Political Sending Reputation

Ever wondered what the sending reputation was for your favorite presidential candidate?

Here's the IP addresses and Sender Score ranking for the last three mailings I've received from each of them. The Sender Score number was noted at the time I originally received the message.

Candidate	IP	Score
Barack Obama	69.25.74.173	80
Barack Obama	69.25.74.172	70
Barack Obama	69.25.74.186	70
John McCain	64.203.105.82	65
John McCain	64.203.98.31	55
John McCain	64.203.105.83	65

A higher Sender Score number is usually considered better. Looks like very generally speaking, Obama's sending reputation may be a bit higher than McCain's. Of particular concern to me is both candidates seem to be mailing from multiple IP addresses. Why is that? I hope it's not to avoid blocking.

Beware the Fake News Spam

Terry Zink reports on the most recent ball of spam that he (and most of us) have been receiving: Fake news alerts that claim to be from CNN.

Yahoo Insights and Subcriber Engagement

Mark Brownlow talks about Yahoo's take on subscriber engagement here. After you read that, check out Mark's more generalized theory on what ISPs consider when determining whether or not email is unwanted. Comments from Yahoo's Mark Risher confirm what many of us already knew -- subscriber engagement matters.

Anti-spammers and deliverability people both get hung up on opt-in (alone) sometimes. A sender will say, this mail is opt-in, how dare an ISP choose not to deliver it. Various blacklists will harp on confirmed opt-in (alone) as the sole arbiter of whether or not mail should be delivered.

Truth is, they're both wrong.

Sure, opt-in matters. Your mail has to be opt-in, and confirmed opt-in is the best way to do it. If your mail isn't opt-in, all bets are off.

But, ISPs care about *more* than just that. They're figuring out whether or not recipients care about mail from any given sender. If the people on your list don't care about your mail, the ISP doesn't care about your mail, and that doesn't bode well for your ability to deliver that mail.