Spam Resource: All Things Deliverability
I'm Al Iverson and I'm here to help. You've got questions about email deliverability? Find answers here! This is where I've been writing about email technology, sender requirements and best practices, email authentication, stopping spam, and more, for twenty-four years. And if you can't find an answer in one of the 1700+ articles here, drop me a line with your question, and I'll try my best to follow up. And don't forget to subscribe to my email newsletter, so that you'll get updated info pushed to your inbox weekly.
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Physician, heal thyself: Even I can get auth wrong!

Physician, heal thyself: Even I can get auth wrong!

Here is a fresh slice of humble pie: even after years of advising senders on authentication protocols and email best practices, I managed to break my own newsletter's SPF record last week. I try to practice what I preach. My newsletter list is 100% double opt-in, no spam here, and I’ve got just about every auth protocol covered – SPF, DKIM, DMARC and BIMI. All in place, all passing, all correct. But then, I updated the DNS for my domain a couple of weeks ago. I did so quickly and with confide…

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Physician, heal thyself: Even I can get auth wrong!

Here is a fresh slice of humble pie: even after years of advising senders on authentication protocols and email best practices, I managed to break my own newsletter's SPF record last week. I try to practice what I preach. My newsletter list is 100% double opt-in, no spam he…

BIMI: What does self-asserted mean?

What does it mean when people talk about a "self-asserted" BIMI logo, and should you set one up? That's the topic of my latest Valimail "Ask Al" video. A standard BIMI record does two things. It publishes a link to an SVG file, which is the logo you wan…

The Context Box: Do It, But Right

Newsletter strategist Dylan Redekop recently wrote about the "context box, " his term for the line in a marketing or newsletter email explaining why you are receiving a particular message. (By the way, I think he coined something useful here, so I'm totally going …

Troubleshooting 554 5.7.5 DMARC-related SMTP rejections

It's a bit of a cryptic error message, isn't it? Mail bouncing back with "554 5.7.5 Permanent error evaluating DMARC policy." Wondering how to troubleshoot that? Well, I covered exactly this in a recent Ask Al video for Valimail, which was inspired by this Red…

Webinar Alert: From DKIM to DKIM2: What Senders Need to Know Now and What Mailbox Providers Expect

Hey, big senders! Are you unsure about DKIM2 and wondering what you need to know about it? If so, the Certified Senders Alliance (CSA) has got you covered, with a free webinar on this very topic upcoming on Tuesday, August 25th at 9:00 AM US Central Time. Presented by Sebast…

Guest Post: The Race to the Bottom Runs Straight Past the Inbox

Editor's note: Today I've invited a contribution from Jakub Olexa, CEO of Mailkit and Omnivery . Jakub's a good guy, part of the collaborative spirit that works together to protect the email ecosystem from within, and I was curious about and intrigued by what he…

APRF: A New Standard for Deliverability Feedback

There's a very exciting new proposed email specification making its way through the IETF, called APRF (Aggregate Performance Reporting). The individual draft specification comes from Alex Brotman of Comcast, Tom Corbett of Iterable, and Emil Gustafsson of Google. And Comcas…

What If? The Future of AOL Mail Under Bending Spoons

Last October, Yahoo sold AOL to the Italian company Bending Spoons for approximately $1.5 billion (as reported by Forbes and others). If you're asking yourself, " What is Bending Spoons? " you aren't alone. They are a tech company known for acquiring well-kno…

Email-to-SMS no more?

Email-to-SMS gateways were once a popular tool for email geeks and savvy sysadmins to ping themselves with important notifications. Nowadays? They're either dead and gone, in the process of shutting down, or problematic enough that we can't even tell if they're stil…

Friday Fun: The Fascinating Story of Hotmail

Looking for a fun way to kill some time before you wrap it up ahead of the weekend? This might help. This YouTube video dives into the history of Hotmail, from how Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith came up with the idea for free webmail, to its explosive viral growth, and ultimatel…

Infobip Acquires SocketLabs

In the latest round of email industry consolidation, cloud communications giant Infobip has announced its acquisition of email marketing and infrastructure platform SocketLabs . Infobip is a global cloud communications platform focused primarily on SMS-based communication. The…

How does a mailbox provider support and display BIMI logos?

If you’re wondering exactly how a mailbox provider like Yahoo, Google, Comcast or Fastmail might implement support for decoding and displaying BIMI (Brand Indicator for Message Identification) logos in or near the inbox, then I’ve got you covered. TL;DR? It boils down to: Valid…

RE: Don't Do This: Google's Guide to Keeping Gmail Happy

Google recently published a highly practical new help article: Top 10 Gmail sender issues . Here's how to prevent the most common hurdles you might run into when sending mail to Gmail. Seasoned senders will recognize core pillars like authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and m…

Apple changing hide my / sign in domains

Apple put out a notification on June 15th that soon, the domains for "Hide My Email" and "Sign in with Apple" masked email addresses will be changing. Previously, "Hide My Email" addresses were generated under the default icloud.com Apple consum…

Which ESP is Best for Deliverability? (Spoiler: Wrong Question)

Just the other day, I saw someone post another one of those "Deliverability Ranked by ESP" charts, and frankly, it drives me nuts. These charts are inaccurate and misleading. There is no useful way to generate a single "snapshot metric" that tells you you…

ESPC Webinar: Evolving EU Regulation of Tracking Pixels

If you've been watching data privacy developments in Europe, you already know that the current rules around open tracking (pixel tracking) in email marketing are ... messy , to put it mildly. The regulatory environments in France (CNIL) and Italy (Garante) have thrown a lot…

Bad ideas: From Sticky Widgets to the Spam Folder

Let’s say you run a business selling, oh, I dunno, widgets. Maybe sticky, flat widgets, printed on one side, where you peel off the back so buyers can slap them onto a laptop or a bumper. You’ve sold a lot of those widgets over the years, which means you’re sitting on a massive…

SNDS and JMRP in transition

Microsoft's sender reputation data portal ( Smart Network Data Services , or SNDS) and their ISP feedback loop mechanism (Junk Mail Reporting Program, or JMRP), are undergoing a transition. The SNDS website relaunched in June, 2026, with updated access controls and some ch…

From DMARCbis to DMARC: New DMARC RFCs

DMARC has been updated! Three new RFCs have been published (RFCs 9989 , 9990 , and 9991 ) governing the latest incremental updates to the DMARC standard. TL;DR? It's all about the DNS tree walk, privacy concerns around failure reporting, and removing little used flags (PCT,…

Troubleshooting 4 different types of Microsoft DKIM rejections

If your attempts to send email to Microsoft-hosted inboxes are bouncing back intermittently with authentication-related rejections; specifically highlighting that DKIM is failing, when you know you’ve got DKIM authentication correctly implemented: what do you do now? The actual…

CNIL open tracking restrictions are coming and complex

CNIL, France’s data protection and privacy authority , recently announced new restrictions and requirements related to open tracking (aka pixel tracking) and things are relatively complex. The TL;DR is that permission is required before tracking opens, there’s a potential exemp…

CU Boulder shutting down alumni email service

If you’ve got an active alumni email account from the University of Colorado Boulder, you might have already seen the announcement : Your alumni email account is going away as of August 31, 2026. This affects email accounts in the domain colorado.edu — not all accounts, as this…

Learn more about DMARCbis

DMARCbis: What is it and what do you need to know? It’s the updated version of the email authentication-related DMARC internet specification, and it modifies how DMARC works in a few small, but important, ways. If you’re curious to learn more, check out my latest Valimail &quo…

ICYMI: BIMI success stories and data

Curious about BIMI adoption rates? Looking for BIMI success stories? The fact is, BIMI helps boost email engagement. And if you’re looking for the data to make the business case for BIMI, this recent webinar has what you need to help you support the argument for implementing a …

More on DKIM2: VERP, async bounces, signatures and hops

As you might have seen me mention on Linkedin this week, I'm still working to fully wrap my head around DKIM2, specifically thinking about a couple of different things: the impact on DMARC and the impact on ESP platforms. Let me tell you what I know and what I don't kno…