Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Yahoo is screwing with your email

I've seen this email get tossed around the email farm every few months so I thought I'd blog about it, the premise is pretty clear and the complaining is about

YAHOO screwing with your emails.

  • "We were testing outbound emails in the usual email clients/services. When we looked at our messages in Yahoo mail, we noticed that Yahoo is now turning random snippets of text into hyper-links that, upon rollover, point to their advertising partners. Obviously this will cause some issues as we're sending out emails on behalf of our clients that, when viewed in Yahoo inbox, suddenly include links to competitor's sites. Not good. (Incidentally, this is also causing the linked text to change color, which in some cases, makes the text hard to read on a dark background.)"

It's been going on for quite some time now, and you all should know that any text in the body of a message can be replaced with a hyperlink to an advertisement that is:


What is there to do about it?
Change the style of your body messages, it is easier to place something like the code below around the entire block of text and Yahoo will ignore the text as an option to add their Yahoo Links. Eliminating the problem above:

Code:

<a style="cursor:text;text-decoration:none;">
<span style="text-decoration:none;">
[plain text with regular links goes here]
</span>
</a>



What about the links changing? try this solution:

Code:
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<style type="text/css">
.yshortcuts { color:#CCCCCC }
.yshortcuts a span { color:#00FF00 }
</style>
</head>

<body>
<div class="yshortcuts" style="font-family: 'Arial', Trebuchet MS, Helvetica, Plain;
font-size: 12px;
color: #CCCCCC; padding: 2px; margin: 2px; line-height: 12px; font-weight: normal; display: block;
width: 400px;">This is a test link <a href="http://www.robo-mail.com/" style="text-decoration:
none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; color: #00FF00;">www.robo-mail.com</a> to enter.</div>
</body>
</html>

Mountain Dew Email Rendering

Email rendering is important.

Critical? Probably not, because for most B2C email lists will contain 50-70% yahoo email addresses. That is your big buffalo, if it's not rendering at yahoo? then you need to fix that. Yes, that would be critical.


The mobile devices still have people scratching and banging their heads against the wall.

Here is an example of a critical flaw in sending an email. Only send the email in HTML. It does not render well for quite a few people, including the elusive mobile folks. See the results from Mountain Dew's campaign.

The Bad:
Blackberry.


The REAL Bad:
Plain Text.

The VERY VERY BAD:
Yahoo.

What it's supposed to like:

I don't mean to pick on just 1 email.
Let's look at Dell's recent email too?


DELL RESULTS: click here

VERY VERY VERY BAD:
One of the image link goes to a 404 page can not be found.
http://www.img.deliverynet/cm50content/2438/29898/titulo.jpg

Kinda bad:
Windows Mobile



Monday, July 19, 2010

Yahoo Investigators

Watch out - Yahoo

is looking at your links, and if you are not careful they are also unsubscribing people from your list(s).

66.196.97.X [the last octet is usually between .157 and .168]

209.191.87.X [the last octet is usually between .214 and .221]

Note: 99% of the time the user agent of choice is: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)

Note: Yahoo Slurp comes from 209.191.87.221 : Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)

Friday, July 16, 2010

Do you buy coreg data?

Is the source of your email lists from co-reg data?

If so, you might want to talk to me off line about your data.

I've found a number of spam traps from people who said they have gotten data from the following sources below.

NOTE: THIS LIST OF EMAIL COREG DATA SOURCES DOES NOT IMPLY ANY MISCONDUCT BY ANYONE NOR SHOULD BE TAKEN THIS WAY. I CAN NOT VERIFY IF THESE ARE REAL DATA SOURCES OR FORGED WHEN RENTED OR PURCHASED.

TO MISINTERPRET THIS LIST IN ANY WAY WOULD BE COMPLETELY INAPPROPRIATE.


- So ask yourself, do you have coreg data?
>> If yes - read on.

- Does any of your data say that it comes from any of the following sources?
>> If yes - see if any of your sources come from the following:

SOURCES:
===================

100bestfranchises.com
123freetravel.com
60secondcarquote.com
7kfinancial.com
aaa-recipes.com
adswise.com
air-attack.com
allapi.net
americasweather.com
amny.com
apartments.com
artistdirect.com
astrology.com
autofinancinghub.com
backontrackloans.com
baltimoresun.com
barrons.com
bctop100.com
birthdaypartyideas.com
bookingbuddy.com
bookit.com
boston.com
businessjournal.com
businessmailbox.com
buy.com
careerbuilder.com
celebritycruises.com
checkngo.com
chicagotribune.com
classicvacations.com
classifieds.com
classmates.com
computerworld.com
coolsavings.com
countrycharts.com
courant.com
cowboy.com
custodyevaluators.com
daawat.com
dailyindia.com
dailypress.com
debthelp101.com
diamond-platinum-card.com
discoverfinancial.com
disney-princesses.com
e-mailspecials.com
ebay.com
ecoupons.com
edwardjones.com
entrepreneur.com
esweeps.com
expedia.com
ez-powercart.com
famousquotes.ws
fandango.com
financialtimes.com
footballavenue.com
franchisegator.com
franchiseocity.com
freebiesforbabies.com
freelotto.com
freescripts.com
getyourgift.com
golftoday.co.uk
greatfreeware.com
greenwichtime.com
healthanddiets.com
hi-techreviews.com
howtomakestuff.com
insidecowboys.com
investcom.com
ivillage.com
jamaica-star.com
javascriptkit.com
journalstar.com
kayak.com
latimes.com
lilcharmers.com
magazinecity.net
marketworm.com
match.com
metpronews.com
modifiedcars.com
moovees.com
morningstar.com
motortrend.com
mydrinkrecipes.com
myjaco.com
mysafeonlinecash.com
myspace.com
nemofriends.com
netflix.com
nigeriadailynews.com
offers-4-u.com
orlandosun.com
orlandoweekly.com
parenting.com
people.com
pethandbook.com
photoparade.com
polkonline.com
popularliving.com
projectpayday.com
qmovies.com
quickestautoloans.com
radiocashnow.comssl
recordnet.com
restylane.info
rivals100.com
silent-creation.net
skateboardspots.com
solarviews.com
soulsearch.net
spellarama.com
spokesmanreview.com
stamfordadvocate.com
starseeker.com
studentsreview.com
stuttgartarkansas.com
suddenpayday.com
sun-sentinal.com
superdotnet.com
swishweb.com
swnebr.net
tagged.com
teachitforward.com
teamautohaus.net
thatcherprescott.com
thecoloringspot.com
theconsumerreport.com
theparenteducator.com
trackyourcash.com
tradeking.com
travelocity.com
tvshark.com
uptofifteenhundred.com
virtualchicagoland.com
vocabtest.com
wakeskating.com
washingtonpost.com
wavefilter.com
wb.com
weatherhub.com
whitepages.com
wildconsumers.com
wireimage.com
wnav.com
work-from-home-picks.com
wsj.com
xtremesportsxchange.com
yourdotcomoffers.com
yoursurveyoffers.com


If you do, I can send you a sample of spam traps email addresses to check to see if they are on your list(s) and how to find more of them.

Bad Email Delivery Servers


Email delivery is supposed to attempt more than 1 time.

If the first message gets deferred then the MTA (mail server) is going to retry the message X number of times in X given period. Usually you've seen a proper mail server set up with a reply to your email that the message has been in queue too long, or that the mail server has given up after 3 days.

Which mail servers are behaving badly, and are only trying 1 attempt?

The GUILTY:
twitter
facebook
linkedin

to name a few...


Thursday, July 15, 2010

PHISHING SPOOF EMAIL

Prime example of a PHISHING SPOOF EMAIL example

One of the best I've seen to date.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

List of top URL deferral references:

HREF URL TIMES
http:// postmaster.yahoo.com/421-ts03.html 123239
http:// postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/421dynt1.html 77146
http:// postmaster.yahoo.com/421-ts01.html 63312
http:// postmaster.yahoo.com/errors/421-ts02.html 15418
http:// postmaster.yahoo.com/errors/421-ts02.html 15418
http:// postmaster.cox.net/confluence/display/postmaster/Error+Codes 7995
http:// mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6596 7653
http:// help.comcast.net/content/faq/BL000010 6477
http:// postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/421rlynw.html 4253
http:// postmaster.yahoo.com/errors/421-ts03.html 2230
http:// verizon.net/whitelist 1475
http:// postmaster.live.com 1362
http:// postmaster.yahoo.com/errors/421-ts01.html 1073
http:// postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/421dnsnr.html 1047
http:// charter.com/postmaster 947
http:// csi.cloudmark.com/reset-request/?ip=X.X.X.X 527
http:// security.rr.com/cgi-bin/block-lookup?X.X.X.X 405
http:// help.comcast.net/content/faq/PTR 280
http:// csi.cloudmark.com/reset-request 217
http:// bbl.barracudacentral.com/q.cgi?ip=X.X.X.X 197
http:// barracudanetworks.com/reputation/?pr=1&ip=X.X.X.X.X 145
http:// spamhaus.org/query/dbl?domain=domain.com; 101
http:// mail.rcn.net/contact.php 68
http:// barracudacentral.org/lookups 62
http:// spamblock.outblaze.com/AMM###### 41
http:// messagelabs.com/support/ 36
http:// surbl.org 35
http:// barracudacentral.org/rbl/removal-request 29
http:// barracudacentral.org 28
http:// csi.cloudmark.com/reset-request/?X.X.X.X 25
http:// isg.ee.ethz.ch/tools/postgrey/help/domain.com.html 19
http:// postmaster.yahoo.com/errors/postmaster-23.html 18
http:// bounce.emailsrvr.com/?a0 12
http:// commtouch.com/Site/Resources/Check_IP_Reputation.asp 11
http:// greylisting.org 10
http:// postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554rlyb1.html 10
http:// commtouch.com/check-ip-reputation/ 8
http:// google.com/mail/help/bulk_mail.html 7
http:// surbl.org/lists.html 7
http:// postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554rtrbl.html 6
http:// ncmail.net/rejectedemails.htm 5
http:// postmaster.yahoo.com/errors/postmaster-21.html 5
http:// spam.aptalaska.net 5
http:// earthlink.net/go/emailsettings 4
http:// kb.mediatemple.net/questions/1685 4
http:// lookup.uribl.com/?domain=domain.com 4
http:// mail-abuse.com/enduserinfo_qil.html 4
http:// uribl.com. 4
http:// iprep.mx25.net 3
http:// milwaukeepc.com/whitelist 3
http:// myacc.net/greylisted/help.html 3
http:// barracudacentral.org/rbl 2
http:// epals.com/about/change/ 2
http:// ipadmin.junkemailfilter.com/remove.php?ip=X.X.X.X 2
http:// logsat.com/SFDB/why.asp 2
http:// mail-abuse.com/cgi-bin/lookup?ip_address=X.X.X.X 2
http:// projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/ 2
http:// Proxmea.com/. 2
http:// senderbase.org 2
http:// senderbase.org/search?searchString=X.X.X.X 2
http:// 27.4mail.com/l/?l=XXXX 1
http:// aps.naples.net/NFN_unblock/greylist.cfm 1
http:// barracudacentral.org/lookups?ip_address=X.X.X.X 1
http:// barracudacentral.org/lookups/ip-reputation 1
http:// barracudacentral.org/lookups/reason 1
http:// bosch.com/reply?s=X 1
http:// cbcm.org/mailkeeper/blackip.asp?IP=X.X.X.X 1
http:// cbl.abuseat.org 1
http:// clarkconnect.com/userguide/greylist/caoec.org 1
http:// dam.net/mail/spamfree_notice.php?code=XXXXXXXX 1
http:// info.webtv.net/spam/index.html#jadabe 1
http:// info.webtv.net/spam/index.html#sandlr 1
http:// ipmotor.com/smtp_err.htm 1
http:// kb.wisc.edu/wiscmail/page.php?id=3998#alias 1
http:// linuxmagic.com/empowering_the_user 1
http:// lookup.uribl.com/ 1
http:// magicmail.linuxmagic.com 1
http:// net.cn/service/faq/youx/mailsy/200905/3781.html 1
http:// netlinkcom.com/ucepolicy.htm 1
http:// no-ip.com/redir?p=gl 1
http:// nuxo.com/grey/ 1
http:// onehammer.com/aspam.php 1
http:// postmaster.tdc.dk/publish.php?id=25167 1
http:// postmaster.yahoo.com/errors/postmaster-22.html 1
http:// register4less.com/cgi-bin/fom.cgi?file=178) 1
http:// support.carroll.com/mail/spam-blocking.html 1
http:// ttees.twotrees.com/smtp-errors/Error-056.html?&ip=x&hlo=x&cpl=x&spl=x&su=x&sd=x&mid=x 1

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Hotmail Delivery - your emails have been dropped!

Hotmail

If you are having email delivered to Hotmail accounts but it never gets opened and you feel confident that Microsoft is null routing (DROPPING) your email, then that might be good news.

Recently I have a number of hotmail mailers that have made the discovery that Microsoft is looking closely at Return Paths Sender Score. If the IP space has no Sender Score reputation it is almost guaranteed that the email will be null routed and never delivered to the inbox.

To solve this problem, you must build a SenderScore Reputation. Send your best, clean data to general internet domains. Keep the volume low such that you do not alarm any spam watch-dogs. The emails will be reported by the ISPs that use Return Path. This includes, Cox, RoadRunner, USA.NET, Mail-Trust, BlueTie, Earthlink, Excite, Rackspace Hosting, Tucows managed domains and Yahoo.com managed domains that include AT&T.

Today I noticed a number of IPs were being manually blocked at Microsoft. I made this discovery because I subscribe to Microsoft SNDS. You to can see these reports at Microsoft and can easily sign up at Microsoft postmaster As easily as you get blocked at Microsoft you can also get unblocked. You just need to ask. They will remove the manual blocks usually within two business days upon your request.


Now the secret to getting IP space unblocked by Microsoft is easy

With you have data from Microsoft and know how to ask the right people, the right question and within a few days, sometimes a few hours the IP space block is removed.Go to http://postmaster.msn.com/Troubleshooting.aspx and at the bottom of this page you will see a link to Support. Click on Support link

The next step will require some careful attention to details.

Answer all the questions and be honest. Microsoft support will read every answer you give and will reply with additional questions as needed within a few hours. In my case I had a large number of IPs that needed to investigate thus this took three days.

After you complete and submit this form, you should expect a reply withing 24-48 hours.

You also need to be part of Microsoft's Smart Network Data Services. Read more at https://postmaster.live.com/snds/FAQ.aspx

Smart Network Data Services (SNDS)
Is a revolutionary Windows Live Hotmail initiative designed to allow everyone who owns IP space to contribute to the fight against spam, malware, viruses, and other Internet evils, to protect e-mail and the Internet as a valued communications, productivity and commerce tool. Windows Live Hotmail, with over 350 million active user accounts world-wide, is in a unique position to collect and analyze e-mail activity data. By providing that data to service providers, most of whom wouldn’t otherwise have access to any such data, they are empowered to use their relationship with their customers to react and take repair actions, such as preventing spam from originating within their IP space. The overarching goal of SNDS is to make the Internet a better, safer place. Working together, Windows Live Hotmail and service providers can make their respective customers happier and more satisfied with the various services we all provide. Visit this link to join https://postmaster.live.com/snds/.

If you are not using our Global Complainer Suppression List, please email me today: keith@inter7.com

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Email Servers Go Down..

4:30 CST, Chicago IL

At approximately 4:30pm CST today people with the ever popular antivirus ClamAV installed on their mail servers experienced inability to send and receive emails.

Usually effecting the General Internet (GI) email servers hitting them with outages across the board - clamav kills them!

FROM: Article


all ClamAV releases older than 0.95 are
affected by a bug in freshclam which
prevents incremental updates from
working with signatures longer than 980 bytes.

You can find more details on this issue
on our bugzilla (see bug #1395

Starting from 15 April 2010 our CVD will
contain a special signature which disables
all clamd installations older than 0.95 –
that is to say older than 1 year.


Basically impacted around 3-5% of all mail servers, and 100% of lazy email administrators.

If you need assistance with your email server, we can help.
--
Keith Kouzmanoff | email solutions
ROBOMAIL | inter7 internet technologies, Inc.
office 815.776.9465 x2206 | www.robo-mail.com
AIM kkouzmanoff | Y robomail99 | G kouzmanoff
TW @robomail | LK http://linkedin.com/in/kouzmanoff
youtube: http://www.youtube.com/robomail99

Monday, March 29, 2010

Email Marketing : Blacklisted



See the entire VIDEO

Share Bookmark and Share





If your mail server has been blacklisted, email you send may not be delivered. Email blacklists (ealtime blacklist, DNSBL or RBL) are a common and easy way of reducing spam.

"Blacklists help keep away spam and unsolicited email by giving mail providers a list of bad email senders in which they can then simply automatically block and keep away from in-boxes and or email servers. The main CON for using blacklists is that sometimes legitimate email providers can get on a blacklist. There is no formal governance for monitoring what/who blacklist publish.

Tools to check if your IP space is on a blacklist: dnsstuff.com (PAID) | mxtoolbox.com (FREE)
Some blacklists are more important not to be on than others, here are ones you should pay attention to: MAPS | URIBL | SURBL | SpamHaus | Spamcop | CBL | BARRACUDA | UCEPROTEC | INVALUEMENT

Things to do to AVOID getting on a blacklist: Not using a confirmed opt-in, Using a hosting provider known for sending bulk email, Ignoring unsubscribes, Blindly running an email marketing server, and last but not least : Buying an e-mail list,

Companies who can help you not get on a blacklist: ReturnPath.com, Goodmail.com, Pivitalverocity.com

Companies that can help monitor reputation: Senderscore.org (FREE)
Category: Education
Tags:
email marketing email blacklist inbox email inbox how to get in the inbox what are email blacklists MAPS URIBL SURBL SpamHaus Spamcop CBL BARRACUDA UCEPROTEC INVALUEMENT Senderscore.org ReturnPath.com

Monday, March 22, 2010

Above The Fold



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT1xMKHCae8

The RoboMail Channel

Above-the-fold is the portion of an email page that you first see without scrolling. Above-the-fold is generally the most desirable location of content in an email because it is the most readily visible. With the increase of people using mobile devices to view email and wide screen formatted monitors, above-the-fold is getting harder to determine.

NOTE: Using external CSS sheets to render the email is the most effective way of rendering the content above the fold.

"Above the fold" is a graphic design concept that refers to the location of an important news story or a visually appealing photograph on the upper half of the front page of a newspaper. Most papers are delivered and displayed to customers folded up, meaning that only the top half of the front page is visible. Thus, an item that is "above the fold" may be one that the editors feel will entice people to buy the paper. Alternatively, it reflects a decision, on the part of the editors, that the article is one of the day's most important. By extension, the space above the fold is also preferred by advertisers, since it is the most prominent and visible even when the newspaper is on stands.

The term can be used more generally to refer to anything that is prominently displayed or of highest priority.

This term has been extended and used in web development to refer the portions of a webpage that can be visible without scrolling. However, some have suggested that this term is inaccurate as screen sizes vary greatly between users, especially in an era where websites are viewed with mobile devices as much as home computers. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Above_the_fold

Screen Resolution and Page Layout:
Optimize : for WIDE SCREEN format, (16:9 and 16:10) it's probably about 80% of your viewers can see that.
Liquid: use a liquid layout that can stretch the entire length of the preview pane.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Yahoo Delivery / Robomail99 Channel



See the entire video on my channel:
http://www.youtube.com/robomail99

Keith Kouzmanoff  | email solutions
ROBOMAIL | inter7 internet technologies, Inc.
office 815.776.9465 x2206 | www.robo-mail.com
AIM kkouzmanoff | Y robomail99 | G kouzmanoff
TW @robomail | LK http://linkedin.com/in/kouzmanoff

Thursday, March 18, 2010

email authentication

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhoZYbZxRj0

When email marketing you should probably consider email authentication. There are 4 basic authentication methods for email: SPF, Sender ID, DKIM and Domain Keys. Which one is right for you? Email authentication helps prevent spoofing, and is more and more prevalent in the email space. If you are an email marketer then get used to the lingo.

yahoo email delivery

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsP8v8niORA

Inter7 with robomail talks about delivering to yahoo.

You should comply with the following standards:
1. Use one unique IP address for mailouts
2. Set a reverse DNS entry for an IP address and make sure that the forward look up matches
3. Make sure that the same (valid) email address appears in the "From" header for every email sent
4. Use SPF (Sender Policy Framework) Records
5. Sign each email with Domain Keys (OR) DKIM
6. Keep list hygiene a top priority, Unsubscribe and Maintenance of lists is a MUST!
7. Automatically unsubscribe emails that bounce often (many deferrals)
8. Do not continually resend emails that receive permanent errors
9. Periodically send confirmation messages to keep the list up-to-date
10. Messages must be formatted according to RFC 5322 SMTP
11. HTML emails must be formatted to w3.org standards.
12. USE the 'Precedence: bulk' header field.
13. Your subject line of each message should be relevant to message body.
14. Do not attempt to mask/spoof/hide links and or sender.

Friday, February 19, 2010

YouTube VIDEO

Jeff Ginsberg, Chief eMail Officer of The EmailGuide, gives Keith Kouzmanoff of RoboMail his shot at the elevator pitch -- in a elevator (of course) at MarketingSherpa's eMail Summit 2010 in Miami.

See the YouTube Video Now.