Howto: Make your brand icon display in Gmail

Looking to make your brand's logo show up next to emails you send to Gmail recipients, but you're not sending from a Gmail account? I think I've figured out how you can do that. Read on.

Inbox by Gmail: Bye bye

Do you use Inbox by Gmail? If so, you've got until March 2019 to enjoy it before it shuts down.

H/T Delivery Counts.

Spam in a post-GDPR world?

Spam levels are down a bit, according to various reports. Is GDPR to thank? Truth be told, Spamhaus says, that GDPR actions taken by legitimate companies sending legitimate mail might have reduced the amount of mail they send, wanted or unwanted, but those companies weren't the biggest sources of spam to begin with.

The real issue, Spamhaus says, is that GDPR is "hampering organizations from effectively stopping career cybercriminals from defrauding innocent people."

Why? Because good guys fighting the bad actors sending bad mail utilize WHOIS data to help identify and track those bad actors. The effective gutting of data in WHOIS in response to GDPR impedes that good work, as shared by John Levine.

This isn't news to me. Hiding or redacting domain ownership has long been a pain point for anti-spam and internet security folks.

Now Hiring: Merkle

Hey, you! Are you looking for a deliverability-related role? Merkle's got you covered. They're good people. Find more about the role (and how to apply) here.

Test Authentication Here

I finally repaired my long-broken DKM/SPF/TLS checker, you can find it here.

It's time to re-engage!

A re-engagement campaign is where you beef up your subscriber engagement (the open/read/click percentages in a sender's stats) by asking existing subscribers to click on a link to show that they're still alive, often followed by retiring/suppressing addresses who don't respond. (That suppression step boosts your engagement rates which makes you a better sender in the eyes of many ISPs, and it also helps you leave spamtrap addresses behind, so if you're having spamtrap or blacklist issues, it's very important.)

How do you do it? What should you consider? MailChimp has a solid high-level overview. Some bits are MailChimp specific, but it's still a good place to start, regardless of which ESP or email platform you use.

Need examples of compelling re-engagement content? HubSpot's got you covered, with ten great examples of effective re-engagement emails.

A site called "Essence of Email" has another dozen examples you should check out.

MailChimp also links to this Really Good Emails site which has a ton of re-engagement campaign example emails.

Note: What marketers call a re-engagement campaign, anti-spam folks would call a permission pass or reconfirmation email.