New Domains at Yahoo

Yahoo recently announced the addition of two new domains, ymail.com and rocketmail.com, in order to open up addresses for users that had previously been unavailable. Today on their blog they announced that they are encouraging people to move to the new accounts and delete the old ones at yahoo.com so that they are available again. They even offer a service to automate this process. The service is set up to notify people in users address books, but if you don't think that you've been successfully added to enough subscribers address books, it may not hurt to send a notification to yahoo subscribers to remind them to update their address to continue receiving your emails. If your list contains a large percentage of yahoo.com addresses this could mean an increase in complaints at that domain as people move around and new people adopt abandoned addresses.

Yahoo Paragraph Spacing

Yahoo announced today that the issues with paragraph spacing are known and that a fix will be coming. They also offered a couple of tips for yahoo design until this issue is cleared up. Read the full article here.

More Spam Law Updates

There have been several spam law changes in the world in the past month or so. Israel has passed a new spam law. The FTC of course released a ruling making clarifications to the CAN-SPAM law in the US (check out this MarketingSherpa podcast about it). MySpace was awarded $234 million in a spam suit. It makes one wonder what will be next.

List Owners, Senders, and List Rental (oh my)

DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

Last week the FTC approved a new rule provision under the CAN-SPAM act. The ruling specifically addressed multiple senders and who could be a sender and also alluded to the concept of list ownership. Based on the combination of these things list rental can fall into a gray area.

If you aren’t advertising in a list rental email, even though you are the list owner, you may not be able to be considered the sender. This has a few interesting implications. Can the list owner be the branding in the from line? Can you, or even should you offer an opt-out mechanism? All of these also carry deliverability implications as well. For instance, if the branding must be based on the renter, your authentication may be broken. Senders might not be able to capitalize on personal whitelisting, which bypasses some filtering. If it isn’t possible to be completely opted out of the list owner’s emails via an unsub link, that will lead to an increase in complaints.

To me the best solution to this dilemma from a deliverability standpoint would be make sure to brand your emails in such a way as the list owner can be perceived as an advertiser. If the list owner can be considered an advertiser in the email they would be able to be the designated sender. As the designated sender you can reap the benefits of the changes in the CAN-SPAM clarifications. But equally important is the fact that it allows you to capitalize on your own branding to potentially boost response for your advertisers.

Yahoo Drops Paragraph Spacing

According to this entry on the Email Standards Project blog, Yahoo has changed how they render messages. Yahoo no longer inserts space between paragraphs, so it may be necessary to include a margin of 1em to give some spacing. "The Email Standards Project is about working with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email." They have a number of useful articles about rendering across platforms including this one about Outlook 2007.

FTC Approves New Rule Provision Under The CAN-SPAM Act

The FTC has announced that it is publishing clarifications to the CAN-SPAM act. The primary focus of the clarifications are (per the FTC release):

(1) an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender;
(2) the definition of "sender" was modified to make it easier to determine which of multiple parties advertising in a single e-mail message is responsible for complying with the Act’s opt-out requirements;
(3) a "sender" of commercial e-mail can include an accurately-registered post office box or private mailbox established under United States Postal Service regulations to satisfy the Act’s requirement that a commercial e-mail display a "valid physical postal address"; and
(4) a definition of the term "person" was added to clarify that CAN-SPAM’s obligations are not limited to natural persons.

Read the press release here, and the full document is available here.

AOL Postmaster Updates

The AOL postmaster blog announced some more changes to the postmaster site. They have updated what had been their best practices to be their delivery requirements , and have introduced a new sender best practices page. According to the article "Failure to meet any of these [delivery] requirements will result in delivery issues."

MAAWG Updated Sender Best Communications Practices

MAAWG (Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group) has released an updated version of their Sender Best Communications Practices document. MAAWG is largely comprised of ISPs, blacklist providers, and others in the anti-spam community, so I like to think of this document as a roadmap for deliverability.

Email Equality

I have a friend that sells window treatments. The company he works for goes to people’s homes, show samples, take measurements, and then leave and put the orders through later. As part of this process, they tell their customers to expect an email order confirmation letting them know that the order has processed. According to my friend the company doesn’t send any types of email apart from these order confirmations, however they find themselves blocked or on blacklists.

Conventional wisdom seems to say that transactional messages are more highly relevant and therefore less likely to be complained about. Most experts, even MAAWG, often recommend that these transactional messages be placed on IP addresses dedicated only to those emails. Because they are highly relevant, it is thought that complaints are unlikely to occur, bounce rates will be low, there will be few trap hits, etc., but is that really the case? Also, given the sporadic sending patterns of transactional messages, what impact will that have on deliverability at the major ISPs that factor that into the deliverability secret sauce? I think that perhaps a better way of looking at this isn’t, "which of my emails is most important to be delivered," but rather, "every point of contact we have via email is an important opportunity to engage subscribers."

Segregating email is much like segregating people, separate but equal seldom exists. If you look at your email program and split it up so that certain types of email have better deliverability than others, you are inherently saying, "this type of email is bad and this one good," and quite possibly inherently excusing practices that can affect deliverability and even your relationship with your subscribers. If practices in one branch of your email program are being segregated because they would negatively impact deliverability to other parts of your program, maybe the answer is to fix the underlying problems with that part of the program rather than segregating your email.

AOL disables links by default

AOL postmaster blog had a post stating that they released a new version of their webmail last week that defaults to blocking links as well as images. Read all about it here. Things like this make it even more important that readers add you to their personal whitelists, and that you establish a trustworthy and relevant reputation with your reader base. Links will have to be enabled before even a "view this email in a web browser" link will work.

The (Un)Subscriber Experience

In the B2B industry, trade publications have long been a trusted resource for their readers. Subscribers know that they can expect highly relevant, well written, and validated content and they actively seek it out. As the industry moves online, it is taking all of these qualities with it. However, the online experience is inherently different from the print one. Seth Godin, the author that coined the term “permission marketing”, wrote an excellent article recently on permission. There are a lot of misconceptions of how permission marketing works. Lets take a look at some possible impact permission can have not only on an email program and online presence, but also the publication’s reputation that takes so long to build.

For a moment, place yourself in the shoes of Joe. Joe is the Director of Technology at a medium sized company. He has been lauding your publication, which he previously received in print, to all of his friends, employees and the CIO. Joe decides that he wants to receive your email newsletter too, so he goes to your website to sign up. He enters his email address in the form and sees the notice that you have a privacy policy, but doesn’t have the time or inclination to read it. After all, the text where he is opting in tells him that he is going to be receiving a daily newsletter[i].

The next day Joe receives his first daily newsletter, skims through it, and reads an article or two. He is happy that he signed up and is glad to know that online he is still getting the kind of content he has come to expect from the publisher. The next day Joe receives his daily newsletter, and he again skims through it. Later that day he receives another email suggesting that he opt in for a related publication. Joe realizes that he just signed up for this publication, so maybe they thought he’d like a companion to go with it. He decides against the other publication. The next day he receives his daily newsletter, which he still skims through, and an email from a printer company. The email appears to have come unsolicited from the printer company, but has an unsubscribe link he decides to use[ii]. He then realizes that the email from the printer company is actually from the publication he signed up for. He tries to unsubscribe from the type of publications specific to the printing company while staying signed up for other emails.

Time goes by and Joe changes jobs. The newsletter is no longer relevant and he is getting more frustrated by the emails that he has discovered he agreed to by not reading the privacy policy[iii]. Not knowing which lists he is on and therefore unable to opt out, he is left with no choice but to complain[iv]. So, Joe takes the path of least resistance and hits the “this is spam” button in his email browser. The complaining doesn’t stop there though. Joe is frustrated now. All of the people that he has told about the daily newsletter he now warns not to sign up. Joe also stops telling others about the benefits of your magazine. Potential new subscribers are being turned off before they have a chance to subscribe because of warnings that their addresses will be sold, traded, or generally “abused”.

All of this could have been avoided by taking a few simple steps:

1) Be clear at the time and place of opt in exactly what Joe will be receiving

2) Provide a clear and simple method of opting out of email globally

3) Offer a concise and easy to use preference page allowing Joe to manage the email he wants to receive

4) Respect Joe and the fact that he gave you permission by only sending to him what you have mutually agreed to send

5) Do not rely on privacy policy to convey what Joe is signing up for

In the online world, respect is crucial. If you want to keep your subscriber base and maintain a good reputation, respect your subscriber. They will return the favor.

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[i]According to Tom Bartel, Chief Privacy Officer at Return Path, historically the percentage of users that read privacy policies has been in the single to low double digits

[ii] 41% of people surveyed clicked the spam button for email that wasn’t of interest – Special Report: Spam Complainers Survey, Marketing Sherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008

[iii] 25% reported spam because they received too much email from the sender - Special Report: Spam Complainers Survey, Marketing Sherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008

[iv] 21% of the people surveyed reported spam to unsubscribe, even though they didn’t consider the message to be spam - Special Report: Spam Complainers Survey, Marketing Sherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008

Changes at the ISPs

ISP Update

The major ISPs have been making a number of changes recently. Here is a summary of some of the major changes.

AOL –

AOL has made major changes in spam filtering. It has started using DKIM (domain keys identified mail) to authenticate email sent to their servers. They have also changed their whitelisting policies. Rather than having a proper whitelist, the application will basically be for AOL to learn who you are and what kind of mail you are sending. They will then use this information along with their reputation system to determine if your mail will be delivered. (More information available http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2008/01/changes-to-aol.php )

Yahoo –

Yahoo has been making some changes as well. In a recent blog post they announced that they will now be utilizing the spamhaus list to protect their members from spam. From the sound of the post many more changes are on the way. They have also updated their postmaster site so that it now provides more complete information. (Yahoo’s post and postmaster sites:

http://ymailupdates.com/blog/2008/01/04/yahoo-mail-taking-new-steps-to-combat-spam/ http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/postmaster/index.html )

Comcast –

Comcast has released a beta version of a feedback loop, and we at Hallmark are working on getting signed up for it. The have also changed their preferred connection settings to no more messages than 6 per second. Additionally, several rr.com domains were retired. We have updated our infrastructure to manage these changes, and updated the addresses in the retired domains to a held status.

Two good articles about ESPs

I ran across a couple of good posts about deliverability today. Both address deliverability issues people see who use ESPs.

http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2007/11/dont-expect-your-esp-to-have-t.php

http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2006/12/esps-and-deliverability-what-t.php

A couple of pertinent quotes:

“ESPs only control one out of the five possible causes of deliverability problems - infrastructure ... And, in almost all cases, ESPs do a good job about keeping up with the changing industry standards around how to send email.”

“ESPs should absolutely provide diagnostic tools that allow clients to monitor and analyze deliverability issues in real time”

The Little White Book

As I’ve discussed a bit before, it is important to ask your subscribers to add you to their personal whitelists. This allows you to bypass at least some filtering and increases your chances that your emails will be delivered to the inbox. How much impact these listings have varies by domain, ranging from being the final step in the filtering process and only allowing inbox delivery if it passed the other filters to bypassing all filtering whatsoever.

Included in these instructions can also be ways to ensure that images are turned on by default for your email. If you send HTML email, this is very important. Most email clients turn off images by default and your readers may not get your message as it was intended.

There are several good sources of info out there in terms of how to set up a page of instructions for your readers:

- This new one includes how to whitelist on a blackberry amongst others and has great tips on how to design the page.

- Another set of instructions can be found here.

- Here is an article about the importance of personal whitelisting and how many clicks it may take some readers before they can actually see your email.

How are your mails perceived?

When it comes to matters of deliverability, CAN-SPAM is merely a starting point. I once had a teacher that told me to look at laws as the bare minimum of acceptable activity. If you want people to respect you, invite you in, or simply not ignore what you have to say, people know that they have to go above what the law outlines. Things like manners, ethics and values often exceed legal expectations in terms of personal interactions. The same should be true of email legal compliance.

CAN-SPAM outlines a number of policies for senders of mail in the US and there are a myriad of international laws on the matter as well. The more important issue to senders than “can I legally do this”, is “how will sending this be perceived”. Receiving servers can block email for any number of reasons ultimately lumped together as, ‘we are trying to protect our users’. An email can be legally compliant and still find itself directed to the junk folder or worse blocked. We recently encountered a case of blocking based on URLs because they perceived emails sent from that domain as not being compliant, even though the sender responsible may in fact have been following legally acceptable practices.

The FTC certainly seems to be moving toward interpreting can-spam as a transparency issue. If it isn't clear and obvious and easy, it could be viewed as non-compliant. More importantly, however, is the damage done to the reputation of both your brand and your IP addresses if things like unsubscribing are not simple and quickly observed.

Some advice from Yahoo!

On Monday I sat in on a call with Yahoo’s Mark Risher. Mark is in charge of deliverability at Yahoo and described his role there as one of “the shepherds of the inbox”. One question that was asked was what takeaways he would like us to pass along to our clients. He responded with 4 items that senders should keep in mind:

• Ensure prompt response to unsubscribe requests. CAN-SPAM currently allows a 10 day lag time between the time that a subscriber notifies you of a wish to leave your list and the time you actually cease mailing them. It is better to remove those people from your mailings as quickly as possible. Continuing to email subscribers that have asked to be removed leads to increased spam complaints which is the highest contributor to blocking at Yahoo.
• Use data returned from their feedback loop. Yahoo recently implemented a feedback loop that is still in beta for senders utilizing domain keys. The feedback loop allows you as a sender to monitor your complaint rate. You can see if it is coming from specific portions of your list, for different content-types, frequency, or other factors. It also allows for the removal of complainers from your list.
• Be certain to use a meaningful from name and subject line. Users most often decide to open your mail based on these fields, but many also base the decision to complain on these factors alone. Emails should be clearly branded by the sender and accurately represent the content of the message.
• Avoid disreputable senders and use a consistent send strategy. He recommends not sending email from ESPs that are trying to game the system and get messages through by sending at non-peak times or other means. By consistently sending you can establish a reputation on your emails and your subscribers can become familiar with the cadence they will be arriving.

As Yahoo moves further along the path to domain based reputation it is imperative for senders to adhere to email best practices. Yahoo hosts a significant number of corporate domains in addition to the yahoo domains. While they are working on increasing transparency regarding their expectations and how you are performing, they also expect senders to do their part in keeping the users of Yahoo happy. The user is their top priority after all.

Cleaning Up a Bad Reputation

Having a bad sender reputation can wreak havoc on your deliverability. Your emails are likely to be delivered to the spam folders if they aren’t blocked altogether. This is damaging to both your brand and your delivery rates. While it is much better to get off to a good start to begin with, there are things that can be done to clean up a bad reputation. It isn’t an easy process, and, depending on how bad that reputation is, it can be a bit painful in the short term. The long term effects will pay off in the long term.

Use feedback loops

Many feedback loops provide not only the complainer’s email address, but also the mailing that is being complained about. From this information you can determine if specific types of mailings or certain cross sections of your list are causing the complaints. It could be that the opt in language needs to be updated for certain acquisition sources to alert subscribers what types of email they will be receiving. The branding on certain emails may not be obvious to alert the subscriber as to why they are receiving the emails. A simple creative revision, like adding personalized text saying “As a subscriber to Publication X, you are being sent this special offer,” may alert readers that their information hasn’t been sold or given away to a third party. Consistent branding in your from name can not only help decrease complaints but also lift open rates as found in an unreleased study conducted by Silverpop. Any patterns that can be found in your complaints are a good place to start finding problem areas with your emails. Read more about this topic here.

Revise bounce processing rules

High unknown user rates can be another source of bad reputation. While high rates of bounces will cause blocking in and of themselves, it is important to remember that after an email address has been abandoned for a few months it can be converted into a spam trap. Hotmail offers a program called Smart Network Data Systems (SNDS) that allows you to see how many of their traps you are hitting. Other services like Return Path’s Sender Score and Habeas’ SafeList also help monitor spam trap hits. These spam traps are used for a variety of things. Some are used to gather and fingerprint content to be used by content filters and others are considered de facto spam and enough hits to these traps will result in blocking or even blacklisting.

Reconfirm your list

This is a tough pill for all senders to swallow, but if spam trap hits, unknown user rates and complaint rates are high enough, it may be necessary. There are certainly things that can be done to make it have a minimal impact on your list size. If you have researched your complaint sources and trap hits you can determine which portions of your list are causing most of your problems. This subset of your list could then be sent a series of confirmation mails reminding readers of why they signed up for your list. One major B2B magazine publisher has had great success with a similar strategy. It is also possible that contacting your subscribers through other means (via mail or phone for instance) could yield updated email addresses and the need to reconfirm via email may be lessened.

The most important factor to keep in mind is to send relevant and useful emails. If you send emails that your subscribers want to read and they look forward to, your deliverability woes will start to clear up on their own. Give your subscribers a reason and means in every email that you send to update their email addresses if they are changing. It is also a good idea to offer options in which type and frequency your subscribers want to receive emails.

Hallmark Data Systems can provide you with reports on spam complaints, acquisition source information, SNDS data, bounce information, and much more. We can also assist with confirmation efforts and intermediary work with ISPs, other domains and blacklists. Talk to your account managers for more details. With a little effort and time it is not only possible to clean up a bad reputation, it will be more effective in the long term than abandoning that reputation and ruining the reputation of another domain.

A Little Reminder

People are forgetful. They walk out of the house and forget their keys. Sometimes they miss important meetings. They also sometimes forget that they subscribed for your mailings. Just like every other facet of life, it is important to have reminders. This can be done simply by placing wording in your emails to remind your subscribers that they signed up for your list. Permission reminders help establish trust in your brand.

ClickZ posted a great article about how to write permission reminders the right way. A vague message can actually do more harm than good for your brand image, and as he says it is important to explicitly let them know how and where they opted in to your list. If subscribers can’t tell from the reminder that you care for their privacy, they are far more likely to report messages as spam and hurt your deliverability.

He also provides a list of 5 simple steps to keep trust in your unsubscribe process:

1) Use an unsubscribe procedure that takes as few steps as possible. The more difficult that it is to unsubscribe from mailings, the more likely it is that they will be reported as spam. If it is difficult to unsubscribe, the reader will be less likely to resubscribe in the future, and worse they will let their colleagues know about their difficulties keeping them from subscribing as well. Read more about the brand damaging effects of difficult unsubscribe practices here.

2) Tell users exactly where you got their names. If there are multiple sources, a simple database flag will allow you to populate this for each reader.

3) Place the statement where readers can easily see it. The key to this one is to be consistent. While it is a good idea to place this at the top of the email, so that the person reading it knows right away why they got it and don’t have to read the entire message, consistently placing the information in an email admin center can work as well.

4) Test your unsubscribe procedure regularly, either by clicking the links or sending test e-mail. This one is critical for a variety of reasons, legal compliance, brand trust, and spam complaints are just a few. There are even companies that you can contract to monitor your compliance and unsubscribe functionality like Lashback.

5) Provide alternate methods for removal, such as a telephone number or dedicated postal address subscribers can use if they can't or choose not to use the online version.

I would add to this list to be consistent with your from addresses and names. If you are doing a list rental for another company, and present to your list that the email is “from” that other company, the likelihood of them complaining without even opening your emails is considerably higher. It would be better to present the email as from you on behalf of the company renting your list. You can even present it as a recommendation or exclusive offer based on the fact that they are in your elite list. Read this to find out more about list rental.

New Spam Laws

The email deliverability landscape is constantly changing. Default image suppression, smarter, faster filtering techniques, and many other efforts to thwart spam are constantly redefining standards and creating obstacles for email marketers. The legal landscape is one other area that has been changing. Today, 9/5/2007, is the day that the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act goes into effect in New Zealand. Asia has seen some new laws recently as well. Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan have all been updating their spam laws or introducing new ones.

The New Zealand law seems to bump up the legal processing requirement for unsubscribe requests to 5 days. There are also indications that in B2B someone within an organization may not be able to give permission to send email to others within the same organization. The Hong Kong laws have some language implications as well that should be looked at indicating that you may need to provide a version in Chinese characters or update your opt-in to indicate that subscribers are signing up for a publication in English. If you send email internationally it would be a good idea to have your legal team take a look at these laws and make certain that you are in compliance. Below are some links that provide more information on these laws:

New Zealand Unsolicited Messages Act 2007 -

Department of Internal Affairs

The Mobilize Mail blog

Hong Kong Unsolicited Electronic Messages Ordinance -

Office of Telecommunications Authority

Singapore Spam Control Bill -

Singapore Spam Control Resource Center

Other resources -

http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/iland/2007/07/anti-spam-legislation-in-asia.html

Mean What You Say

While speaking with clients there is a lot of terminology (see bold items) that seems to be thrown out to describe things other than the email industry meaning. It is important to make sure when discussing deliverability strategies and problems all parties are speaking the same language. I’m going to try to help remove any confusion surrounding some of those terms here.

One area that seems problematic are bounces. The generic term bounce refers to any message that didn’t reach its intended party due to any error from the receiving server. Some of these errors are permanent errors (hard bounces) such as “unknown user” while others are transient errors (soft bounces) like “mailbox full”. Companies often set these addresses to a held status when they reach certain bounce thresholds. When you then look at your deliverability rate, you are looking at the number of subscribers not in held status who did not bounce. Also commonly used (and likely a better and more telling metric) is to calculate deliverability rate based on delivered to inbox rather than merely did not bounce, but neither should include addresses that are flagged as held prior to the send and not actually sent an email. It should be noted that it is possible to have a large held file and very good deliverability.

Another greatly misunderstood item is the confirmation mail. A confirmation mail has only one definition in the world of email. It is an email sent in response to a potential subscriber having opted in to receive your emails which requires the user to take an action (usually follow a link) to remain a subscriber. There is no other definition of this term. Probes (emails sent to test deliverability to an email address typically sent after a certain number of bounces) can be sent to addresses that are suspected to be deliverable, but you do not want to reconfirm and often are either in danger of being held or already have been held. Both of these are types of transactional mail, email sent in response to a business request (invoices, renewal notices, delivery notices, etc.)

There are a few different kinds of blacklists (aka blocklists), lists of domain names or IP addresses that meet a set of criteria specific to that list and are often used in filtering email. A DNSBL is a blacklist that lists IP addresses (the numeric address that represents where your email is coming from in a format similar to 199.1.145.68). An RHSBL is a blacklist that lists domain names (the alpha-numeric address that represents where your mail is coming from in a format similar to bmail1.digital.halldata.com). The third type of blacklist is a URIBL/SURBL. These list domain names of links contained within the emails you send.

The industry does have other words that it is trying to change, remove, or create. Today an article was posted on Email Insider blog talking about the dangers of continuing to use such terms as blast, broadcast, and bulk in the current industry environment. It was arguing that mailers continuing to use these terms (and the practices associated with them) were hurting not only themselves, but the entire email industry. Recently there was an article in the Email Experience Council blog recommending that the hyphen be removed from the term e-mail. New terms are springing up as well. For instance bacn has been getting a lot of press lately. Bacn is basically being used to describe mails that are not quite spam and not quite personal email. By consistently using terms we can have an impact on the perception of email both within the industry and from the outside.