Spam Resource: All Things Deliverability
I'm Al Iverson and I'm here to help. Got questions about email deliverability? You’ve come to the right place! For 25 years, I’ve been writing about email technology, sender requirements, authentication, spam prevention, and deliverability best practices. With over 2,000 articles in the archives, there’s plenty to explore. Can't find what you're looking for? Drop me a line with your question and I'll do my best to follow up. And don't forget to subscribe to the email newsletter to get fresh deliverability insights delivered straight to your inbox every week or two.
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Breaking Up with Cold Emails: A 3-Part Blog Series

Breaking Up with Cold Emails: A 3-Part Blog Series

Breaking up with cold emails: a three-part blog series, by Nout Boctor-Smith and Erin Andress , who have graciously consented to allow the series to be republished on Spam Resource. Why? Because I think it's very important that we offer options to those asking the question: If not cold emails and bulk outreach, then what? Their guidance is particularly valuable, and timely, given the issues companies are having with bulk outreach tools, and spam filters and reputation systems catching on to t…

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Breaking Up with Cold Emails: A 3-Part Blog Series

Breaking up with cold emails: a three-part blog series, by Nout Boctor-Smith and Erin Andress , who have graciously consented to allow the series to be republished on Spam Resource. Why? Because I think it's very important that we offer options to those asking the question…

Breaking up with Cold Email Part 3: Cold emailing vs. ad-based strategies: which one is worth your marketing dollars? -- The Solution

Breaking up with cold emails: part 3 of 3: A solution-driven guide to smarter lead generation strategies, by Nout Boctor-Smith and Erin Andress , who have graciously consented to allow the series to be republished on Spam Resource. Why? Because I think it's very important …

Breaking up with Cold Email Part 2: Why cold emailing isn’t cutting it anymore (and what you should do instead) -- The Breakdown

Breaking up with cold emails: part 2 of 3: A breakdown of compliance issues, deliverability challenges, and the real costs of cold emailing today, by Nout Boctor-Smith and Erin Andress ,  who have graciously consented to allow the series to be republished on Spam Resource. Wh…

Breaking up with Cold Email Part 1: Why cold emails suck -- The Rant

Breaking up with cold emails: part 1 of 3: An in-depth look at why cold emails fail and how outdated they've become, by Nout Boctor-Smith and Erin Andress , who have graciously consented to allow the series to be republished on Spam Resource. Why? Because I think it's …

Friday fun: Daft Punk, but it's Michael McDonald

For your Friday time waster, please enjoy this version of Daft Punk's song "Beyond" (from the album Random Access Memories), with a little help from Michael McDonald's "I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near)." (Youtube link here .) These …

Virgin Media Is Offloading Email to Atmail

Virgin Media O2 has announced that it is transferring the ongoing management of its consumer email service to Junara, a dedicated email provider owned by Atmail. The announcement comes via Alan Stott, Chief Operating Officer at Virgin Media O2 , who framed the change as a way f…

ISP Deliverability Guide: Comcast Xfinity

American multinational mass media, telecommunications, and entertainment conglomerate Comcast has somewhere north of 30 million customers with Xfinity residential broadband internet service. And while they don't publish numbers around what percentage of that subscriber bas…

BFCM 2026: Are You Ready?

Black Friday/Cyber Monday approaches! What will this year hold in the way of deliverability challenges? When I surveyed readers last year about their biggest mailbox provider challenges during Q4, Microsoft Outlook.com took the top spot. Microsoft was clearly the biggest sourc…

Mac Users Face Microsoft 365 Sync Issues as EWS Phased Out

If you or your users rely on Apple Mail on macOS to access Microsoft 365 work or school accounts, you may soon run into unexpected sync disruptions. Starting October 1, 2026, Microsoft began disabling Exchange Web Services (EWS) by default in Exchange Online as part of a phase…

DOI vs. COI: The Pointless Word War

It's time for a trip down memory lane. We're going way back. Before "deliverability" was even a recognized industry term, our attempts to protect the inbox weren't called "email security." Instead, we called it "spam fighting." Back in …

Need Inbox Help? Ask Jen!

Looking to hire a deliverability consultant to help investigate and fix your inbox woes? J ennifer Nespola Lantz can help. She and I previously worked closely together at Kickbox, working side-by-side to provide expert deliverability services consulting, solving the tough prob…

Posta: Run Your Own Email Sending API

When you’re launching a brand new SaaS application or service, you know it’s going to send emails. That means you’ve got to pick an email delivery service. Which API are you going to use to allow your new app to send transactional emails to the world? Luckily, the market is cro…

Ask Al: What is Backscatter? (2026 Version)

I’ve written about backscatter before . (And so has USA Today .) And I’ll probably write about it again. Backscatter, at a high level, is deceptively simple. Somebody forges your domain. Somebody sends a bunch of junk email. A lot of that junk email gets rejected. Spam filters…

Dead domains (sort of): TDS Telecom offloading email service

Another regional internet service provider is getting out of the consumer mailbox hosting business. TDS Telecom has announced that it is winding down inbox hosting, handing off email duties to third-party mailbox provider Everymail . If you manage email list hygiene or delivera…

Goofus and Gallant: 3 Missed Opportunities to Do the Right Thing

Sometimes progress in email marketing best practices feels like two steps forward, one step back. Over the weekend, three emails landed in my inbox that were technically legal under US law, but pretty out of touch with modern email marketing best practices. Upon investigation, …

Dead domain: mydurango.net

If you've got email subscribers on your list from Colorado and New Mexico, take note: the mydurango.net email domain is officially dead. Ting Internet, owned by Tucows, acquired regional communication provider Cedar Networks (Zippytech) back in November 2019, and since has …

Bad Ideas: Why Giving Your Email List to a Third Party Is Just Dumb

A story recently broke on 404 Media that made deliverability experts everywhere cry a little inside: YouTube channel Channel 5 admitted to handing a CSV file of its email subscribers over to a third party so that person could market a new product to them. Putting aside the spe…