A follow-up on Marketing Sherpa’s webinar “Improve Email Deliverability: Tactics for Handling Complaints and Boosting Reputation”

Return Path and Marketing Sherpa joined forces to present a webinar on how to deal with complains. The turnout and questions were great. So great in fact, that we ran out of time to answer them all. Along with Marketing Sherpa co-presenter Adam Sutton, we decided to answer the questions in a two part blog series. Here’s the first.

Tell me more

Categories: Explanation How-To Return Path View Comments

Security Alert: Phishing Attack Update

Yesterday, we updated on our report around the targeted ESP phishing attack that has been ongoing for almost a year now and has led to multiple known ESP system breaches. Our original post is here, and yesterday’s post is here. …

Tell me more

Categories: News Return Path View Comments

Security Alert: Update on ESP Phishing Attack

As you saw from our blog post yesterday, we have become aware of a serious phishing attack aimed in part specifically at ESPs, some direct mailers, and other sites. Since the time of our posting and into late evening yesterday …

Tell me more

Categories: News Return Path View Comments

Security Alert: Phishing Attack Aimed at ESPs

Below is a note we sent to our Email Service Provider (ESP) partners this morning alerting them to a spear phishing campaign targeting ESPs. Spear phishing attacks are targeted and effective, with tremendous potential to damage corporate security.

Tell me more

Categories: News View Comments

Back to Basics: What’s the deal with the “delivered rate”?

So you would think measuring how much email makes it to the inbox and how much doesn’t would be straightforward. Unfortunately, like most things in email, it’s complicated. As usual the complexity is largely a function of misleading terminology and the lack of transparency in the email eco-system. In an ideal world the “delivered rate” metric would mean exactly what it seems to say: the percentage of email that arrived in the inbox. In fact, most of the time “delivered rate” is the percentage of email that was sent but didn’t bounce. If the email didn’t bounce, it should have been delivered, right? Wrong.

Tell me more

Categories: Commentary View Comments

Undercover Unsubscribing

That’s it – I’m unsubscribing from all the marketing emails I receive.

I’m going undercover for three months, removing all my marketing email subscriptions and tracking various data points in the opt-out experience to unearth the sometimes hazy business of the unsubscribe process for an upcoming Return Path email study.

I’m investigating how effective brands are in their response to me opting-out of receiving their emails. I’ll also look into whether or not brands are providing their subscribers with a clear unsubscribe option. Failure to do so may result in subscribers preferring to complain to their ISP, if that’s the easier option. This could lead to all of the brand’s marketing messages getting diverted to the junk/spam folder or being blocked all together.

When it comes to the unsubscribe experience, I imagine many marketers will assume because I’ve unsubscribed from an email I’m not interested in their brand anymore. In fact, this ‘rejection’ could be for many reasons

Tell me more

Categories: Commentary Research View Comments

New MAAWG Consumer Survey: Half of Global Email Users Willingly Click on Spam

Have you ever wondered who in the world clicks on a spam email? Someone must be clicking, the thinking goes, or else spammers would have no economic incentive to keep blasting.

Turns out that we have seen the clickers, and they are us. Well, maybe not readers of this blog or employees of Return Path, but they are people like the consumers and business professionals on our marketing files and subscribed to our online services.

Nearly half (43%) of email users in North America and Western Europe say they have knowingly opened or accessed spam – including …

Tell me more

Categories: News Research View Comments

Same Spam, Different Day

McAfee just released their March 2010 spam report.

The good news: as a percentage of email, spam has remained flat.

The very bad news: Overall email volume is way up so the amount of spam has gone way up too. Translation: there is a lot more crap clogging up the system.

For large inbox providers a move toward systems that …

Tell me more

Categories: News View Comments

2009 European Anti-Spam Report Released

Enisa (European Network and Information Security Agency) just released their third survey on anti-spam measures implemented by European providers. They interviewed 90 EMEA xSPs (Internet Service Providers, Telcos, Hosting companies, etc) in 30 European countries to compile the results.

The survey is a comprehensive look at spam issues affecting Europe and highlights how spam is truly a global problem. European mailbox providers echo concerns raised in the United States and globally.

Tell me more

Categories: Commentary View Comments

There Never Was a Time Before Permission

Think about what you were doing on the Internet fifteen years ago, as 1994 rolled over to 1995. The Mosaic browser was brand new; Netscape 1.0 shipped that December. Windows 95 hadn’t been released. Bill Clinton was still considered a hip, young president. And me? I was already dealing with spam.

Some people may try to tell you that spam started in the seventies, but that’s just shoddy research. Up until the mid-nineties, there were maybe a handful of misguided marketers sending out spam‚ email or otherwise, each year. It wasn’t anything like we’ve got today, and it wasn’t a big deal because they were always slapped down quick. The early Internet had an Acceptable Use Policy which basically forbade all commercial activity, and violating it meant you lost access.

But within just a few years, it all changed. The last vestiges of the non-commercial Internet were replaced by paid access, which led to the expectation that if you paid your bills on time you could do whatever you damn well pleased. Mom & Pop dial-up ISPs were borged into a few corporate conglomerates, yet neither had ever imagined they’d have to deal with any email activity worse than the occasional chain letter.

Tell me more

Categories: Commentary View Comments