We want to remind all of our customers up north that Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) takes effect starting July 1st. If you’ve never heard of CASL or need a refresher on what it means for your email marketing activities, please take a look at the support article that we’ve prepared:
If you are unsure if you have proper consent (either express or implied) from your subscribers, we recommend setting up a subscribe form and then emailing your subscribers (before July 1) inviting them to sign up to your new list if they wish to continue receiving communication from you.
If you have any questions about CASL or setting up a subscribe form, please reach out to our support team.
We will be performing some maintenance on our database servers tonight from 12 AM to 2 AM Pacific Time. During the two-hour maintenance window, the Direct Mail application on your Mac will not be affected, but your access to online services from within the app will be temporarily suspended (including sending campaigns, updating reports, subscribe forms, and design tests). Sent email campaigns will not be affected and open and link tracking will continue to work normally.
Our latest update to Direct Mail addresses some issues that have been “bugging” some of our users. The update is free and can be downloaded from inside the Direct Mail app by choosing Direct Mail > Check for Software Update from the menu bar at the top of the screen. Here’s a quick look at some of what’s changed:
Germans users who sync Direct Mail with Daylite will be happy to learn that the “Individuelle Anrede” (Individual Salutation) field can now be synced to Direct Mail and included in mail-merge tags.
Several bugs causing crashes, hangs, and high CPU usage (especially when under memory pressure) have been crushed.
If you’re so inclined, you can now hand-pick the image that will appear when sharing your campaign via Facebook or Twitter.
Direct Mail now warns you if your choice of From address will run afoul of any DMARC policies (see the recent AOL and Yahoo changes).
AOL today followed Yahoo’s lead in implementing a new policy change aimed at reducing fraudulent or spam email. If you use an aol.com “From” address for your email campaigns, you’ll want to take note of how this policy affects email you send using Direct Mail.
The Policy Change
AOL uses a technology called DMARC to digitally publish policies governing how their domain name can be used. The recent change requires that any email bearing an aol.com From address must originate from an AOL mail server IP address. Email providers like Gmail, Hotmail, and others who use DMARC will reject aol.com email that is not sent from AOL mail servers. This change was done in an effort to combat fraudulent email, but also impacts mailing lists and email service providers (like us). Mailing lists and email service providers like Direct Mail send email using their own mail servers, not AOL mail servers, which could cause legitimate email campaigns from aol.com addresses to be bounced or marked as spam.
However, there is a solution.
The Solution
The solution is to simply not use an “@aol.com” From address for your email campaigns. The best solution is to use an email address from a private company domain—like joe@abc-company.com. If that is not an option, you can use an email address from another free provider (like Gmail or Hotmail/Outlook.com). However, note that there is a good chance they could follow AOL and Yahoo’s lead and implement a similar policy change in the near future.
AOL’s policy change may be inconvenient in the short-term, but their goal is laudable. Hopefully, over time, this change will result in less spam and fewer fraudulent emails. As always, please contact our support team with any questions.
If you use a yahoo.com “From” address for your email campaigns, you may have noticed that there is now a greater chance of your email bouncing or being marked as spam. This is due to a recent policy change by Yahoo on how email sent from yahoo.com addresses should be handled. This blog post explains, in brief, the policy change and what you can do about it. Remember, this only affects you if you are using a yahoo.com From address on your email campaigns.
The Policy Change
Yahoo uses a technology called DMARC to digitally publish policies governing how other mail servers should interpret email sent from yahoo.com. The recent change requires that any email bearing a yahoo.com From address must originate from a Yahoo mail server IP address. Email providers like Gmail, Hotmail, and others who use DMARC will reject yahoo.com email not from Yahoo mail servers. This change was done in an effort to combat fraudulent email, but has not been without its share of controversy. The controversy stems from the fact that this policy change breaks most mailing lists and can cause some trouble for email service providers (like us). Mailing lists and email service providers like Direct Mail send email using their own mail servers, not Yahoo mail servers, which could cause legitimate email campaigns from yahoo.com addresses to be bounced or marked as spam.
However, there is a solution.
The Solution
The solution is to simply not use a “@yahoo.com” From address for your email campaigns. The best solution is to use an email address from a private company domain—like joe@abc-company.com. If that is not an option, you can use an email address from another free provider (like Gmail or Hotmail/Outlook.com). However, note that there is a good chance they could follow Yahoo’s lead and implement a similar policy change in the near future.
Yahoo’s policy change may be inconvenient in the short-term, but their goal is laudable. Hopefully, over time, this change will result in less spam and fewer fraudulent emails. As always, please contact our support team with any questions.
