May 26, 2010
By Dennis Dayman
If you haven't heard, Hotmail is looking at taking the old This is Spam button and bringing it into the 21st Century. Coming to a Hotmail inbox near you will be a new feature called "Sweep" which essentially does just that, sweep's unwanted email away from your inbox, but without the consequence of taking a negative hit to a senders reputation score.
Why are they doing this you ask? Well it is simple, many of us know there is a gray area in email that isn't outright spam, but isn't something you really care about as well like a personal note from your friends. Per Hotmail, Sweep is a virtual broom that lets you super easily "sweep" the mail you don't want out of your inbox into either folders or oblivion, leaving your inbox clean.
The great thing about the new “sweep” feature for managing gray mail is that Hotmail users can get the same result, i.e., not receive the gray mail they don’t want, but it won’t negatively impact the sender’s reputation score.
To be honest I still worry a bit here about this. Will it solve the problem of preventing ok email from being marked as spam if the users don't want it anymore even after signing up for it? Will users be more educated using this feature to know they could just as easily unsubscribe from within the email if they don't want it anymore? Could this new feature cause more confusion? perhaps...
What are your thoughts?
More on this
-Dennis
Eloqua
Don't Just Send, Deliver!
March 18, 2010
By Dennis Dayman
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?
- Be a Certified level member in the program. Apply right now.
- Have IPs that are rarely, if ever, suspended from the Certified list
- Authenticate your email with Domain Keys and/or DKIM and have unique domain/selector pairs dedicated to your Certified IPs
- 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!
February 12, 2010
By John Scarrow
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
