We’re working on an experiment in the MailChimp Lab to help us automatically detect when someone’s about to send something too spammy from MailChimp (no, this is not what the supercomputer is for). We’re using Cloudmark, Barracuda, and Spam Assassin (and possibly Postini in the near future). We picked those, because they’re the most commonly used—and vexing—spam filters.

We’re not planning to expose any secret formulas, or help customers “get around spam filters.” It’s more of a behind-the-scenes, “big brother” tool to help us catch exceptionally bad campaigns before they get sent. That’s the idea, at least, and we’re not sure when this’ll go live.

For now, we’re doing research. We’re currently scanning a few hundred thousand campaigns sent through MailChimp over the years, to see how many “false positives” we might trigger.

In the process, we’re uncovering a lot of innocent mistakes made by senders, plus a few surprises.

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A lot of people who are checking out MailChimp will call or email us and ask, “Can I use a purchased email list with MailChimp?”

So we created this: http://caniuseapurchasedemaillist.com/

If you run an abuse desk somewhere, and you’re tired of answering that stupid question over and over, feel free to link people to it. If you’re not sure why importing a purchased email list into a 3rd party ESP is a bad thing, then promptly turn off your computer and unplug it from the wall. Thanks.

A couple days ago, Comcast sent an email asking for feedback about their feedback loop. Rare to see an ISP genuinely asking email senders what they think. Anyway, this meant I got to speak with one of their senior spam analysts on the phone today. Now I’ve spoken with a lot of ISPs, and I can tell you this was unlike any other conversation I’ve ever had. Comcast was human. Friendly, even. It was refreshingly Comcastic.

He gave me some tips that I could pass on to our readers. So here you go:

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A “permission reminder” is a little blurb in your email campaigns (usually in the footer) that helps your recipients remember how you got their email address. In some cases, it can help prevent you from getting reported or blacklisted as a spammer.

Here’s a good permission reminder:

And here’s a bad one from a campaign that received 300+ abuse complaints:

I wouldn’t go so far as to say this “bad” permission reminder is what caused hundreds of abuse complaints. It’s more of a symptom of a much larger problem. But that’s a topic for another blog post.

Back to the original question: What makes a good permission reminder?

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At MailChimp, we manage over 65,000 subscriber lists, with over 75 million recipients in them. We’ve seen a sloppy list or two, and have dealt with a delivery problem or two. So we’ve learned a thing or two about how sloppy lists happen, and how to prevent them. Most sloppy lists come from ignorance, not evil. But that doesn’t make it any less stupid. So here are some stupid list management mistakes to avoid:

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