AMP Emails

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is an open-source project that aims to make the mobile web better by providing a framework for building content pages that consistently load fast.

AMP emails allow senders to include AMP components in the email so the recipients can perform actions like purchase transactions, etc, without leaving the email page.

BIMI

Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) is a technology that is built on top of DMARC and helps brands display their trademark logos in the Inbox. Gmail and Yahoo display a blue check mark for BIMI-enabled senders. It helps build trust in the recipient's mind.

Bounce

Bounce is a delivery failure. If an email is not accepted by the recipient server, it is called a bounce. There can be two types of bounces: soft (temporary and may deliver in the next send) and hard (permanent: The user doesn't exist).

Bulk Email

Emails sent in bulk i.e. as a part of a large group are called Bulk email.

Bulk Email Senders

Email senders who send emails in bulk i.e. who send a high volume of emails are called Bulk senders. Google identifies anyone who sends more than 5k emails per day as a bulk sender.

Daily Peak Sending Volume

This refers to the highest volume you would be sending in a day. This usually applies to new senders during the onboarding/warmup-ramp-up phase.

As such you can consider the highest volume you would be sending during/post ramp-up completion. Peak season volume is not included here.

Dedicated IP

If an IP is reserved for sending emails for just one domain or brand, it is called a dedicated IP.

 

DKIM

Domain Keys Identified Email (DKIM) is an email authentication method designed to detect if an email has been tampered with. DKIM attaches a new domain name identifier to a message and uses cryptographic techniques to validate authorization for its presence.

DMARC

Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) is an email authentication and reporting policy that is built on top of SPF and DKIM. DMARC instructs the ISP on how to handle an email that fails the DKIM and SPF checks. Strict DMARC policies ensure that spammers are unable to impersonate you. DMARC permits three policies.

• p=none [means recipient servers can manage the email with DMARC failure as per their own descretion]
• p=quarantine [means emails with DMARC failure should be sent to spam/junk]
• p-reject [means emails with DMARC failure should be rejected i.e. blocked entirely]

Strict DMARC "p=reject; sp=reject; pct=100" prevents spammers from masquerading as you.

Domain 

If your emails are sent from, MyBrand <xyz@anything.mybrand.com>, your from domain would be anything.mybrand.com which is essentially a subdomain of mybrand.com.
In this example, From name is MyBrand, From domain is anything.mybrand.com, From address is xyz@anything.mybrand.com, and friendly from is xyz.

Domain Reputation

This is a value assigned to any domain by recipient servers based on their assessment of emails originating from that domain. A higher or better reputation increases the chances of further emails landing in the inbox. With a lower reputation, there are high chances of emails being placed in spam. Domain reputation is a result of how recipients and recipient sever filters perceive your emails.

Email Deferred

This is a transient state where an email was sent i.e. a delivery attempt was made but it was not delivered or failed. The recipient server responded by saying the server was busy or the IP was rate limited/throttled and retried later. So our system will retry these emails until it is either delivered or failed (bounce).

Email deferral is not the final state of the email. It will either get delivered or bounced with subsequent re-attempts until the pre-configured bounce-after period. The bounce after a period is typically 72 hours for Sendgrid. So after 72 hours of the first delivery attempt, if the email is still in queue, it will be marked as a soft bounce.

Email Deliverability

Email deliverability is the measure of emails that go to recipients' Inboxes. There is no way to calculate email deliverability as recipient servers do not share if they sent the emails to inbox or spam. Proxy indicators of deliverability include Domain and IP reputation, Campaign Performance Metrics (delivered, open, click, complaints, unsubscribe), and Inbox placement rate.

Email Sunsetting

Email sunsetting is the process of suppressing unengaged email addresses. Lack of engagement despite good inbox placement for a period of time - say more than six months - could be because the user has abandoned the mailbox, the mailbox is a spam trap, user no longer wants to interact with the brand. Hence, email sunsetting is used to keep the email list clean.

Email Suppression

This is a list of users who are excluded from receiving emails despite being target users. Typically these are the users who have unsubscribed from your communication, reported your emails as spam, or whose email address does not exist. Repeated soft bounces should also be excluded from sending and should be suppressed.

Feedback Loop

A feedback loop (FBL) or complaint feedback loop is a service offered by ISPs such as Yahoo, Microsoft, Comcast, Mail.ru, etc., wherein you get to apply for Feedback Loops for the IPs or Domains that you manage. In your provided email address [feedback address], the servers then forward the email complaints made by their recipients. The feedback address has to be added and verified during FBL registration.

A feedback loop is a common term. Yahoo calls it a Complaint feedback loop, and Microsoft calls it JMRP (Junk Mail Reporting Program).

Filtered results in SNDS

The Filtered result is the aggregate spam filtering applied to all messages sent from that IP. This might not necessarily mean Inbox v/s Junk percentage as it also depends on individual recipient’s filters and behavior history, but it should be close.

• Red: more than 90% of emails were identified as spam
• Yellow: 10% to 90% of emails were identified as spam
• Green: less than 10% of emails were identified as spam

Folder placement

Gmail has several tabs [Primary, Social, Promotions, Forums], Microsoft has two tabs [Focused and Others], and Apple recently announced they will be introducing tabs by the end of 2024.

Folder placement like Inbox placement is a measure of emails sent to each tab. It, like Inbox placement, can't be calculated in absolute numbers and we can get this vis 3rd party providers like Inbox Monster, eDataSource, Everest (Validity), and the like.

From Email Address

If your emails are sent from, MyBrand <xyz@anything.mybrand.com>, your From email Address would be xyz@anything.mybrand.com.

From Name

If your emails are sent from, MyBrand <xyz@anything.mybrand.com>, your From Name would be MyBrand.

Google Annotations

Email annotations are only relevant to the promotions tab in the Gmail app.

When you annotate emails, Gmail users can view your promotions directly from their inbox. Users can click on the annotated text or image from the Promotions tab to learn more about the promotion, without opening the email.

Hard Bounce

If the bounce is permanent, it's called a hard bounce. It typically happens when the recipient's domain doesn't exist or has been permanently disabled, or the recipient's email address does not exist or has been permanently disabled.

Inbox Placement

Inbox placement is the percentage of emails that are likely to have landed in the recipient's Inbox. Recipient servers do not share this information directly, so there's no way to determine this. However, third-party tools like eDataSource, Inbox Monster, Validity, EmailConsul, Kickbox, and so on., share approximate Inbox placement rates based on the results of Seed Testing.

IP Address

The IP address is the identifier of the email server from where your emails will be sent. These are assigned to your accounts with the ESPs at the time of onboarding.

IP Reputation

This is a value assigned to any IP by the ISPs based on their assessment of emails originating from that IP. A higher or better reputation increases the chances of emails landing in the inbox. With a lower reputation, emails are highly likely to be placed in spam. IP reputation is a result of how recipients and recipient sever filters perceive your emails.

Namespace Mining

Namespace mining is a practice of verifying if email addresses exist without sending (or attempting to send) emails to those addresses. This method is commonly used by malicious senders to generate lists of valid e-mail addresses to which they can send spam, phishing emails, or malware.

For example: pinging the servers with various combinations of common names to identify valid email addresses: johndoe@hotmail.com, johndeooo@hotmail.com, junedoe@hotmail.com, jonnydoe@hotmail.com, etc.

Namespace mining-like patterns may result in your email getting blocked. If you are not involved in namespace mining, check your servers to ensure they were not compromised by a hacker who is using them to attack the recipient’s servers.

Microsoft SNDS shows connection requests made (RCPT commands) v/s actual emails sent (Message recipients). A large gap between these two could be a result of compromised IP. Alternatively, it could also be due to rate-limiting on IPs which causes several retries. However, it can be mistaken by Microsoft as NameSpace mining behavior and might result in blocks.

Phishing

The attempt to steal personal information by presenting a fraudulent copy of a trustworthy identity as bait is called Phishing. Spammers forge sender's addresses and masquerade as a trusted brand to trick end recipients into revealing sensitive information.

Banks, online payment services, and social media accounts are common targets of phishing. These scams are often distributed via email, as well as other vectors.

Pre-Warmed IP

IPs that have an assigned reputation and have already been warmed up to send higher volumes can be called pre-warmed IPs. In the parlance of email campaigns, pre-warmed indicates that you would not need to undertake IP-warming activities.

Pristine Spam Traps

Pristine spam traps are honeypot addresses created specifically to catch spammers/senders who have poor/unsecured user collection methods. As these email addresses never sign up anywhere and are left on the web, anyone scrapping the list can get these users.

Product Carousels

Product carousels display multiple image previews for a promotion. It's an extended version of Annotations for the promotions folder in the Gmail mobile app.

Promotional Emails

Promotional emails are typically sent to inform your customers about new arrivals, offers, sales, and so on. The intent behind a promotional email is to increase awareness about your products/services and engage and retain customers with the eventual goal of generating revenue.

Recycled Spam Traps

Recycled spam traps are addresses that were once valid and owned by real people and may have even signed up on several websites, however, they were inactive for some time post which recipient servers sent a hard bounce response, and sometime after continuously sent hard bounce response, recipient servers converted those address to spam trap to monitor sender’s list quality. Any sender who continuously hits recycled traps is deemed as not following the list management best practices.

Sender Authentication

Sender Authentication is a set of technologies to validate the authenticity of the email i.e. the email sender is who it says it is, the IPs are authorized to send emails for that sender, and the email message has not been tampered with during transit.

Shared IP

If a common IP is used to send emails for more than one domain, it is called a shared IP.

SNDS

Microsoft's Smart Network Data Services (SNDS) gives an insight into the IP reputation at Microsoft similar to how Google postmaster tools share reputation information relevant to Gmail.

Snowshoe Spam

Snowshoe Spamming is a way of avoiding spam filters by spreading emails across various domains and IPs. Even compliance requirements are less stringent for low-volume senders, similarly, spam filters have comparatively low sensitivity for low volumes. That's the loophole the snowshoe technique operates on.

Soft Bounce

If the bounce is temporary, it's called a soft bounce. It typically happens in scenarios where the recipient's mailbox is full, the recipient's mail server is busy, the sender's IPs are blocked, the recipient servers are temporarily unreachable, and so on.

Spam Email

Spam is generally understood to be Unsolicited Bulk E-mail (UBE). However, you can consider any unwanted email as spam.

Spam Reports/Spam Complaints /User Complaints

These indicate users who received the emails in their Inbox and then marked them as spam. For Gmail, you can see this information in the Google Postmaster tool. For other mailbox providers who support traditional feedback loops, this information is available in the campaign analytics.

Spam Traps

Spam Traps are honeypot addresses created/repurposed by Mailbox Providers to access the list management practices of the email senders. Spam Traps addresses are valid and hence emails will be delivered to them. But they never engage with the emails.

Spamhaus

Spamhaus is the trusted authority on IP and domain reputation. Spamhaus is the largest block list. IPs and domains listed on the Spamhaus block list tend to have very low delivery and very high soft bounces. All the major mailbox providers like Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft, Comcast, etc look at Spamhaus data while determining domain/IP reputation.

SPF

Sender Policy Framework(SPF) is an email authentication method that helps validate if the IP from where the mail has originated is authorized to send emails from that (mailed-by) domain.

Transactional Emails

Transactional emails are typically sent when an action is performed by the user or on the user's account, such as information about purchases, subscriptions, account activity, one-time passwords, invoices, shipping or billing information, and so on.

Unsolicited Email

If emails are sent to users who have not explicitly opted in for it, the email is called unsolicited.

Unsubscribe Drop

This is relevant in the case of email vendor suppression. If an email address exists in the suppression list of the email vendor (SendGrid) and emails are sent to those users from MoEngage, the email will be dropped as an Unsubscribe drop.

Web Scraping or Email Scraping

Email Scraping is a way of collecting email addresses from the web, be it websites, social media platforms, or local HTML documents. There are various tools available that allow you to automate this process and collect users this way.

The users collected this way would not have explicitly given consent to receive emails. This goes against deliverability and user collection best practices. This would also violate policies like GDPR, CASL, etc.