Google is ending a pilot program that allowed political campaigns to bypass the spam filter, and they have filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit that the RNC filed against them. Note that Google is not 'restarting' spam filtering in Gmail for political campaigns, as claimed by some, and that's because they never stopped. Confused? You won't be, read on.
Users of mass email services such as Gmass, Woodpecker, Lemlist and others, that have been using Gmail's API to send bulk email that tricked recipients into thinking that they were receiving personal one-to-one emails, have been put on notice today by Google: "Applications that use multiple accounts to abuse Google policies, bypass Gmail account limitation, circumvent filters and spam, or otherwise subvert restrictions are prohibited from accessing Gmail API scopes."
If you're looking for the promised "this is spam" option that Google promised with it's new Gmail political campaign pilot program (you know, the program that lets political campaigns sign up to by-pass the Gmail spam filter and go right to your inbox), you're not alone. Oh, it's there, but it's hidden.
Google's Gmail Verified Sender Pilot Program for political campaigns is up and running, and political campaigns can now apply to be part of Google's program which allows political campaign email to bypass the spam filter and be delivered directly to Gmail users' inboxes, but only once unless the user doesn't click on the big red "I don't want this" message that will accompany it.
Most (but not all) email tester and email list cleaning and validation services are generally frowned on by many (if not most) inbox providers and ISPs, and many consider their use to be a sign that you may be a spammer. The rise of list cleaning (also known as "list hygiene") and email tester services, by which we mean email address validation and verification services, has tracked in tandem with the rise of new ways to detect spamming activities, including adding email addresses to mailing lists without consent. It's this last bit, the "adding email addresses to a mailing list without consent" that is the sticking point, and it is that activity which list hygiene services are, for the most part, intended to facilitate. Which is why they are disdained by the email receiving industries (inbox providers, ISPs, and spam filtering services). There's a reason that they are called "list cleaning" services; and if you are building your mailing list with consent then your list won't be dirty and need cleaning. Note that it's important to distinguish these services that offer just these list "hygiene" services, and those who help you to not only clean up your email list, but also to make sure that you are following best practices.
Just as with any other industry, the email deliverability and email marketing industries have their own […]
Whither goest Mailchimp? Often an email company being acquired leads to abuse handling and opt-in standards declining, and so to an associated decline in reputation and deliverability. It took Mailchimp 20 years to build up the good reputation that they have in the email receiving community; it can take them, or Intuit, or both, fewer than six months to destroy it.
Today we are celebrating both the dawn of networked email, and the person who sent the first email, Ray Tomlinson. In October, 1971, Ray sent the very first networked email. To be sure, the computer to which he sent it was barely 3 feet away from the computer from which he sent it, and yes, he had sent it to himself, but nonetheless, it was groundbreaking. Prior to that some computers had a rudimentary 'email' messaging system through which one person could leave a 'mail' message for another person, but only on the same computer (sort of like a local dropbox). Sending one email to another computer was a Very Big Deal. It was also Ray who decided that there should be the "@" between the username and the domain (web address) of the email, and the rest, as they say, is history.
A New York court yesterday affirmed that New York can charge sales tax on sales made through affiliates who are based in New York state. Known as "The Amazon Tax", and indeed the primary plaintiff in the case was Amazon, the rule says that so long as the affiliate is located in New York, and the company for whom the sales are generated has sales of at least $10,000 attributable to affiliates in New York, then the company must pay sales tax to the state of New York.
Customer service email response time expectations are such that a lead or customer expects to get an email reply to an email inquiry within minutes or, at worst, a few hours. That means that if you are taking more than a few hours to respond to a customer's email, and especially to a lead or prospect's email, you are both tarnishing your company's reputation, and losing out on business - in fact, you are effectively turning business away. Instead, answer it immediately, or at least as soon as you can, even if it's just to acknowledge it and say that you will get back to them more fully later.
