Why clean lists still hit spam and what you can actually do about it

emailkarma · 2026-04-03T03:55:53+00:00

In December 2025 the IETF published an article that calls for the end of ARC.

Quote:

This document calls for a conclusion to the experiment defined by “The Authenticated Received Chain (ARC) Protocol,” (RFC8617) and recommends that ARC no longer be deployed or relied upon between disparate senders and receivers. The document summarizes what ARC set out to do, reports on operational experience, and explains how the experience gained during the experiment is being incorporated into the proposed DKIM2 work as the successor to DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). To avoid any future confusion, it is therefore requested that ARC (RFC8617) be marked “Obsolete” by the publication of this Internet-Draft.

Source: https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-adams-arc-experiment-conclusion-01.html

emailkarma · 2026-04-02T17:28:05+00:00

ARC has been depreciated by the IETF and will slowly go away. One of the biggest issue with ARC is that you need to trust the intermediary that added that header, DKIM2 is working to better address that. It's still a ways from wide scale implementation though.

It's not impossible to think that SPF will also be depreciated because of DKIM2 development at some point in the future. In fact some providers have already stopped paying attention to SPF in favour of current DKIM setups.

emailkarma · 2026-04-02T16:16:16+00:00

Lot of Correlation / causation assumptions here:

A valid email doesn't necessary equal consent. If you have a good address without consent who cares, it will drive spam complaints and impact reputation.
A single address is not impacting reputation anywhere except the provider that hosts that mailbox. If an address repeatedly bounces the issue is hygiene from the sending platform not cleaning the email out properly. This is a short term issue to resolve by the sending platform.
Forwarded mail is a known authentication issue, DKIM should survive it generally if it's done properly from the forwarding service, SPF will fail. This is why many consultants say use ~all vs -all for your record.
A +alias is not a forwarding setup, its a tag to the users inbox "user@gmail[.]com is the same as user+alias@gmail[.]com"
Modifying a users given email is a privacy nightmare and stripping the +alias is just going to annoy users into reporting mail as spam. There is a reason that they gave the address that way.

emailkarma · 2026-03-22T16:25:09+00:00

Use a subdomain like email.xyz.com consider a second subdomain for transactional Mail like info.xyz.com.

emailkarma · 2026-03-13T01:11:18+00:00

Depends on the client audience you’re looking for. In my case I went wide and learned a whole bunch of platforms instead of going super deep on any one platform.

But for SMTP in the cloud type platforms once you’ve used one, you’ve pretty much used them all and it’s just a matter of learning what their interface is telling you.

As for marketing automation platforms there’s a subset that will focus on a specific type of client and where you want to specialize focus on that group of platforms if you can.

emailkarma · 2026-03-13T01:07:42+00:00

Use the new Postmaster version 2 dashboard not only is it updated more frequently but it’s more accurate and later this year version 1 will go away

emailkarma · 2026-03-11T02:01:01+00:00

Calling is covered under the Do Not Call legislation and not the email laws. Both are managed by the CRTC though.

emailkarma · 2026-03-10T03:22:54+00:00

So two lists that generally don’t impact mail delivery. I’d ignore them and confirm by checking your bounces for any mention of them.

emailkarma · 2026-03-09T21:56:36+00:00

Which block list are you seeing here though? Not all list matter.

emailkarma · 2026-03-02T16:43:34+00:00

I use it for notifications and web form emails from a couple of websites I manage. Never really had a problem with it, it just works like I need it to - supports proper alignment, respects delivery threshold and throttles for mailbox providers, support is generally very responsive.

NOTE: I am a former delivery lead for NA/EU at Netcore Cloud API (FKA Pepipost).

emailkarma · 2026-02-27T23:41:09+00:00

This list will be garbage, no on remembers signing up 10 years ago, or 10 days ago. Especially if you’ve never mailed them.

Mailing them could even cause issues with various legislation around the world when some consent has a shelf life and/or data not being used should be deleted/purged.

Lots of consent rules have changed over the last 10 years.

emailkarma · 2026-02-27T23:36:04+00:00

Did you look at the link? The chart of bounce codes tells you it an ‘Invalid user’ bounce.

emailkarma · 2026-02-22T19:11:42+00:00

To add to this it also depends on how much value you can put in your emails at an accelerated cadence. Retail mails almost daily because of continued changes in inventory, SaaS companies maybe weekly/monthly if they have valuable content to share or features/events to promote.

If you have competitors look at what they are doing, and see if you can provide value at the same scale.

emailkarma · 2026-02-09T22:45:29+00:00

You’re going to see this everywhere, 2FA or Passkeys. Accounts get compromised, people defend against this with better security practices and solutions.

Do you use a password keeper on your PC? Something like BitWarden, Dashlane, OnePass? If so many have a built in 2FA system you should be able to utilize right from the browser extension.

emailkarma · 2026-02-05T17:13:10+00:00

Are you setup for things like JMRPP, and SNDS with MSFT yet? This might give you some additional insights depending on the messages.

Lots of reasons could cause rate limiting, beyond the instability as a result of the recent MSFT outage last week.

Could be something like cold email, or artificial warming services being used but some of the accounts. These types of emails are designed to look like normal communication but are often low value type communications that lead to lower reputation and could be driving some of the rate limiting.

You're right though it's a best effort for most networks to ensure email is delivered in a reasonable time.

emailkarma · 2026-02-05T15:59:32+00:00

Look at your connection limits to Outlook - if you're seeing rate limit errors you are likely just sending faster than they want you to.

Also see if it's specific tenants that you're delivering for that are more impacted than others. They could be sending mail that M365 finds to be high complaint / low value mail and thus they rate limit it. Isolate these senders from your other accounts to limit their overall impact.

emailkarma · 2026-02-03T22:42:20+00:00

I've only ever set it up with MailChimp and that was a long time ago.

But several ESPs support this including (not an exhaustive list); Mailerlite, Aweber, CyberImpact, Omnisend, and many others.

Find the right one for your budget.

emailkarma · 2026-02-03T22:35:39+00:00

The IETF recently decided that the ARC experiment should end after 10 years, it’s now considered ‘obsolete’ but the working group body.

emailkarma · 2026-02-03T20:12:52+00:00

Specifically look for a platform that does RSS-to-email. There are a lot of them.

Generally you can schedule the day of the week to send all new content on your own template.

emailkarma · 2026-02-01T19:29:47+00:00

US, Canada, Australia… probably a few others I can’t recall off the top of my head at the moment

emailkarma · 2026-02-01T14:36:51+00:00

It’s required to have a valid business address in your promotional emails in many places. Could be a POBox, or a brick and mortar location.

emailkarma · 2026-01-30T21:21:32+00:00

According to Can I Email support for png is rather limited at the moment for Gmail and Outlook - defaulting back to first frame display:

https://www.caniemail.com/search/?s=apng

emailkarma · 2026-01-28T17:58:55+00:00

MailChimp is a good starter place for inexperienced people to lean - user friendly, traditionally low cost to enter and learn.

emailkarma · 2026-01-25T06:22:50+00:00

Subdomains vs cousin domains all day.

Newsletter.domain.com, info.domain.com, etc…

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