Official AOL Postmaster Blog

Web Support Tool Beta

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:49:27 GMT

The AOL Postmaster Team is pleased to announce the beta of our new web support tool for delivery issues. Please feel free to test it out and give us your thoughts and feedback. We hope it will provide a way for mailers to get help and resolution more quickly than ever before!

It must be stressed, though, that this is just a beta, and problems could arise. If you run into problems with the tool and need more immediate help, please call us. That said, we hope everything will go smoothly, and that you will like what we've put together!

David
Systems Programmer, AOL Postmaster Team

AOL Converting All FBLs to ARF on 9/2/08

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:38:45 GMT

AOL first began offering complaint feedback loops in 2003. Since that time, many other ISPs have begun offering FBLs, and from that, a standard(ish) format was born. This format is called ARF, or Abuse Reporting Format, and is designed to prevent FBL recipients from having to maintain separate parsers for FBLs from different providers. Due to the widespread adoption of ARF, AOL is adopting ARF as its only format for sending FBLs.

Beginning on September 2, 2008, AOL will remove the option to create non-ARF FBLs. We will also convert all existing non-ARF loops to ARF loops.

Please note that ARF messages are not readable in most major email clients. Parsing and decoding the complaints will require scripting. If you have existing FBLs in the traditional non-ARF format, please update your tools and scripts to parse ARF complaints by this time.

To read more about how ARF is used at AOL, click here.

Christine

Manager, AOL Postmaster Team

Tags: announcement, FBLs

Website Maintenance Alert

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:33:42 GMT

We are doing some website maintenance, which is causing some of our forms to time out. If you experience this or other website issues, please be patient. The maintenance should be completed by COB today.

Tags: announcement

Updated Feedback Loop Documentation on Postmaster Site

Tue, 20 May 2008 16:50:57 GMT

Just a quick announcement to let you know that we have updated the Feedback Loop documentation on the AOL Postmaster website. Some mailers informed us that the process was confusing, particularly with regard to the email confirmation and IP ownership.

In response, we've added two new links. The first, FBL Application Information, describes the application process in detail, explaining the various steps and why they are necessary. The second, Feedback Technical Requirements, explains how you can satisfy the IP ownership requirement.

It is our hope that this updated documentation takes some of the confusion out of the FBL application process.

Christine

Manager, AOL Postmaster Team

Tags: FBL, website update

New Sender Best Practices Document

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:05:58 GMT

The AOL Postmaster Team spends a lot of time helping email senders resolve delivery issues. Our goal is to educate senders on what practices lead to a good reputation and what practices generally lead to a poor reputation. To further this effort, we made a couple of changes to our postmaster website.

First, we added a new document called “Sender Best Practices.” This document outlines the basic guidelines for improving your sender reputation. These are not requirements. They are best practices. Following one or more of these best practices does not guarantee email delivery or whitelisted status, but the more best practices you follow, the better your sender reputation should be – and the better your sender reputation, the better your delivery.

Second, we modified our old best practices document and renamed it “Requirements for Sending Email to AOL” which is more appropriate, as these are in fact requirements. Failure to meet any of these requirements will result in delivery issues.

We hope you find these new documents informative.

Christine
Manager, AOL Postmaster Team

Tags: website update, announcement

Links disabled by default in new WebSuite release

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:56:04 GMT

Since the launch of AOL 9.0 in 2004, images and links received from unknown senders have been disabled. In May 2007, our web mail service was enhanced to disable images from unknown senders. Last week, our newest web mail product, Goa, was released. This WebSuite release completes the process by disabling links from unknown senders. Our aim is to provide our members with consistent safety features across all AOL applications.

Annalivia Ford
Senior Technical Account Manager, Postmaster Team

Tags: changes, webmail

A Quick Note on Invalid Recipients

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:26:08 GMT

Invalid recipients are a fact of life for any mailer. You can minimize them with confirmed/double opt-in, but you still have typos and people who change their email addresses. We get that - it's cool.

At the same time, invalid recipients are used industry-wide as a metric of how good a mailing list is, and high invalid recipient numbers are associated with unsolicited mail and namespace mapping. That's not cool.

We've always factored invalid recipients into a sender's reputation, but we want to give you a heads up that we're refining the process a bit. As such, we would like to remind mailers that high numbers of invalid recipients is a Bad Thing and will result in poor delivery and removal from the whitelist.

Now, I know you, and you are asking, "What's a high number?" That's easy. A high number is a number higher than that which we consider indicative of a good mailer. If your invalid recipient stats are consistent with mailers similar to you, this shouldn't matter much to you. If you generate more invalid recipients than mailers similar to you, you will see a negative impact on your delivery in the near future.

David
Systems Programmer, AOL Postmaster Team

Tags: invalid recipients, policy, changes

Welcome to the AOL Postmaster Blog!

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:32:18 GMT

Welcome to the AOL Postmaster Blog!

Just what the Internet needs, right? Another blog! But have no fear, we won’t be writing about the latest American Idol rejects, moaning about our horrible NCAA brackets, or pontificating about the Presidential elections. Nope, we are here for one reason only — to keep you informed about what’s going on with the AOL Anti-Spam Team and how it might affect you.

If you’d like to be notified each time we create a journal entry, or when someone leaves a comment, click on Alerts or Feeds to subscribe. Also, feel free to comment on our posts, but please, keep it clean. This is a family establishment.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that this is not the appropriate place to make requests of the AOL Postmaster team. General postmaster information about our whitelists, feedback loops, block codes, etc. can be found on our website. If your email to AOL is being blocked, please call 888-212-5537 and be sure to have your error code handy for quick resolution.

Christine
Manager, AOL Postmaster Team