Now hiring: ActiveCampaign

Email marketing and CRM automation platform ActiveCampaign is looking for a Compliance Support Manager to "provide day to day leadership for compliance support analysts." "Experience with Trust and Safety or Compliance Proven track record of building out a 24/7 global support team" is a must. Could this be you? Ready to lead the team helping to shut down bad actors? If so, click here for more information and/or to apply.

Now Hiring: dotdigital

Hey, dotdigital (formerly dotmailer) is looking for a Junior Delivery Operations Engineer. Could that be you?

They say: "This role will help ensure we can continue to grow and face the challenges of delivering email at a very large scale. You will be managing servers sending email and SMS, collaborating with deliverability experts, and working with experienced engineers to build your skillset and knowledge with the goal of ensuring maximized email delivery of our customer’s messages."

For more details and/or to apply, click here.

Pardot Email Unsubscribes Report: Understand Which Caused Email Opt-outs

From Lucy Mazalon of THE DRIP: Click here to read. This is good specific guidance for users of the Pardot email platform (owned by Salesforce), but I'm sharing it more broadly because regardless of what platform you send emails from, understanding which emails, which types of content, or which list sources drive the highest unsubscribe rates will provide you with very important deliverability-focused strategic guidance. The more you know, the more you can tailor your content, or improve signup practices, or jettison a high unsub-driving practice, and the more your deliverability will improve. Better deliverability, better, more solid inbox placement, means more response, which means more success from your email program.

It's really simple if you think about it like this:

1. Identify highest driver of unsubscribes.
2. Improve that content, practice or data source to reduce unsubs.
3. Note improvement in deliverability and/or response rates.
4. Repeat!

And thanks to Lucy for sharing with us how Pardot users can implement that first step in their reporting.

Changes to the Spam Act in Australia

Toshi Onishi, Senior Deliverability Analyst for dotdigital reports on specific recent updates to Australia's federal anti-spam law (and I think he did a good job in breaking down the changes in a way easy to share and understand). Of course, I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

[ H/T: Kent McGovern ]

Email security vendor Agari acquired by HelpSystems

HelpSystems, a Minnesota-based software company, working in the areas of systems and network management, business intelligence, security and compliance, just announced that they have acquired email security vendor Agari. Read more about it over at ZDNet. 

Agari, if you weren't already aware, is a long term player in the email security space, both providing filtering solutions and helping companies secure email systems through proper implementation (and monitoring) of DMARC email policy.

Requesting pre-emptive accommodation from Microsoft

If you are new to your sending IP addresses -- meaning you're going through IP warming, you are likely to find that Microsoft OLC (Hotmail and related domains) can be quick to block your sending IP address.

My guides here and here talk through the general process for reaching out to Microsoft to request unblocking, but in a scenario where you're newly sending from your IP address, or you're going through IP warming, be sure to request "pre-emptive accommodation" from Microsoft. Where you do this is in response to the reply you receive from "Hotmail Sender Support," after submitting your unblock request via their online form.

Using the magic phrase "pre-emptive accommodation" tells Microsoft that this mail stream is newly coming from this IP address. You're asking for them to give you some time to build up reputation. They'll respond, asking you for data on your projected email send volume for the near term. Provide this to them. They'll use it to decide how much mail to allow from your sending IP address, and it means that if you stay generally within the volume guidelines you tell them, your chances of getting blocked will be reduced.

Of course, it doesn't mean it's open season to spam away. They're not shutting off the spam filters. And Microsoft can be quick to block. Sometimes intentionally so, sometimes not. Reputation still applies here, so make sure you're sending wanted mail, and that you're paying attention to spam complaints and reputation data from JMRP and SNDS.

Google will automatically enroll users in two-factor authentication soon

PCWorld's Mark Hachman explains Google's plans to automatically enroll new users into multi-factor authentication to better protect Google accounts from unauthorized access.

This is a good thing, I think. Though I suppose there are a few edge cases where perhaps not everybody has access to a second device or a mobile phone. Let's hope those folks aren't left behind. But overall, the more use of 2FA, the better off we all are.

Here's the blog post in question from Google's Mark Risher: A simpler and safer future — without passwords.