Tag Archives: deliverability

Company News

Massive Server Upgrade Complete at Elite Email

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We have successfully completed a massive upgrade of all of our email servers.

At Elite Email we have dedicated email servers spread out across Canada and the United States so that we can offer our customers the absolute highest level of service with the best email deliverability.

After months of planning and preparation, each one of these servers has been beefed up and is running better than ever before.

To quote Kanye West, our email servers are now BETTER, FASTER, and STRONGER!

Emails will now send out faster, however everything is still tailored to specific ISP limits and guidelines. So, even though we’re eager to push the pedal to the metal we must ensure that we play nicely with others and follow the rules.

But, the good news is that this upgrade makes our sending infrastructure much stronger and all customers should see immediate benefits when sending email.

Company News, Email Marketing

New Feature at Elite Email > Automatically Remove Hard Bounces

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As always, at Elite Email we pride ourselves on offering industry leading deliverability that gets our customers right to the inbox.

We already employ all forms of email authentication including SPF, Sender ID, Domain Keys, and DKIM. In addition to that, we have relationships with major ISPs around the globe and have active feedback loops with any ISP that offers such a service. And, of course, wherever possible, our IPs are whitelisted or on the Trusted Sender list.

But, even with all that, we are always striving to do more and be better. After all, as soon as we sit back on our heels, we risk slipping and we never want that to happen!

One of the issues that really bothers ISPs is when you try to send to a ‘hard bounces’ address over and over again. This shows poor list hygiene and is definitely contrary to best practices.

A hard bounce is usually the result of sending to an email address that does not exist and is permanently undeliverable. So, if you put yourselves in the shoes of an ISP, you can see why receiving multiple attempts over time to a ‘hard bounces’ address is contrary to the high email marketing standards we expect from all Elite Email clients.

Up until this point, our customers have always been able to clear bounces manually. You could simply click the “Clear Bounces” button on your email’s bounce report and everything would be cleaned for you. But, many customers were forgetting to do this, which we totally understand because we know how hectic things can get!

As a result of much customer feedback and the goal of constantly improving delivery, we have released a new feature that automatically removes hard bounces from your mailing list. This feature was released over the weekend and based on preliminary reports is working well.

Keep in mind that we only remove HARD bounces, so soft bounces (which could be ‘mailbox full’ or ‘temporary server error’, etc) are kept on your mailing list unless you manually remove them. This is because there is a chance that when you re-send to a soft bounced email address that it can be successfully delivered.

Stay tuned for more great features to boost your email marketing that we have planned over the coming months!

Email Marketing, Random Thoughts

Idol Gives Back and Deliverability Issues

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At every seminar, conference or industry summit that I attend, the issue of “Email Deliverability” is always a hot topic of conversation. It just seems like in the circles I run in, that is a key thing people talk about all the time (and for good reason). But, it’s not so often that I hear things in the mass media relating to email deliverability.

I bring this up because last night on Idol Gives Back (Donate Now Online), host Ryan Seacrest said that comedians Jonah Hill and Russell Brand begged and pleaded to organize a celebrity phone bank for the event.

The whole thing was a joke, of course, but when asked where all the celebrities were Hill said:

“The truth is, we emailed all those people, but the email might have gone into the spam file, because our email address is Viagraman182@gmail.com.”

I can only imagine that celebrities such as Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, etc, etc would have their spam filters set high enough to screen out ‘Viagara’ based emails… I guess celebrities really are just like the rest of us. =)

Although the whole skit was a joke, I thought it was interesting to see the issue of spam and deliverability brought up on such a highly watched show as American Idol.