Tag: deliverability

Best Practices, Delivery Essentials, Industry Updates

Don’t be so quick to suppress those mailbox full bounces

Brad

Over the years, it has been a common practice to convert certain temporary bounces into permanent bounces after a series of occurrences. Some ESPs will escalate bounces that occur X number of times in a row, or occur for X number of days without a successful delivery. One of the most commonly affected bounce types for these suppressions is Mailbox Full.

Mailbox full/over quota bounces are considered by many to be a symbol of a dead address. With the nigh-unlimited storage found in most mailboxes these days, no one who actually checks their email should ever have a full mailbox…right?

Not necessarily. In a new blog post on the MessageGears blog, I sat down with Senior Product Owner of Cloud Operations Nick Zeich-Lopez (aka. ‘Mr. Data’). We pored over results from over 20 billion deliveries and found some surprising results.

For starters, the data showed that of those recipients who experienced a Mailbox Full bounce, over 8% engaged with a subsequent email in the next 7 days and over 31% engaged with an email over the course of the next 12 months.

As a sender who’s suppressing Mailbox Full bounces after the first occurrence, you could be losing nearly 1/3 of those recipients for no reason. At the least, it’s worth some analysis of your own data (or your ESP’s) — you’ll likely find some room for improvement in how you’re handling these bounces.

For the details — along with our findings on bounces caused by spam, delivery timeouts, and DNS errors — check out the full post.

– BG

Industry Updates

Google Postmaster Tools issues drag into second week

Brad

Last week we told you about an outage with Google’s Postmaster Tools data, which was missing data starting on 8/16 (many domains had data for 8/17). According to my own data and reports from others, data was populated for most domains late on 8/21 with data for 8/20 but nothing between 8/17-8/20. For the domains I track, it seems 8/21 data was added for some domains but not others, and no domain has anything past 8/21 at this point.

The ‘Last 7 days’ view of IP reputation looks a bit bare.

At the end of last week we assumed the issue was resolved, but it appears data is still missing in many instances. Spam Rate, IP & Domain Reputation, FBL, Authentication, Encryption, and Delivery Errors are all missing data for the same days. Word on the street hints at something new in GPT (but doesn’t it always?), but we’ll just have to keep refreshing that page until Google makes an announcement or something new appears.

– BG

Best Practices, Delivery Essentials

The old switcheroo

Brad

We’ve talked before about domain and IP reputation, and how mailbox providers use each to determine whether the mail you send reaches the inbox or languishes in the depths of the spam folder. Since so much of your sender reputation is tied to your IP and domain, many senders have the idea that the solution to delivery issues is to simply fire up a new IP, domain, or both, granting yourself the ultimate “do-over” with the mailbox providers. There’s just one problem with that theory…

Wrong wrong wrong wrong
via Tenor

It’s wrong. Last week, 250ok’s Beth Kittle published a great piece on the fallacy of this “email myth.” (If you haven’t yet, go read her post and commit it to memory.) Beth’s illustration of the incognito party guest is a great analogy for how providers spot your mail even when sent from new infrastructure and how your misdeeds will find you there if you continue to use bad practices.

But what happens when you do see a benefit from switching? Over the past few years I’ve spoken with dozens of marketers who had an example of a situation where their deliverability improved when switching to a new IP or domain. They performed a few tests on the new infrastructure and – lo and behold – they got to the inbox! Because of this, these clients often didn’t believe my warnings that new IPs or domains wouldn’t fix the problem – they were more concerned with temporary gains (and quite a few just assumed they’d talk their way into another IP once the new one started to tank). Don’t miss this point: your deliverability may improve when you switch to a new IP or domain – but only temporarily.

I’ll provide an analogy of my own, gleaned from a former coworker who compared IP and domain reputation to telephone caller ID. If you get unwanted calls from a telemarketer, you learn to stop answering when their number shows up on the caller ID. After days of unanswered calls, if the telemarketer dials you from a new number you just might pick up to find out who’s on the other end. As soon as you hear the voice of the unwanted caller on the other end, you’ll hang up and make sure you don’t answer calls from the new number as well.

This is how mailbox providers and spam filters operate – while it’s possible your first mailing might see better performance, as soon as they identify you’re the same sender they blocked before you’ll see those numbers fall off right away. As Beth notes, their algorithms are very advanced and they will quickly find out who you are. If you want to improve your deliverability, there are no shortcuts – you’ll have to put in the work to improve your practices.

– BG

Industry Updates

UPDATED – More Google Postmaster Tools weirdness?

Brad

Reports have been trickling in today that senders are seeing spikes in “Bad” reputation in Google’s IP Reputation Postmaster page. In checking my own instance, I found at least 3 major senders whose IPs have been 100% Good for months, then 75% or more in the Bad status for July 3rd.

The results appear to be spotty, but multiple industry folks have mentioned seeing similar behavior in popular forums today. No official word from Google yet, but we’ll keep an eye on this and update as news comes in.

UPDATED 1:45PM EST – After further analysis, deliverability to Gmail does not seem to be affected for clients I’ve checked, and a few others have reported the same. Domain reputation also appears to be unaffected for me, but some others have reported changes in domain reputation that may or may not be related. In any case, these blips certainly lend credence to the loudly-whispered theory that major US holidays wreak havoc on GPT data, with yesterday being Independence Day here in the States.

Industry Updates

Google Postmaster Tools data update

Brad

As of now, data seems to be trickling into my own Google Postmaster Tools display, with some monitored domains showing current data (i.e. 2-3 days ago, as is standard in GPT).

The data is still spotty, though: some domain reputation listings show data points for each day while others show nothing between the 13th and now. IP reputation appears to still be missing for the outage period for the domains I’ve checked that are showing anything since June 13th.

Obviously the issue is not entirely resolved, but it’s nice to see something showing up after 2 weeks of dead silence.

– BG

Industry Updates

Verizon (Media Group) launches Postmaster page beta

Brad

Earlier today, VMG (the mailbox provider formerly known as Oath) announced via Tumblr that their all-new Postmaster page is live. The page, which will serve as a unified resource for all things delivery-related for AOL and Yahoo mail, will soon take the place of the venerable but languishing AOL Postmaster site.

At the top of the page, a message informs visitors the site is “still in beta mode. Things might not work.” Prominently featured on the page are the most recent posts from the provider’s Tumblr, along with some links to Tools, FAQs, and FBL resources.

I’m not alone in thinking AOL’s Postmaster site was one of the best and most informative around, and it’s nice to see VMG carrying on this tradition.

-BG

Industry Updates

Spamcannibal’s brief zombie run

Brad

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

Industry Updates

UCEProtect gets busy; Spamcannibal calls it quits (maybe?)

Brad

UCEP

This past Friday, May 25th, was a very busy day in the email and privacy world. The EU’s Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect, prompting all sorts of privacy policy updates (which in turn prompted all sorts of emails about those updates). From my own experience and the shared experiences of many others, it seems most of these emails cast a very wide net – devoid of targeting or list hygiene. Many of us received updates from brands we don’t remember engaging – and others with which we never did. As a result of all this email, the German UCEProtect blacklist was also very busy, seeing a surge in IPs appearing on its blacklists (h/t Word to the Wise). We’ve seen a small surge in the number of client IPs on UCEProtect as well, but haven’t been able to correlate it directly to GDPR notices. As Laura notes, UCEProtect is not typically a list that causes many bounces, so seeing your IP(s) there is more of a nuisance in most cases.

spamcan1In other blacklist-related news, it appears the Spamcannibal blacklist has shut down. The domain (don’t go there, really) now presents a number of nefarious redirects instead of the blacklist content. No official announcement has been provided, but the Spamcannibal list was considered among the less-reliable blacklists by many in the industry. If the shutdown is permanent, the impact is likely to be minor as the list was not widely used for inbound mail filtering.

– BG

Industry Updates

More missing Google Postmaster data (UPDATE – it’s back)

Brad

6/1/18 UPDATE: And just like that, the data is back. Reports (as well as my own account) indicate the data is currently populated until 5/30. The data typically runs about 2 days behind in my experience, so it seems the issue is likely resolved.

This Monday’s Memorial Day (US) holiday and its extended weekend was accompanied by many reports of missing data in Google’s Postmaster Tools. In my own account (as in most of the reports I’ve seen) the data stopped rolling in on May 24th. Unlike some previous instances, all GPT data appears affected – Spam Rate all the way down through Delivery Errors.

img_2830
We’re as confused as this guy. (courtesy Google)

Each time this happens, many of us hope it’s the oft-promised Postmaster Tools update – the one that brings API access, flexible dashboards and other as-yet-unannounced Google Goodness™. Thus far that hope has been unrealized….but there’s always next time. In the meantime, we’ll just stick to hoping Google restores the missing data in a timely fashion.

Industry Updates

Missing data at Google Postmaster Tools

Brad

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