Spam Resource: All Things Deliverability

Inbox Expo is back, and they're bringing the excitement to Austin TX, May 21-23. Known as one of the top events in the email marketing world, Inbox Expo 2025 is where email pros, entrepreneurs, and experts will come together to share real-world strategies, innovative solut…

Hey! It's Al Iverson here and I hope you'll allow me to share a quick "thank you" for reading the Spam Resource blog and email newsletter throughout 2024. I really do appreciate all of you, and I hope you have a peaceful and enjoyable holiday season, regardles…

Just remember, no matter what anybody might tell you, yes, Die Hard is a christmas movie .

Remember Formmail? Spam fighters and email administrators of a certain age probably remember the bad old days of “ formmail ” spam. Formmail was a popular Perl script that let websites implement simple “contact us” forms. The problem? It was easily abused. The destination addr…

Last week for my Valimail "Ask Al" video series, I interviewed Andrew Barrett as Spamhaus. Following up on a prior video where the topic was blocklists (with Alison Gootee) , I thought it would be good to connect with the biggest blocklist out there and share a tiny …

Have you ever run into the SMTP bounce message "too old"? Perhaps with a status code of 602? Here's what that means! This isn't an SMTP rejection code enshrined in the RFC covering email rejection and deferral codes . Instead, it's a Mailgun-specific messa…

The latest version of Apple's mobile operating system was released on December 11th and now I am able to experience the updated features of Apple Mail first-hand. Here's what I'm observing so far, after having used it for a couple of days: Apple Intelligence-driven …

Hot off the press! Well, not really. Courtesy of the RAND Corporation , here's a guide (from 1985) entitled Toward an Ethics and Etiquette for Electronic Mail , authored by Norman Shapiro and Robert H. Anderson. Some bits of it haven't aged so well. They touch on the id…

Today in "Fun with Data," I present to you a link to a downloadable list containing the top Yahoo Mail email domains . Why would you need this? Maybe you run some certain mail server ( MTA -- mail transfer agent) software that can't group domains based on MX. May…

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is the lingua franca used by mail servers to communicate with each other, in the process of sending and receiving email messages. Here's a greatly oversimplified bullet-point explanation of how the email sending and receiving process wo…

Bounces (also called Non-Delivery Reports /NDRs or SMTP rejections) happen when you attempt to send email to a recipient and that attempt fails, typically because the recipient's inbound mail server has declined to accept the message, when the sending platform's mail se…

Romanian mail server solution Axigen very recently added support for Brand Indicators for Message Identification ( BIMI ) sender logos: "Build trust through visibility. Axigen X6 will now display authenticated brand logos in WebMail, elevating brand recognition in every …

For my most recent Valimail "Ask Al" video, I had a bit of fun chatting with expert deliverability consultant Alison Gootee on the topic of blocklists . The question I was most recently asked was, does DMARC help prevent blocklist issues? Not really, which is kind of …

If you're of a certain age (that would be the second time this week I've used that phrase, ugh), perhaps you, too, purchased the debut album from Madchester-adjacent band EMF , called "Schubert Dip," upon its release in 1991. I bought it on cassette, in case y…

It's time for another blog post from my good friend and deliverability expert, Jennifer Nespola Lantz . (Don't forget to read her ISKTBN blog and find her over at the Kickbox blog , too!) Take it away, Jen! I love email, 🎶 I can't help myself 🎶. My love has only…

In certain email clients and webmail providers, like Gmail, the mailbox provider utilizes the list-unsubscribe header to offer up an in-app "unsubscribe" button that shows up above or next to an email message, saving a subscriber from having to scroll down to an emai…

Recently I published an overview and my first thoughts regarding Apple Business Connect , Apple's business branding and contact program that was recently updated to include support for sender logos in email. While it's not the same as BIMI (and I do think you'll wan…

I saw somebody asking about CAN-SPAM on one of the email industry Slack groups recently and it reminds me that not everybody knows what it is. New people enter our industry every year, or work in locales outside the US. Thus, I think it might be a good time for a quick recap o…

Tis the season for tips on how to drag your way out of the dreaded promo tab. Gmail has had tabs for a good long time now (since 2013), and with Apple jumping on board the tab (category) bandwagon, too, people are again worried about the specific tab or category placement. And …

Every time John Mulaney hosts SNL, the episode includes a silly skit about some sort of NYC neighborhood grubbiness that somehow turns into a Broadway Musical. I wholeheartedly approve and my Friday time waster recommendation this week is that you watch the latest episode of th…

Putting on my Valimail hat for a moment, I'd like to share with you that we've got a great webinar upcoming , focused on explaining everything you need to know about BIMI logos, VMC and CMC certificates, and hosted BIMI solution Valimail Amplify. Join us and learn mo…

Giving Tuesday is coming up soon, so I thought this would be a good time to share a webinar I recently co-presented, along with Sandro Cocito and Ashley Desrameaux from Bonterra , where we covered the latest in email deliverability for Bonterra Fundraising and Engagement custom…

For last week's Tuesday Tip , I shared my top five recommendations for DKIM best practices. Mostly (hopefully) easy things you can implement in your DKIM consideration, or nudge your email marketing automation platform to take care of, depending on whether or not you're…

Journalism matters. Whether or not the important journalistic endeavors once done by newspapers continue is an open question today. The economics of the free press are such that many of those legacy entities are but shadows of their former selves. Long time reporters with deep …

The blog-o-verse is all a twitter because very recently Android Authority discovered what may be new functionality coming for Gmail users : Email aliases, under the banner of "Shielded Email." It's hard to know exactly how this will end up working, assuming it eve…