Google announces the death of Inbox

September 13, 2018 by Brad, posted in Industry Updates

Not with a bang, but with a tweet: yesterday Google announced via Twitter that Inbox, their alternative mail client introduced in 2014, will shut down as of March 2019.

Screen Shot 2018-09-13 at 10.28.45 AM

The transition guide linked in the tweet notes that some of Inbox’s features will be integrated into the traditional Gmail product, including Smart Reply and snooze/nudge options for delayed follow-ups.

The closure of Inbox is not likely to have a major impact on senders. While messages were grouped slightly differently, the structure of Inbox is similar to that of Gmail’s tabs and labels. With that said, it’s always important to watch your own metrics and be mindful of any changes in Gmail response rates around the time of shutdown.

While Google never released solid numbers, it’s easy to infer that Inbox never gained the kind of traction they had hoped – or maybe it was a glorified sandbox that allowed them to test some of their ideas for the primary Gmail product. In any case, those of us who used it as our daily driver are left looking for an alternative before next spring.

– BG

The not-so-official end of summer recap

September 7, 2018September 7, 2018 by Brad, posted in Industry Updates

081006-f-7824s-1131 Now that the little ones are back in school and the neighborhood pools are locking their gates, folks everywhere are heralding the ‘official’ end of summer. While the temps here in NC might disagree, all signs seem to point to the email industry’s slight summer lull coming to a close. Calls from clients are picking up, my unread mail counts are creeping up, and 250ok’s Matt Vernhout is already talking about holiday email.

Before we dive right into the time of the year when marketers burn the candle at both ends, let’s step back for a moment and review some industry updates and notes from the summer months. My own summer was so busy that my writing schedule dropped off, so here’s a few nuggets of information you might have missed.

Deliverability Inferno – Chris Arrendale of delivery consultant firm Inbox Pros actually released his first book in March, but it really started to pick up steam with readers over the summer months. Deliverability Inferno: Helping Email Marketers Understand the Journey from Purgatory to Paradise introduces both basic and in-depth deliverability knowledge gleaned from years of industry experience. The book progresses through the 9 levels, or challenges, each marketer faces in the journey from email purgatory to the glorious inbox paradise. It even features a brief interview with yours truly – but it’s worth picking up nonetheless.

250ok Deliverability Guide – If you’re in for a shorter read (or something to casually hand your decision-makers to help them understand your challenges), 250ok has you covered. In July, the deliverability solutions vendor released their new Deliverability Guide. The 38-page book shares core deliverability insights that are perfect for getting your feet wet or building on basic concepts you already understand. Best of all? It’s free and doesn’t even require your email address to download.

OMG, look at those domains – Along with the merger of AOL and Yahoo into the new company Oath, a new acronym was formed to reference the “big 3” mailbox providers of Oath, Microsoft, and Google: OMG. Laura Atkins of Word to the Wise coined the term, and Al Iverson’s Spam Resource blog gave us an exhaustive list of domains that fall under the Oath umbrella. Could be very useful in rolling up metrics by email provider (even though AOL and Yahoo email are not quite fully integrated just yet).

Need a job? Marketing agency Merkle is looking for an experienced professional to manage deliverability for a large client. Check out the job description and requirements on Merkle’s site.

More business moves – Earlier I mentioned Chris Arrendale and Inbox Pros, and just this week they made the news again in a big way. Digital marketing agency Trendline Interactive acquired Inbox Pros to become the only agency offering end-to-end marketing support including deliverability consultation and remediation.

– BG

Oath update: AOL, Yahoo, Verizon MTAs and FBLs

June 28, 2018June 28, 2018 by Brad, posted in Industry Updates

Last week, the Oath Postmaster blog published an update on the status of their email migration. AOL (who previously absorbed Verizon’s email) and Yahoo are moving closer to their end goal of a unified email platform under the new Oath brand.

According to the post, all mail sent to either brand is now “handled by…OATH MTAs.” So when you send to any address at aol.com, aim.com, verizon.net, yahoo.com, or any other domain controlled by these providers, the mail is all routed through the same system – including spam filtering. Reports have been surfacing on some industry forums of AOL bounces for Yahoo addresses and vice versa. As a sender, this also means you should start aggregating these domains for your reporting purposes. Monitoring complaints, bounces, and other metrics for anomalies should consider Oath as a single entity – word on the street indicates most ESPs have already begun this process for their customer monitoring.

In addition, spam complaints for AOL recipients will soon be received via the existing Yahoo feedback loop. Since Yahoo’s FBL is domain-based, all mail to AOL addresses must be DKIM-signed to participate in the FBL (if it isn’t already). If you use an ESP that hosts your DKIM, they may need to double-sign to ensure all FBL complaints are received.

So far, the Oath Postmaster blog and their participation in various industry channels have provided regular updates on the migration. Let’s hope that pattern continues as the two current Postmaster sites are combined into an upcoming Oath Postmaster resource.

– BG

Spamcannibal’s brief zombie run

May 31, 2018May 31, 2018 by Brad, posted in Industry Updates

Earlier this week the spam blacklist Spamcannibal, which had been returning no listings for a few months, had its domain expire and become redirected to some pretty nasty auto-downloads. Many of us suspected malware because of the multiple redirects and prompts to download a Flash update, but that has yet to be confirmed.

In the meantime, though, Al Iverson was able to get in touch with the operator, who has since retaken control of the domain and is working to sunset the list in a more respectable fashion. So Spamcannibal remains dead, but at least the malware zombies no longer have control of the domain.

– BG

Missing data at Google Postmaster Tools

April 19, 2018April 19, 2018 by Brad, posted in Industry Updates

Over the past week, there have been many reports of missing data for Google Postmaster Tools. From what we can see, it appears data on the Spam Rate, IP Reputation, Domain Reputation, Feedback Loop, and Delivery Errors tabs stopped updating for some folks around April 11th or 12th. According to information posted in an industry forum, Google is aware of the issue and working to resolve it. Some progress has been made, but no official statement has been made (seems to be par for the course with Google).

GPT

As of this morning in my own account, most tabs have data up to 4/13 (with a gap on 4/12) and data for 4/17, but everything between is missing. It remains to be seen whether the missing data will be restored. After a similar issue last September, Google was able to restore the data pretty quickly – hopefully that will be the case here as well.

– BG

R.I.P. (some) AOL Postmaster tools

April 4, 2018April 4, 2018 by Brad, posted in Industry Updates

AOLrep Though most senders may be trying to pin down why Gmail isn’t displaying their images by default, there are still other mailbox providers out there to worry about. AOL, for instance, recently disabled their reputation checker and rDNS lookup tools while many of us were enjoying the long Easter holiday weekend (thanks to Word to the Wise for the heads up).

Gmail’s Postmaster Tools and Microsoft’s SNDS may have provided more data points, but the AOL reputation check was a great way to see at-a-glance where you stood with one of the major mailbox providers. It may not have been perfect, but I must say I’m a bit sad to see it go. Chalk is up as yet another casualty in the ever-changing email landscape.

– BG

Gmail not displaying images by default for some messages (UPDATED 4/5/18)

April 3, 2018April 5, 2018 by Brad, posted in Industry Updates

There have been some reports floating around today of Gmail not displaying images for some messages.

Capture In my testing I’ve been able to reproduce it with some messages in the Promotions tab, but only in the “classic” Gmail web interface. However, these same messages display images when viewed in Inbox.

This seems intentional, although no official announcement has been made. Maybe Google is launching a push to encourage migrating to Inbox? We’ll await word from the Gmail team, but in the meantime more testing is in store to pin down exactly what in the message is triggering the change.

4/5/18 UPDATE: It seems this change was not permanent, with all messages appearing to display images (even those previously not displaying them). Google has been silent about this, so we’re still unsure if this was some sort of test, an error, or something else entirely.

– BG

Spring is a-buzz, and we need your help

March 28, 2018March 28, 2018 by Brad, posted in Random

It’s that time of the year again: the flowers are blooming, birds are chirping, and the clippers are buzzing. That’s right – it’s almost time for our annual St. Baldrick’s event, where we and others shave our heads to show solidarity with kids fighting cancer and raise funds for specialized childhood cancer research. (Check out this post if you’d like more info on the organization.)

On May 5th, my wife and I will go under the clippers for the 6th and 7th times, respectively, raising money that directly funds childhood cancer research at one of 368 institutions around the world.

Together we’ve raised over $6,000 and counting for this very worthy cause. We’d love your help in funding this vital research, and every dollar counts. If you’d like to make a secure donation of any size, click the link below with our thanks.

Donate Now

As I’ve said before, you’ll only see this post once each year, and the delivery news and nuggets will be back in a jiffy. Thanks for listening!

– BG