Spamhaus has uncovered a fake blacklist that is using stolen data from other blacklists such as Spamhaus, CBL and SURBL, saying it is their's, and then attempting to charge senders for removal from this blacklist if they find themselves on it.

The "company" involved in this scheme is touting themselves as a fake anti-spam filtering company called nszones.com. Nszones operates a 'remove your IP' scam charging naive internet users to be removed from the stolen blacklists.

If you find yourself on this blacklist or receive any communications from them saying your in danger by being on their, ignore it. Do NOT pay them anything.

-Dennis
Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

I've been asked many times over the years how to actually get at the email headers when using a standard email client to read messages.  This not only comes in very handy when you're troubleshooting deliverability problems on the sender's side (IP address, HELO values, authentication, etc.) but also allows you to take a closer look at the individual ISPs and what information they tack on to the message headers which can usually tell you something you didn't know before.  Headers are an immutable piece of data that represent the snapshot of when and how the email was sent from points A to B.  Granted, if you work in deliverability to any extent, this is child's play.

However, if you've ever wanted to be an email diagnostician (I remember saying this on my 5th birthday!) or found yourself wondering what people meant when they discussed email headers, keep reading and I'll show you some of the most popular email clients' paths to headers.  Keep in mind, every email that is successfully sent contains headers.  But, the programs that consume the email packets and present them to the end recipients vary on how transparent they are with exposing headers.  Following the lead of the major clients below, you'll get a pretty good idea of what access strategy to use in the majority of email clients available.  

Yahoo!:

 

Windows Live Mail (desktop client):

Windows Live Hotmail (web client):

Gmail:

AOL:

*If left clicking doesn't produce what's shown in the image, right click.

Hopefully this gives you a better idea of where to look when trying to needle out the email headers from your email client without having to get too technical with setting up your own fancy inbound mail server or handler.  If you have any questions, let me know and I'll be glad to go deeper.  Many resources are available explaining the value of and how to read headers.  Depending on the feedback, I might post a follow up to this explaining what you should look for and how the data points play into enhancing your deliverability strategy.  Let me know what you think!

As you might have heard, Return Path Certified Sender has launched some industry changes to their certification program.

Beginning On April 30, 2010, Certified status will no longer be available for email streams strictly comprised of 3rd party marketing. These email streams will be eligible for Safe status only, continuing to receive a level of benefits and reporting not available elsewhere. All other 1st party content will be eligible if not already for the certified status. 

"Third party marketing" is defined as email-based advertising that is not accompanied by content and is sent on behalf of a different company than the one to which the end user subscribed in the first place. You can read the details of the new standards here.

The Return Path certification program offers two levels of trust: Safe and Certified. The level is determined by a sender’s business practices and reputation performance metrics.

If you have ANY customers or programs that are of a 3rd party nature and are in the certification program today, they should have been notified already about this change to the Safe list. If those customers or programs have a mix of 1st party and 3rd party content, then they should be carefully reviewed, segment those content pieces onto separate IP space, and ensure each stream is added to the appropriate program at Return Path.

-Dennis
Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

They say curiosity killed the cat. Apparently, no one is saying that loudly enough to stop consumers around the globe from clicking on spam.

Nearly half (43%) of email users in North America and Western Europe say they have knowingly opened or accessed spam – including clicking on links or opening unknown and potentially dangerous attachments, according to a new global consumer survey  from the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG).  Of those who open spam, about half (46%) did so intentionally – to unsubscribe, out of curiosity or out of genuine interest in the products being offered.  This is consistent with findings from the same study’s 2009, but not an increase in such behavior.

The  2010 MAAWG ‘Email Security Awareness and Usage Report’ was released yesterday (March 24, 2010).   Consumers were surveyed in North America and across Western Europe with a variety of questions from computer expertise and savvy, to their preferences of email.

Several of the findings are both shocking and disturbing.  Consumers seem generally unaware of the consequences of their actions, and a painful percentage continue to click on spam, knowingly, instead of deleting it immediately. Such actions help explain the gargantuan increase in botnet presence on the Internet and zombie’d computers continue to steal millions of bits of personal and confidential business information as a result.

Clearly, we as an industry have an opportunity to do more education for end users of email.  Several of us at Return Path will be working with the good folks at MAAWG and other industry associations to develop programs that we hope can be embraced by marketers as well as mailbox providers and anti-spam professionals.  We'll keep everyone informed of ways to participate.

In other findings, four out of ten users responding to the survey do click the report spam button (39%) or move spam to their junk folder (44%).   One in five say they report the message to the sender, if it’s recognized as a legitimate company.   These findings are pretty consistent between North America and Western Europe.  Younger users both consider themselves more experienced in terms of email security, but also more likely to engage in risky behavior like clicking on spam. 

Marketers know full well the pressure on response rates from the excess clutter in the inbox.   However, users who responded to the survey say that they use the senders’ name (73%) and the subject line (67%) to identify spam in the inbox.    Respondents also say that unusual language, the content of the email, the “from” name or address, and spelling mistakes and poor grammar are signs that an email may be spam.  This is true in all six countries included in the survey, although respondents in Spain and France are less likely to rely on these factors.

Email marketing is still a great opportunity and users surveyed do find marketing messages valuable.  They are just not as welcome as other kinds of personal email.  When asked about what various types of email they prefer, one-to-one communications still rule the roost. Messages from friends and family were ranked as ‘extremely or very important’ to 82% of respondents, but marketing email was only rated similarly by 15% of those surveyed.  Another 32% did view marketing mail as ‘somewhat important’.

Consider these findings in context with our shared goals:  To ensure that valued messages reach the inbox and unwelcome messages – especially the dangerous ones – do not.   Marketers, email service and technology providers, mailbox providers and security vendors all share this goal.

Please take a look at the full survey, and share your reactions and thoughts in the comments section below.

(Thanks to Neil Schwartzman of Return Path for his co-authorship of this post!)

Repost from pvIQ Blog

Starting on March 23rd Lycos began to roll out a new email client. The new front end is powered by Zimbra, an open source collaboration suite.

The roll-out of the new email client is happening in stages and is still ongoing as of the 25th of March. In addition to changing the email client changes were made to the imap servers. The old imap server address was imap.mail.lycos.com to imap.lycos.com. People accessing mail via imap should update the imap service to continue to receive it in their mail client of choice.

Zimbra's new client includes a preview pane which is new addition to the mailbox; the overall feel and look of Zimbra's mail client is not unlike that of an Outlook Web Access client. The default reading pane is positioned below the mailbox list view just like the default preview pane of Outlook 2003. The following screenshots show you a before and after:

Old Lycos email client

New Lycos email client

CSS & design Support in Lycos

The new email client appears to have limited support for CSS. Background images defined through CSS are not supported and will not render as an in-line style, however background colors defined as in-line styles will work. Font manipulation and inheritance is supported via in-line style. The overall result of the new client's rendering is not unlike Gmail's with similar support for CSS. Because Gmail does not support style sheets (either in the head or anywhere else in the body) designers should instead rely on in-line styles as the lowest common denominator when designing emails.

The addition of a preview pane is an added boon for marketers as it gives their emails a better chance of being noticed. However, the new email client, preview pane included, has images disabled by default so although the message might get someone's attention it still takes a recipient's click in order to enable images and thereby register as an open.

Cheers!
-Len Shneyder
Director of Deliverability & Messaging
Unica | Pivotal Veracity

This is a paid job posting.

Optivo, one of Germany's largest email service providers, is looking for a Delivery Manager. Check out the job opening on their website!

---

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

MobileMarketer

By Giselle Tsirulnik

A federal district court in Chicago recently held that SMS messages that are sent to consumers without their consent could violate the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

For those who don't know, the TCPA is the primary law in the U.S. governing the conduct of telephone solicitations.

--CLICK HERE FOR MORE--

-Dennis

Eloqua
Don't Just Send, Deliver!

Reposted from Pivotal IQ Blog

At one time or other we've all asked that age old question what's in a name? Well it's not an old age any more, it's the 21st century and the question to ask today is "what's in a path?" In a word, everything. In a few more words, the final destination of your email.

To borrow a little Jack Lalanne here, content is king and architecture is queen but together you have the entire kingdom, or more importantly the inbox. We know for a fact that content and spam filters take a close look at your p's and q's to determine if the message in your email is fit for general consumption. We know that every element in your message contributes to the overall likelihood of your email being filtered to the inbox vs. the spam folder. However I want to look at one specific component of your email's content that may not get the attention it should: the image path and URL.

An image path is simply a pointer to where the image lives out on the internet. Email marketing is sent without any attachments so the images that are rendered in the customer's inbox are by way of image paths or URLs to the images. Easy enough, this has been the way it's done since like forever, or at least 1999. But from to time I've been seeing people forget that the actual link itself is as important as the image it leads to. Let me give you an example:

<img src="http://www.foo.com/images/banners/image.jpg">  >>> What's the problem with this image link?

If you said nothing you're wrong. There is a problem, it's the word banner. ISP filters and other technology deployed across the internet such as Spamassassin or Privoxy, have complicated rule sets designed to block banners, advertising and all other manner of communication deemed to be UCE (unsolicited commercial email). By naming the folder that contains your image "banner" you are increasing the likelihood that your image, if not your entire email will be outright blocked because you've declared it as a banner in so far as a spam filter is concerned.

The idea here is to have intelligent and easy to read paths that don't attempt to obfuscate what's in them, but also take into account the imperfect nature of filtering technology. Avoid using the word banner or variations thereof, in an image path, or for that matter "ad(s)'.

The problems don't stop here, no the rabbit hole goes much deeper. We live in a fast paced world defined, at times, by 140 characters. Our lives move too quickly for war & peace, unless it can be squeezed in between 60 minutes and grey's anatomy, so we short-hand a lot of stuff including paths in our URLs, such as this:

<a href="http://www.foo.com/mar/mktgspcl/index.html">

Yes, it's March and you have a marketing special ad that you want to link to from your email. Ok, so why didn't you say so? Sometimes it pays to include the vowels if for no other reason than to avoid triggering Spamassassin's consonant filter that eagerly checks for any string of consonants with no vowels greater than 7 characters. By the way, the 7 character length is configurable to be 6 or 5 or anything the operator wants it to be. The net-net here is that although the internet is full of gibberish behind the scenes using plain English doesn't hurt once in a while.

One last thing to keep in mind, image paths, or URL paths for that matter, you should always make folder more than 2 characters. There are specific rules that look for 2 character paths, and 3 character paths at times, so an image folder called /img/ or /im/ should be named /image/ to avoid potential unpleasantries.

I know what's on your mind right now, "will any of this truly condemn me to the spam folder?" Any of this? Hm, possibly not any of this, but in conjunction with the 800 number in your email footer, the dollar signs in your subject line, well you get the picture. To quote Depeche Mode "everything counts in large amounts." Take control of your content and steer the ship to where it needs to go. These are pretty simple things to avoid and once you get the hang of it, you'll find you worry less and sleep more. Cheers!

-Len Shneyder
Director of Deliverability & Messaging
Pivotal Veracity | Unica

Good news today was posted by Return Path. For those using Return Path Certified, you now will receive automatic image and link enabling at both Hotmail and Yahoo!

What do you have to do to get this privilege at Yahoo?

1. Be a Certified level member in the program. Apply right now.
2. Have IPs that are rarely, if ever, suspended from the Certified list 
3. Authenticate your email with Domain Keys and/or DKIM and have unique domain/selector pairs dedicated to your Certified IPs
4. Submit domain [d=] and selector [s=] values associated with your Certified IPs

Pretty simple I say. This should help anyone in the program to clearly communicate their value proposition and provide your customers the best possible experience.

Congratulations Return Path and Yahoo! for making this a reality. Membership DOES have its privileges.

-Dennis
Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

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!