Category Archives: email

Taking your contacts with you when you switch jobs, without stealing from your former employer

I’ve worked almost entirely for startups for the past 30+ years. It’s what I love, but switching jobs a lot comes with the territory. One of the problems I face with each switch is how to take with me outside contacts I’ve made, without compromising my soon-to-be-ex-employer’s intellectual property. Sure, I’ve added some of them… Read More »

It’s 2020, and companies still don’t know how to send emails that don’t look like spam

I received this email at 1:15 this morning: When I saw it this morning, I was confused. I have never before received an email from “loyaltygateway.com”, and I was asleep at 1:15am, not placing an “order” to be confirmed by this email as its subject implies. It sure looks like spam, right? Well, it turns… Read More »

Experian / T-Mobile class action lawyers send victims important emails guaranteed to be rejected by most recipients

In late 2015, 15 million T-Mobile customers learned that they had been victims of a two-year security breach at Experian. Since then, the 150-million victim Equifax breach has made the Experian breach look kind of puny, but at the time it became public it was a Big [expletive] Deal. Of course, a class-action lawsuit was… Read More »

This is what happens when you let monkeys with keyboards design your email templates

You know how sometimes you encounter something that is so terrible and appalling that you feel you just have to tell other people about it? Well, for me, today is one of those days. But look, I’m a nerd who writes email software and likes to write raw HTML. If the terms “SMTP” and “MIME”… Read More »

“CQ Engage” bulk mail service provider enters my global kill file

Recently, I wrote about what prompted me to add Blue State Digital to my global kill file. Today, CQ Engage, a service offered by CQ Roll Call, joins in that dubious honor. The things you need to do to be a reputable bulk mail service provider are actually very simple and straightforward: Publish an anti-spam… Read More »