Is a Feedback loop just email noise?

Thinking about Feedback loops?

Email has many handlers, which translates into “not all your email will be delivered as intended.”  When an ISP receives many complaints about a particular email going through their email servers (where “many” is a number based on the discretion of the ISP), the ISP may deliver those messages to the recipient’s junk folder or decide not to deliver those messages at all.  (Complaints can be collected on report spam pages, webmail, email clients or other.)

If you’re the originator of the message, that isn’t good news as your marketing efforts are wasted: your intended recipients may never look at their junk folder or worse yet, they never received your email message because it was never delivered.

Consider a typical (major) ISP, such as AOL.  AOL like all ISP’s (for a variety of reasons) want to protect the in-boxes of their email recipients from SPAM and unwanted junk mail.  Ideally, they want to handle incoming email problems before they get out of hand and quickly resolve those “Report Spam” button issues. One way they do this is using a communication system known as FBL or “complaint” Feedback Loops.

Feedback loops are:

• A service that several major ISPs provide on an individual basis, to bulk mailers such as an ESP (Email Service Provider) like Dundee Internet Services.
  • An agreement between a major ISP and an ESP, where the ISP automatically forwards SPAM complaints originating from the ISP’s email box user to the ESP.  (The  sender’s organizations)
  • Used by the ESP to automatically removed the offering email address.
  • Critical for good list hygiene.

Feedback loops can:

• Identify companies that want a preemptive approach to reduce the amount of spam sent to their users, those companies that are diligent about monitoring their mailings for abusive or otherwise unwanted content.
• Streamline and automate the spam reporting process with specific identifiable-readable parts of an email:  using various headers used to describe the structure of MIME messages (RFC2045 and RFC1341)

Bottom line, as an ESP or any entity running mail servers with bulk mail distribution should sign up with the feedback loops programs as it’s a good way to curtail spam and maintain a good IP reputation.  Marketers using an ESP with FeedBack Loops benefit too, their ISP is a responsible sender and as a result, a responsible sender delivers their email.

Which ISP’s offer Feedback Loop agreements, check out this partial list

http://www.mequoda.com/articles/email-marketing/10-email-feedback-loop-lists/?floater=99

Is a Feedback loop just Email Noise? is a post from: Mailing List Services and email list management

This morning you mailed to 750,000 subscribers, a simple newsletter and you cannot understand why the delivery rate is beyond slow, in fact, it is crawling.  Your list members are all opted-in, you’re not black listed anywhere and this is a scheduled mailing, people are expecting it.  What’s going on?  You check with your list administrator who informs you your mail is being tarpitted. Huh? – With a little research and reading, you discover:

Tar Pitted or Tarpitting is closely related to the notion of the teergrube (German for tar pit):  a server that is intentionally configured to be sluggish as a common means of trapping address harvester programs.  Can that really be the reason for your delayed mailing? 

What and whys:

1. Tarpitting is the practice of purposely slowing down email transmissions from reaching the mail server, typically by delaying incoming connections for as long as possible.  This practice is noted to have been developed as a defensive measure against a computer worm. 
2. Tarpitting can be created by adding specific delays between a set numbers of messages.  For example, the mail server can insert a 5-second delay between email messages after the first 50 messages are sent: which essentially can add days to your delivery rate (depending on how many list members you have).  Additionally the mail server can create a delay if the release time is extended with each invalid email address submitted.  If your valid email is caught up in a tarpit, your mail will eventually be delivered because the connection is never broken, just slowed down
3. Tarpitting continues to be utilized because there is a belief that usual network abuses such bulk email spamming loses its effectiveness if delivery takes too long.
4. Tarpitting employed by a mail server is done with the intention of discouraging bulk spammers, by offering low response rates because the slowed connections.  This in turn creates the inability to send volumes of messages quickly (and cheaply).
5. The practice of tarpitting normally does not affect the integrity of legitimate email senders because the actual delay time is inconsequential for the typical recipient lists. (Mail server administrators can also make exceptions for legitimate mail.) ]

However, you’re not a spammer and you’ve been sending email newsletters for years!  If you find yourself with an unusual slow mail delivery, check with your ESP.  (Email Service Provider).  An ESP can usually research and discover if your mail delay is related to a tarpitting issue.  An ESP might tell you that bigger ISPs may tarpit mail on occasion for a variety of reasons, from internal issues to a perceived spammy subject line.  We’ve seen tarpitting occur without rhythm or reason other than the ISP decided that not enough people were clicking on the received mail, so therefore if might be spam. 

If tarpitting becomes a concern, one option you may have is to get yourself whitelisted.  In some cases when your mailings are clearly whitelisted, tarpitting will not have an adverse effect on your email.  However not all ISP’s use or accept whitelisting which doesn’t help you if your dealing with such an ISP.

 To be whitelisted is a good thing, as a whitelisted email may escape the tarpit slow down.  However, as mentioned this is not available to do with all ISPs.   Moreover, while being whitelisted is good, other classes may not be.  There is mail that can be greylisted or blacklisted.  Greylisting occurs when the sever rejects the connection causing the need for your email to be resent later.  Greylisting is based on the premise that spammers only want to connect to a mail server quickly, ideally on the first attempt with little hassle, while legitimate mailers will retry to connect to the mail server over longer periods.  If you’re sending from an unfamiliar IP address for example, you may be greylisted.

If you’re blacklisted simply put you are considered a Spammer.  Become blacklisted and you compromise your sender reputation and the IP address being used.  There are volumes of information written about Blacklists, a good topic for a future blog.  

In conclusion, the necessity of tarpitting, and classifying email as greylisted, whitelisted or blacklisted is the direct result of the steady progression of spammers and other malicious coders of which there is no end in sight.  These proactive measures aren’t perfect, as you may well be aware of, but may be the best available for now.

Tarpitting and other sticky email issues. is a post from: Mailing List Services and email list management

Is your legitimate email being blacklisted because you picked up a spam trap address in your subscriber base?  What is a Spam Trap and what can you do about it. Where did it originate from and how can you stop them?

What is a Spam Trap?

Spam traps are secret, non-published email addresses that catch some list owners by surprise.  A Spam-Trap is a valid email address, used specifically to trap unsolicited email or spammers; hence the name Spam Trap  The Spam Trap premise is based on the belief that if the owner or former owner of an inactive email address has not checked email for a quite a while, why are you still sending email to this address?

Spam traps are used by many different organizations and can be created or designed as needed, usually from an inactive email account or an inactive domain.  To be effective, the address in question must be inactive for a considerable amount of time.

Frequent spam trap sources are those old email addresses that may have been used long ago, to post to Usenet or those addresses used as a function email addresses such at webmast@ and president@.  In other instances, addresses with a period of invalidity can be recycled as spam traps as well as email addresses that have never been used by a live person.

Who Uses Spam Traps?

Many organizations use spam traps, such as large ISP’s like AOL, companies that offer spam filters and organizations that specialize in email reputation.  Void of rules or regulations, organizations interpret spam trap information with charts, formulas and WAGs to block incoming emails based on their own understanding and methodology.

Spam Traps – The Blacklist Guaranty

The Blacklist guaranty – send a newsletter with a spam trap and you will be blocked or blacklisted in no time. This block may take the form of a permanent block on your sending IP Address; your future messages will not be delivered until you remove the spam trap address.  With your tarnished reputation and spammer label, no doubt you will become familiar with Blacklist reporting agencies like SpamCop and the Passive Spam Block List who will continue to keep you on their Blacklist until you resolve the spam trap issue.

Who put a Spam Trap in My Permission Based Email List?

A spam trap can be added to your list unknowingly by:

1. Not using confirmed opted-in and other permission based maintenance
2. Harvesting addresses
3. Purchasing email addresses
4. Renting email addresses
5. Using an email Append service
6. Deliberately added to your list
7. Using an old list

How to Remove Spam Traps

Avoid spam traps.  Spam traps are near to impossible to remove and the reporting ISP, SPAMCop for example, will unlikely tell you which address to remove to get yourself off their Blacklist.  

You could reconfirm your list of subscribers and once again require them to confirm their subscription to your email newsletter.  You will lose subscribers because of the process and an a required action they have to take.

If reconfirming all your subscribers seems a little daunting, you may be able to identify a clean, free from spam trap address segment, from  part of the offending list (i.e. join date for example) that you can eliminate from the reconfirm process, thereby narrowing your losses from those who will not reconfirm.

In summary, removing a spam trap is a difficult task, and you may not be successful unless you reconfirm your list.  The better solution: make sure these offending address stay off your mailing lists altogether by following Safe Mailing Practices and not following the Worse Email Practices for List Management.

Who put a Spam Trap in My Permission Based Email List? is a post from: Mailing List Services and email list management

“No Spam allowed” ~ Dundee Internet is a permission-based email service provider and as such expressly forbids the transmission of unsolicited commercial email and unsolicited bulk email.

When it comes to list hosting and email deliverability we protect our customers with list hosting services for opt-in mailing lists only.  For over a decade we have continued to maintain a solid relationship with the major ISP players, such as AOL, Yahoo, and MSN etc., to resolve any arising mailing issues with them, quickly and efficiently.

Unwanted, unsolicited bulk email is SPAM.  SPAM costs everyone money.  SPAM raises the delivery cost of legitimate email: the price for receiving, storing and removing unwanted mail effects us all.

No Spam is a post from: Mailing List Services and email list management