Click here for MORE--

-Dennis
Eloqua 

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

(The Deliverability Forum is a series of interviews I hosted with industry leaders and luminaries over the past few months.  It came to closure last week and I have shared the final post with takeaways and highlights from the Bronto blog.)

It is with a bit of ennui that I must close this series.  Many thanks to everyone who contributed to the blog posts over the last few months and gave their uncensored opinions around what they find valuable, in need of change or what interesting developments are in the pipeline.  As we began, so we will end - you may not have direct access to these industry leaders but I hope the conversations I've shared have given you insight into the minds of those who have direct influence over the email industry from a sender's and receiver's perspective.  And thank you for the comments and readership thus far.

If you missed any of the blog posts, they are laid out below in chronological order with a high level summary of the post and my takeaways for you as a reader to glean from the interview.  Also, I've included a "definition" section at the bottom of this post if there are any acronyms that you might be uncertain about.  Please scroll down to access it.

The Players:

The FTC (post) describes in the US government's own voice how spam is regulated and counteracted.  Ethan Arenson, the FTC Spam Coordinator, spells out the very serious consequences of not being CAN-SPAM compliant and where to go for their exacting interpretation of what exactly is required of all commercial mailers.  It also shows the government's willingness to help curb the problem of unwanted email by enforcing industry standards such as authentication in a non-legal but best standard way.

My take: While most commercial emailers are compliant with the law (especially if using an ESP such as Bronto), it remains in your best interest to stay cognizant of the law and have someone you trust and can defer to when you're not sure if what you're doing is legal.  Also, the FTC regularly updates the Act's provisions so make sure to stay abreast of the latest rules that are voted in by the FTC commissioners.  We are talking about law here with real civil and criminal consequences if broken.  You don't want to find yourself being accused of a federal crime wherein ignorance of the law won't hold much water!

Pivotal Veracity's (post) President and CEO, Deidre Baird, explains the importance of both authentication and user engagement.  Pivotal Veracity is neither an ISP nor an ESP, but rather a deliverability intermediary services company with deep expertise around content and email disposition.  Also, Pivotal Veracity is a partner of Bronto.  As the interview mentions, without a conscious eye towards the emerging shift in ISP deliverability patterns, specifically around user engagement and authentication, you'll find your program in trouble.

My take: As AOL puts it, "send relevant email to people that want to receive it!"  Are you doing everything you can from an infrastructure standpoint to ensure your email doesn't attract negative hits when being scanned and determined for acceptance by the ISPs?  And, once delivered, is the email being received well by your recipients?  If you can't categorically answer in the affirmative to both of those questions, you have some major homework to do or else risk your mail being deemed irrelevant and sent off to the bulk folder or bounced back.  Both cost money.

Razorfish (post) chimed in from a email content and strategy perspective.  Whitney Hutchinson, Group Director, Strategy and Account Services, sums it up nicely by hitting on these key points: engage your recipients with appropriate creatives, have a holistic marketing approach for the relationship management and take into account the "stacking effect" which is a result of the newly emergent communication technologies available to market to recipients through.  Email is now one of many.

My take: While email is now just one piece in a wide breadth of technologies (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Wave, SMS, etc.), it is still the most important and most trusted conduit of content that recipients most engage with consistently over time.  It has proven itself as a reliable protocol, even older than the internet itself (history)!  But, recipients have become increasingly savvy with its adoption so making your content stand out amongst the sea of email users get is at the vanguard of a successful marketing program.

ReturnPath's (post) President, George Bilbrey, still believes email is the "killer" app.  ReturnPath, while not an email sender or receiver, hosts a suite of services ranging from ESP to ISP products and plays a significant role with its liaison relationship between both senders and receivers.  He poignantly breaks down the exacting metrics ISPs use to measure user engagement (i.e., open rates, click rates, spam complaints, panel votes, etc.) along with the idea of domain reputation.  ReturnPath is a partner of Bronto.

My take: Authenticate, watch your complaints and make sure your domain reputation is healthy.  Yahoo! and AOL have already moved over to using domain reputation as a determining factor for deliverability - so to even ignore those two at this point with their combined estimated 142.4 million unique inboxes is perilous.  ISPs are fighting off spam and user interpreted unwanted email; don't let your mail take on these smarmy characteristics.

Cloudmark (post) occupies a very distinct space in the email industry as being a provider of anti-phishing, spamming, virus and other threat vector services to ISPs only.  Jamie Tomasello, Abuse Operations Manager, posits that authentication doesn't actually imply good mail but rather mail that is verified as coming from the declared source.  Interestingly, she adds that user engagement is not a net positive measurement - you can have negative user engagement as well depending on what the user does with your mail that is perceived by the ISPs and companies such as hers when it's not wanted.  Permission is tantamount.

My take: Bronto and many other responsible ESPs require permission based marketing as the only source of email addresses senders can email to.  Why?  Because it shows the true intent of the recipient to actually want your email; they've taken an action that is clear and deliberate to let the sender know they want the email.  By assuming recipient desire and emailing recipients who haven't given permission is casting a large net that will cause deliverability issues.  Think about it.  When was the last time you marked an email as spam or deleted it when you didn't knowingly sign up for it?  That's what I thought.

LashBack (post) rounded up the series as the final contributor with James O’Brien, Director of Marketing.  LashBack is dedicated to monitoring unsubscribe requests, suppression list abuse and whether an unsubscribe mechanism exists.  This directly ties into CAN-SPAM compliancy as well as being inline with email marketing best practices - when a recipient communicates to you they don't want your email anymore, you should honor this request without question or judgment.  Also, LashBack is putting together the first Email Compliance Summit which should be highly anticipated by senders and ESPs who want to stay on the cutting edge of unsubscribe policy.

My take: With the unsubscribe mechanism being one of several ways a recipient can directly and easily communicate intent with the email sender (others being complaints lodged with the respective ISP or direct email to the sender's role accounts), it is a very useful metric to measure the impact your mail is having on recipients.  Are you sending too much?  Too frequently?  Not targeted enough?  It's the job of the marketer to find that sweet spot where relevancy, recency and frequency are met with the recipients to not drive them to unsubscribe from your mail.

Definitions:

• CAN-SPAM: Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003 is the law the federal US government enacted to combat spam and other unwanted and malicious email.

• FTC: Federal Trade Commission is the arm of the federal government in charge of enforcing and maintaining the CAN-SPAM Act.

• ISP: Internet Service Provider of which the largest B2C ISPs are Yahoo!, Hotmail/Live, Gmail and AOL.  Email provider or receiver.

• ESP:  Email Service Provider such as Bronto.  Email senders.

• SPF: Sender Policy Framework is a type of email authentication that is path based and validates the sending entity.

• DKIM: DomainKeys Identified Mail is a type of email authentication that is encryption based, validates the content of a message hasn't been tampered with while in transit and can be tied back to a sending domain.

I hope that the Deliverability Forum and this wrap up have helped you with your deliverability programs.  Still have questions?  Comment below and let's keep the conversation going.

Chris Wheeler
Director of Deliverability at Bronto
@ChrisAWheeler