Overview
00:01:16 So what the heck happened this year?
00:01:56 Lets start with Google Postmaster v1, SNDS
00:13:06 Yahoo downsized their inbox and EAA, Microsoft Authentication
00:39:51 What about 2026?
[00:00:00] Eric Trinidad: Hi, and welcome to Emails Not Dead. My name is Eric, and with me as always is my GUL friend, Jonathan Torres.
[00:00:06] Jonathan Torres: What up, man.
Thanks for that one. Appreciate it. It’s going okay, by the way. Thanks.
[00:00:15] Eric Trinidad: Good man. Good. This is a podcast by email geeks for email geeks and we have a very special episode today. Not too much like our other very unspecial, very special episodes, but we’re looking at 2025 a year in review and we have a special guest with us.
Alison Gootee, our delivery deliverability advocacy specialist at Mailgun. How are you, Alison?
[00:00:38] Alison Gootee: I’m so good.
I can never say the D word right on the first try either.
[00:00:42] Eric Trinidad: Don’t ask me to spell it. It always like auto corrects for me. It just, yeah, it’s been like, what is it, six years now and I still, you know, it’s just, I…
Stumble over it. It’s okay.
[00:00:57] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: It’s like, What Nick Schaffer used to say, like, the difference between deliverability and the word delivery was the letter like Y I think, or something like that. It’s the Y. It’s the Y.
[00:01:12] Jonathan Torres: Good ol’ deliverability daddy. Gotta love him.
[00:01:16] Eric Trinidad: Oh, well we missed that guy. We should have him back on. But this episode, we’re looking back at everything that happened this year, and Thomas if you could, do you have like editing software to like, so that you can show us, like laughing at all, like the fun things that we saw.
Can you show that now?
[00:01:34] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: Okay, sure. I’ll, okay I’ll try.
That’s fine.
I’ll do it in post. Yeah.
[00:01:38] Eric Trinidad: Oh, man, that was so good. Alison, we did so much this year like the email community in general. You know, we had good times, we had new releases. We had some tears. We had a lot of tears.
[00:01:48] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: Yeah.
[00:01:49] Eric Trinidad: You know, so just kinda wondered to go over some stuff with you and see how things have what you experienced and what you thought about, like, all the changes that we’ve seen this year.
[00:01:56] Alison Gootee: Yeah. It has been difficult, I think, because some of the changes have run together, which is great. For a long time it felt like email wasn’t changing that much. That was kind of the joke of like, oh, nothing ever happens. And then all these providers kind of got together and started saying like, what if we shake stuff up?
And so obviously like the Yahoogle thing was a big issue last year, and then Microsoft kind of joined the fray, I think earlier this year. And now lately there’s been like a slew of activity with Google retiring v1 of Postmaster tools. They’re taking away IP and domain reputation. Yahoo just introduced their sender insights fresh on our blog today.
You can read more about that. I think there’s just gonna be a lot more coming up soon. I’m honestly nerdily excited to see how things progress in the next year because it has been exciting. There was a time where it was oh, does anyone even need deliverability expertise anymore?
It’s just become so straightforward. I don’t think that’s the case anymore. I think a lot of senders are struggling and I think even people in the industry are struggling. The loss of IP and domain reputation was like a really big deal, and I personally was not super heartbroken about that.
But I know a lot of people were really bummed out because they felt like it was such a easy thing to reference. You know, everyone wants to know like, what’s my grade? What’s my credit score when it comes to deliverability? Sender reputation. And so seeing Gmail be like. Good. You know, they felt like really comfortable.
[00:03:20] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: Excellent. Poor.
[00:03:23] Alison Gootee: I’m doing great.
I’m sure you guys have opinions here as well. Now I’d love to hear them, but for me, I almost feel like it was too simple and too misleading because I would have customers saying like, oh, but my reputation is medium. How do I make it better?
What does it mean? And I’m like, it’s your regular fine, you know, you should probably still try to do better and here are the things I would do to improve. But like, let’s also look at what you’re really seeing. How are your conversions? Are people opening? Are they clicking? What are your bounces looking like?
You know, what does Gmail say about complaints? And keep in mind that if you don’t have any, that doesn’t mean it’s good. It could mean some of the mail is in the spam folder where they can’t complain. And so. I guess it was a nice like jump off point and maybe a good thing to like get some senders to notice that there was an issue, but I am a little bit grateful that they’re going to have to rely back on their first party data again because it is difficult to over simplify deliverability and boil it down to like one grade, even just at gmail, but I don’t know. How do you guys feel being, I mean Eric, you are in the trenches talking to customers.
Like what has their reaction been hearing that this is going away?
[00:04:33] Eric Trinidad: Yeah, I think I mean they really like seeing is believing at this point for them. So, you know, considering that they still have access to that data now it’s just like, meh, I guess we’ll deal it when we get there or you know, the customers that I usually deal with are like really good about monitoring, engagement and being on top of their game.
You know, whereas, you know, previous customers that I worked with were just like, like you said, like, what does this mean? I’m in the yellow, I’m in the red. What kind of happened? And then we would go and kind of like triage what was going on and try to understand like, well, you can’t send to these people.
Like, oh, I got, well, did they? Consent. You know, did they sign up for your service? Well, no, I got it from, you know, so and so, you know, so, okay. That’s the big thing. Consent. Good. I dunno if you can read it, but it’s right there.
[00:05:21] Jonathan Torres: You’re gonna make it bolder.
[00:05:22] Eric Trinidad: I know. You know, it’s kind of light and I got this, you know, sun coming in here, so, but yeah.
But yeah, you know, so I think, you know, time will tell and like with anything else, we’ll just have to adapt and learn how to know,read the signs and you know, throw our tarot cards down and try to see like how we can figure it out, you know?
[00:05:40] Alison Gootee: Yeah. I think they have kind of alluded to there being like new and improved other diagnostics.
I’m curious what it’s gonna be like. I think some people have hinted that they think it’s going to be an actual reputation score or inbox placement instead of just like, good, bad, it might say like, here’s the percentage that’s actually going to the inbox, or here’s what we see about you that we think I’m interested to see what happens.
But again, I don’t know, I’m torn because it is nice to hear directly from them about what they think about you, but I just think the numbers speak for themselves. You know, we always harken back to the credit score analogy and so if you have really good credit score, but you’re getting denied credit, like that number doesn’t mean that much to you if it’s not giving you the thing that you really want, like, it’s great that I’m excellent. Why aren’t you giving me the money? And so I kinda like to tell senders like, your goal isn’t just like send the most mail or make Gmail, like you, you have a business goal that you’re trying to meet.
Like how are your emails serving that? Like, let’s start there.
[00:06:35] Jonathan Torres: Yeah. I agree like with what you said, that it kind of hyper focuses them on just that particular thing, the medium versus good versus, you know, bad. I think exactly what you said, it gamifies it in that way of, you know, how do I get it to the next level?
Like, what do I need to do? Like, what type of metrics do I need to hit in order to get to the green instead of the yellow? And it’s, okay, cool. Like that’s one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is, are you doing the right things in general? Like it, you know, if you’re getting a ding here, but you’re also seeing a lack of engagement, you’re also seeing a bunch of other things.
Let’s take a step back from just that number, that color, just, you know, what classification you have and do it. On the other side of that too, it’s like you have these companies that would, you know, they’re not so great senders, and then they would do just enough.
To bump up to a medium or good reputation. And then as soon as it was there, they’d see like, that’s the green light means go means send all the email that I’ve been holding back for forever because like now I can. And then they’re immediately back in a bad spot and it’s like, okay, well you know that should train you to do something else, but then you just keep the same pattern over and over again.
So it’s different. And I, without being in that new world fully yet, like, who knows what exactly that’s gonna look like. But I think it’s hopeful that we can hopefully use that to change behavior rather than change, you know, the view, I guess, you know. It’s, really what it is. I’m excited for it.
I really wanna see what the next version of this is gonna look like, like how it’s all gonna land and where we’re all gonna end up. I don’t see it being any worse. I’m hoping it’s not any worse. I’m gonna knock on wood. Not enough wood in here to knock on.
[00:08:06] Eric Trinidad: Google hold my beer.
[00:08:08] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: Google hold my beer.
[00:08:10] Jonathan Torres: I think it gets us in a really good spot. Like exactly what you’re saying too. Like, saying that it really solidifies the role that we have and the role that we play in the community to help people understand and really focus in again, on what are you doing, what, like why are you sending email?
What’s the purpose of your email? And then are you doing everything to fulfill that purpose or are you just sending email ’cause you can, and it’s cheap.
[00:08:34] Alison Gootee: Yeah, I think that’s a huge part of it. I also like, even if it, they do say like X percentage of the mail hit the inbox, or X number of messages hit the inbox.
We’re gonna be in the same spot where customers are going to be saying like, okay, well how do I make it more? How do I get to a hundred percent? And it’s like, it’s gonna be the same advice, like not to undersell what we do, but the underlying concepts are going to be the same exact things.
Maybe the nuances will be different or the impact will be more evident when you’re looking at that versus like inferring based on the signals. But I mean, I feel like if people aren’t opening it’s crappy if some of that is because it’s in the spam folder, but it’s the same issue regardless. It’s in the spam folder ’cause they weren’t opening.
We want them to open it and you know, we need to do the things that make it a more appealing proposition for them. Just the reputation thing is changing from the sending side of the equation on the recipient side for users. Gmail’s also introducing the purchase tracking, which I have live now.
It’s very exciting, though they were wrong about when my chewy.com order would arrive. I was waiting for it all day yesterday because my inbox is like arriving today. No, it is arriving today now. Which I guess it’s always today, somewhere else so its kind of right.
[00:09:46] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: Mine’s coming today too. That’s funny. Yeah.
[00:09:51] Alison Gootee: Maybe It just always says that. It’s gonna be right.
One of these times.
[00:09:56] Jonathan Torres: Eventually one of these todays it’ll be okay.
[00:09:59] Alison Gootee: Yeah, it’s gonna be perfect. And then also they’re doing the relevance tracking. And it’s funny ’cause one of our product managers, Peter, was like, if Gmail turns my inbox into Instagram, I’m leaving. And I am curious how many people feel that way because I also hate, like everything being like trained on the algorithm, you don’t always know what’s most relevant to me.
And though users will have the ability to say how they want their mail to appear. I mean, I don’t know how many casual users feel comfortable like digging around in there. And then there’s also the aspects of like, is that Gmail filtering going to come through on say Apple mail? ’cause that’s what I primarily used to view my email.
And I’m curious am I gonna have to like log into the web client to change how my view is in order for my mail app to show what I want, which is a little bit annoying Gmail. But you Know I guess we all have to adapt and grow. Have you guys, in talking to senders, have they like expressed any hesitation about this new aspect?
Or is that one of those things they haven’t quite yet paid attention to? ’cause it’s not out yet.
[00:11:00] Eric Trinidad: Yeah. On my end it’s, you know, trying to get them out of their old habits, you know? Further authentication and transparency on messages that are being sent. You know, understanding like, yeah, it’s working right now, but you know, as an industry we’re just like being more transparent, you know, being, understanding what you’re getting and you know, segmenting traffic properly.
You know that’s huge. So, you know it may be working now, but soon it’s gonna be a shift. Right. But we don’t know when soon is right. Soon down the road. Soon. Soon. Next year.
[00:11:31] Alison Gootee: Today.
[00:11:31] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: Isn’t that a Smiths song? How soon is now?
[00:11:38] Alison Gootee: Shut your mouth.
[00:11:40] Jonathan Torres: But I think it’s also like, you know, one of the things that
i’m seeing, I’m hearing and I think it’s gonna be one of those things where we also need to adapt to the messaging that we have, is that this is a focus in, on their particular product. I think everything is kind of pointing in that direction. Like and I get it because everybody’s providing the service, right?
Like they’re providing the email service. Primarily you have an inbox that you can go and log into. Then how are the users then utilizing that email? Like, or that service, are they logging into the web portal? Are they using the Gmail app specifically? Are you using the Apple mail app specifically?
And I think it’s really helping to focus in on like, we want our users to use this platform because this platform is gonna be the best. Because you can do the customization, you can interact with it. And then for the senders, then the messaging becomes. You know, how are you expecting users to utilize this?
Are you making it good on every platform? Are you focusing and targeting directly to what Gmail is doing with these, you know, promotions and updates and order tracking? Or are you just kind of generalizing because Apple, good old Apple’s taking a big swing in trying to do the same thing on their platform.
I know ’cause where I use my email primarily and yeah, they’re like, Hey, Siri found something, like, let’s order track this. And I’m like, okay, cool. Order track it. Always wrong. But yeah, and everybody’s trying to like, bring in their own aspect to it and kinda get people in on their platform to say, we’re doing it the best.
Like, come look at our stuff. And you have to, as a sender, I think, consider all those different ones and how it’s all working.
[00:13:06] Alison Gootee: Yeah. I think you bring up a really interesting point, which is I have suggested to senders before, like you know, why don’t you cater your content to the mailbox provider that people are using?
There’s probably things about the demographic or certain just aspects of these users. Like what do your Yahoo users like to see? What kind of promotions do they like? Are you doing your markups so that it shows well at all of these major mailbox providers? And it’s, you know, I’ve covered Gmail a lot, but I also think, like, one thing that we haven’t talked about yet is Gmail is offering the, like managed subscriptions
center where you can say like, oh, I’ve received X number of emails from this sender over this amount of time, and they make it really easy for you to unsubscribe. Yahoo actually has already been doing that for a long time, and I think Yahoo like really has a good understanding of who their users are, which is primarily in my experience, people kind of use their Yahoo boxes, like their promotion center.
It may not be where they’re doing their one-to-one personal communication. Maybe not even, they’re like paying their bills. It’s like big for shopping, and Yahoo’s made a lot of changes to their own product to make that really easy and kind of highlight all, you know, they understand what they’re doing.
They’re making it easy to find your promotions and easy to unsubscribe from things you don’t want. And then again, they are also kind of catering to senders on that side, doing the sender insights and offering more things in their sender hub. And so I’m curious, like if Yahoo wants senders to send to them, what is the consumer base going to do?
Like if, are they going to pick the mailbox provider that gives them the best experience for what they need to use that mailbox for?
[00:14:40] Jonathan Torres: I think that’s exactly the way to look at it. That’s exactly what I think is tough because senders now have to consider all those extra variables and you know where their customer base is.
Like what type of email you’re sending to them, like in the way that it’s formatted, like is it properly populating in each one of those platforms like what’s happening within that? Those are two tools, two, three tools that you mentioned that have launched all this year, that it’s all new and all doing like, and I mean, I was very excited to see what that was already talked about in the subscription management of, Hey, we’re sending to this platform. They can see that you’re getting email consistently from us. We’re including the one unsubscribed link for all of the people that you’re getting messages from. And you can say like, Hey, I don’t want this one, don’t want this one, and I want this one.
Forgot about that one. I just keep deleting it, you know, or it’s maybe landing in a different folder that I’m not even paying attention to. So, it really helps out. And I like that. You know, one of the other people that’s doing it that didn’t really do a huge announcement for it, but in Apple mail also, like it’s picking it up, you know, gives you the unsubscribe link right up on top and it’s, to me, it’s doing a much better job of doing that than what it was doing in the past because they’ve adopted the unsubscribed link, the one click unsubscribe, and it’s working and
I as a consumer, I appreciate it. Like I think it’s just helpful to kind of see it and do it that way because, you know, I sign up for stuff just for kicks sometimes. I just wanna see if they’re gonna send me some good promotions
[00:15:56] Alison Gootee: For coupons.
[00:15:56] Jonathan Torres: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You gotta get those coupons. But then I have always disliked, and especially working in this space, knowing that it should be easy to unsubscribe. And then when I click on a link and it takes me to a webpage, and then it’s like, type out your email again. I’m like, well you’re not following the rules. And then I can go back and just say, oh, they do have the one click on subscribe.
Lemme just hit that link and let’s see what happens. And it’s good. And I feel like consumers. That don’t know it’s there yet or don’t know how to utilize it yet. I think, you know, they’ll eventually catch on. Like, I think that always happens is new technology and new buttons, everyone’s afraid to click on stuff.
And I think it’ll get there. But it is it’s very nice to see the changes in how it’s all working.
[00:16:33] Alison Gootee: Yeah, I agree. I do think it’s interesting though when one thing that we covered a little bit, and I haven’t seen a ton of fallout from it, is that Yahoo also reduced their mailbox size, which is kind of counterintuitive. Because they do probably get so full of promotions and maybe they’re like, oh, this is such a burden. If you’re not looking at stuff that’s that full, like you can just go down to your 20 gigs. I think that was reduced to, which is still more than what Gmail gives you, and so it was like kind of a, you know, kind of sad news if you have a really full mailbox. My husband’s been using the same Yahoo account since like 1999, and so he was like, oh, I should probably go check on that. There’s probably a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff going away. But I don’t really blame them for doing it.
Eric, like, have you seen bounces for that like did they increase For your senders?
[00:17:17] Eric Trinidad: Yeah. I mean, a huge number of bounces almost like immediately, and I’m like, oh, well. Dang.
[00:17:22] Alison Gootee: That was that.
[00:17:23] Eric Trinidad: Okay. Hopefully they come back, you know, so, you know, we’ll, kind of like time will tell with that.
But yeah. Crazy move. Is your husband’s email appropriate, like all the way back from like 1999? Is that it?
[00:17:35] Alison Gootee: Yeah, it’s just his first initial and last name. He was much more boring than many of us.
[00:17:40] Jonathan Torres: I still use the same email address from way back then. That was a Yahoo email address.
And I think I had just bought myself my first Nintendo 64. So, it includes the number 64 in the email address, so I still use it till this day.
[00:17:55] Eric Trinidad: Yeah. jt64@yahoo.com. That’s a good email address.
[00:17:58] Jonathan Torres: I’m not gonna say the rest of it.
[00:18:00] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: I got locked out of my high school Yahoo account. And I’m very grateful for one of our Yahoo friends. I reached out, I was like I need this account, and can you please help me get into this account?
[00:18:13] Alison Gootee: You can do that. Oh, they’re, I’m contacting them ASAP because I have one too. They used to have that Yahoo Instant Messenger, and it’s one of my friends messaged me and was like, oh, look at this picture I took, and we would totally message people, stuff like that.
So I was like, oh yeah, I’m gonna go look. And it was like log into your account and my immature unaware of cybersecurity self did not realize it was not really my Yahoo account. I was just logging in and giving somebody my password, and so I lost my Yahoo.
[00:18:39] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: Well, yeah, my recovery email was an old email that I had
sunsetted years ago from our family had closed down that ISP, that was at our house. And I, that was like the one thing that was left that and my StarCraft account, that’s a longer story. We’ll get to that, but hey, had to, I was trying to get all the vespene gas that I could, but yeah.
[00:19:01] Jonathan Torres: You needed more of it. That’s true.
I, yeah, but I finally got back into it, so it you too. It can happen to you too. So anyway.
[00:19:10] Alison Gootee: Yeah, it happens to even the very best of us. Yeah these professionals,
[00:19:16] Jonathan Torres: “Professional professionals”, we’ll put it in quotes.
[00:19:18] Alison Gootee: Sorry. Back to Gmail. One more thing I forgot. They have just been so busy this year.
They had the sender compliance hub and so they part of their like shifting to getting rid of the v1 with the reputation scoring. Was they have given senders this like insight into seeing, like do they comply with Gmail’s rules that they have outlined and one of the biggest things I’ve seen senders have an issue with is their compliance for either one click unsubscribe or honoring unsubscribe.
And this has not been directly confirmed officially, but kind of I have gotten a nod from some of the Gmail folks that my interpretation is headed the right direction. Which is, if you are a sender seeing this, it typically means that you’re getting spam complaints. And so it’s not necessarily that your unsubscribe is broken, they’re kind of giving you the benefit of the doubt and saying you are getting spam complaints, probably something’s just not working right.
It’s not that people think you’re a spammer, right? And so I think senders need to be cautious that. Just because you classify mail as transactional, just because you’re sending from your parent domain with one-to-one messages, does not mean that people cannot report those messages as spam. And so just be really careful as you’re seeing something that says you’re noncompliant.
It could mean that people are objecting to the mail that you are sending, even if they can unsubscribe. So.
[00:20:28] Jonathan Torres: Yeah. This is a good opportunity to remind people that, you know, buying a product from you doesn’t necessarily mean they want your newsletter also. Just a, you know, a heads up.
[00:20:40] Alison Gootee: Yeah. Or if you’re sending those legitimate interest B2B type of sales outreaches that I would call spam and you would call cold. Your legitimate interest in emailing me does not also gimme that same interest. And so I definitely have reported mail like that as spam, and I think whoever’s checking their compliance dashboard would be like, this doesn’t make sense.
We don’t even send from this domain. But you do. Your sales team does and they are ruining that for everyone. So keep an eye on that. Anyway, okay, so we’ve talked about. Google, we talked about Yahoo. Microsoft is also upholding the rules of authentication, which is great. A big one that I am not as well versed in.
So I get to hand the mic over to our in-house expert here on the EAA. The European Accessibility Act is gonna be a big deal for senders. It’s not specifically a deliverability thing, but does somebody wanna fill us in on more?
[00:21:30] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: Shout out to our old homie Megan Boshuyzen, who is knowledgeable of all, everything of accessibility, but it was primarily trying to make sure that any merchant emails specifically in the European Union. Where if you, any of your emails that were being sent out, you were accessible.
So specifically speaking, like on alt text colors, stuff like that. Just making sure that your emails are being accessible to, you know, people that you know. That are blind, that have hard hearing, stuff like that. Just making sure that you know, because sometimes people have readers and stuff like that where they’re having their emails read off to them.
Sometimes all these different type of technologies that are helping other email readers. And your users access their email and that’s why it’s kind of a big thing. Even myself too, like I was working on my band emails the other day and I was like, oh man, I need to make sure I fill out these alt text sections because it’s like, I don’t know if someone else out there is trying to read this email or hear it in any other way.
And there was a massive number. Megan was talking about there was so much money being left on the table for so many different types of emails where people can’t you know, digest them. So it’s like, why don’t you just standardize that process among all emails over there.
So kind of a cool regulation that came out last year. And I bet if you are, you know, participating, which you know, if you are in the European union, you should be definitely doing this. But I can only imagine that your revenue is going to be going up higher because you are accessing and trying to cater to that money that’s left on the table.
So yeah, make sure emails are accessible for everybody. Y all means all. I love that. Yeah.
[00:23:03] Eric Trinidad: Y’all means, means all. That’s right,
[00:23:05] Alison Gootee: Yeah. And totally. I think it’s important to mention that it is the law in the EU, but it’s still a good practice. Around the globe the EU is not the only place in the world that has
users who need assistance and I think probably some senders think, oh, there’s extra cost in doing that alt text or making sure that this renders properly and that a screen reader can read it, but you gotta spend money to make money. Go make that money from the people who wanna use your stuff.
It’s not that difficult and it makes you a good person. It’s good to do the right thing. One thing that I did read while we were doing this is that violating this, even if you are based outside the EU, because you don’t necessarily know who you’re sending to. I’ve seen your lists and you don’t all know where users are.
And this can be super expensive, 250,000 euros per issue of non-compliance. And in US dollars, that is more, we didn’t do the calculations and they would be different by the time this episode airs, but it’s more money in the US so.
[00:23:55] Eric Trinidad: A lot more.
[00:23:56] Jonathan Torres: It’s pretty broad reaching and I mean, it’s the same way as like GDPR.
Like don’t test the waters like they will go after people. Like, it’s asking you to do the right thing, do the right thing and it’s gonna be to anybody, any, I think even European citizen, whether they’re living in Europe or abroad at the time like it protects everybody who is governed by them.
I just, I definitely have trouble seeing certain colors against certain backgrounds and like when people are not checking their emails and what they’re sending out I even have a hard time reading some of ’em. And if I do, I’m just gonna delete it. Like, I don’t need to bother with it. You need to take the time to format it in a way that
everybody can read. It’s gone. And I know, ’cause my wife’s next to me too and you know, she’s getting older and she’s gotta have the readers on and her eyes are going faster than mine.
She texting you clean the house and you’re like, I don’t see the colors. I dunno what it says.
[00:24:41] Eric Trinidad: I don’t even know what this means.
[00:24:44] Jonathan Torres: Yeah. No, but I mean, like, you have those emails that like, it’s tiny little text, you can’t read it. And she’s just sitting there just delete, delete, delete.
[00:24:49] Alison Gootee: But I do think that this is kind of like leading back to the core principle, which I wanna make sure I cover ’cause it’s one of my favorite things to talk about, which is everything that you do should be in service of your users. And selfishly, just because you’re a business that exists to make money, it’s good to do things for the people who wanna give you money, make it easier for them to give you that money.
But I mean, if you wanna stay in the inbox, you have to do the things that are right by the people who are getting that email. It is not just about serving your needs or blasting as many messages as you can, like not just looking out for people who have different visual or hearing abilities.
But everyone who wants to give you money, why not make it easier for them, even if you’re just like, selfish, fat cat. Like, just go get it.
Oh, speaking of Yahoo, this is yet another mailbox provider change.
Sorry. But Comcast is moving their traffic over to Yahoo, so Yahoo will have even more mailboxes to manage. I don’t necessarily think these decisions were aligned with each other, but I do wonder if Yahoo was like, yeah, lets reduce some of that storage. ’cause we’re about to have more mail over here.
We’re getting full.
[00:25:50] Jonathan Torres: And that’s kinda like one of the changes that, that’s starting now continuing into 2026. And I know that’s one of the things we’re trying to transition to, like let’s look forward a little bit and see what else is happening in the space. But like that definitely signals I think, a few different things.
I think there’s. Definitely this isn’t the first one. AOL you know, going into Yahoo a while back is one of those things. Comcast now being one of those that’s doing it. And we have like two different type of movements it feels like, is one, is that consolidation piece, you know, smaller ISPs being consumed by you know, just a larger entity that,
has the ability to, some of ’em it’s because they don’t wanna do it anymore. I know there’s always been rumors of some of the other US based ISPs that just don’t want to, they don’t care about email. Like it’s just kind of been tagged on for years and they’ve just never gotten rid of it. So what happens to them?
Are they gonna continue this move to migrate users over to a different platform that are still using it or just terminate it completely, which is, you know, some of the other rumors that we’ve heard. And then you have the other side of it, which is on the EU side. So many of those are very country specific and we don’t consider ’em very large ISPs because.
For us on the US like we don’t…
[00:26:54] Alison Gootee: Because America’s big.
[00:26:55] Jonathan Torres: Yeah. We’re and yeah and we have like, you know, what is always considered as the big three with Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo you know, kind of hosting from here or they have mailboxes that really anybody in the world can utilize.
But there is those smaller ISPs that exist in those European nations and what do they do you know, close shop? Do they grow and expand? And I think it’s nice to see that we have that contrast instead of just merging into something else. They’re growing and expanding.
You know, starting to utilize some of the tool sets and expanding those tool sets that they use for authenticating mail, for making sure that things are filtering correctly, like getting senders properly authenticated when they’re sending to the platform which I do appreciate.
It just, it really emphasizes the point that, you know, we have straggler senders who are straggling and not falling behind. I don’t wanna say falling behind, but you know, they’re slower to adopt. And now you’re gonna have to, and especially if you were, oh, i’m okay i’m only sending to Orange. Cool. Great. You know, like Orange is gonna adopt this eventually, you know, GMX is the one that we are seeing right now that’s starting to put in place, like their ability to do DMARC properly you know, giving the reports back. Starting to filter and use that as proper authentication.
So it’s a good thing to see and I appreciate that it is actually happening and we can continue moving forward with that. I think it’s just gonna be a really good thing for the industry overall.
[00:28:12] Alison Gootee: Yeah. I think you bring up kind of a, it was like a full circle moment because Thomas was referencing his, like his cable email address and back in the day when internet was new and you like chose your internet
provider, they would give you your little email address, you could have your Comcast address, you could have your MindSpring EarthLink, like all those.
[00:28:28] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: The old fart Windstream account that I just closed, like.
[00:28:32] Alison Gootee: Yeah. Every time you see a sender with a bunch of Windstream bounces, you’re like, I have bad news for you, your customers they are no more. And so I guess that’s just, we’re kind of seeing that like sunrise, sunset, you know, the rise of personal email was these kind of cable addresses ’cause that was something static that never changed. And then, you know, Yahoo was like, Hey, you can come send with us. And I was like, oh, great.
I don’t have to be, you know, well I was on my parents’ account. They weren’t gonna gimme one of their official email addresses. I had to go get one somewhere else. So I, it’s just, I mean, it’s kind of sad in a way to see like Comcast saying like, oh, this just isn’t a thing that’s super useful for us to do in house anymore.
We’re gonna offload it onto Yahoo. They’re the pros. They’ve been around so long, which good for you. I’m glad for them. I guess that’s kind of all the updates we have for 2025. Looking ahead Microsoft, SNDS, we’ve noticed some hiccups. It’s been a little bit tougher to access and people are seeing some formatting changes. Anybody hearing any buzz about maybe what’s gonna. Happen or any fantasies about what you would like SNDS to turn into?
[00:29:35] Eric Trinidad: Oh
[00:29:35] Alison Gootee: Something valuable for a change, perhaps .
[00:29:38] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: Some fan fiction.
[00:29:39] Eric Trinidad: Oh man, that’d be real, real nice. I mean, it looks more bubbly, right? Like it’s got like the new like, ios 17.
[00:29:44] Alison Gootee: They put about soft rounded corners.
[00:29:46] Jonathan Torres: Yeah, no, yeah they definitely upgraded to iOS 26, so,
[00:29:50] Eric Trinidad: Yeah. Right.
[00:29:50] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: Oh, don’t get me started on that.
[00:29:55] Eric Trinidad: But yeah, I mean, it would be nice to have some very, good like usable data, you know? I don’t know. I feel just any kind of insight would be great.
[00:30:03] Jonathan Torres: I think that’s kind of been the story with Microsoft. I think overall, like some of the data that they had is not super hot. You don’t know what it means. Like, it’s left to interpretation. You have a color. Cool. Like, what does it mean? I don’t know.
[00:30:16] Alison Gootee: Is it good?
[00:30:17] Eric Trinidad: Less than red was less than 10%, or
[00:30:21] Jonathan Torres: You don’t even know.
[00:30:22] Eric Trinidad: Yellow is 10% to 90% are going to the inbox Maybe. And then green was like, the other 10% are different. I don’t know. Who knows?
[00:30:31] Jonathan Torres: It’s something.
[00:30:32] Alison Gootee: But we got your mail after that I don’t know.
[00:30:37] Jonathan Torres: But I also appreciated that they would just report on like the spam traps, you know, like that’s coming through.
That was one of the things that I don’t think any of the other ISPs were doing in a good or significant way. And so there is this insight that you can glean from it and learn things, but. The way it was presented, the way it’s been presented in SNDS is not super great. I wish that they would improve.
So I think for me it’s more of like I’m seeing them poke at things. And I’m hoping they continue to poke at things and hopefully they feel pressure from the other ISPs that are improving their reporting and they continue to do that. I felt like the authentication piece was part of that. It’s like, oh, everybody else is doing it.
We need to do it to keep up. I really do hope that this SNDS piece goes the same way.
[00:31:17] Alison Gootee: Microsoft is validating authentication, but it seems like maybe that took some resources and updates on their end that are still being worked out. We’re seeing a little mail, just a little portion be rejected.
Even though it is fully authenticated, they are returning it as being unauthenticated some of the buzz in the industry is suspecting that perhaps doing all these lookups, you know, that’s tripling the amount of lookups they were previously doing may be causing some timeouts that are getting kind of caught as bounces, which is unfortunate.
I hope that they’re able to work out those kinks. I just feel like you never know when you have such a long running set of products like that. Like which pieces are touching each other. So maybe they went to like add the bubbles to SNDS and were like, oops. Something else, but i’m sure those things are not directly related, but I’m sure they are also dealing with like, you know, some behind the scenes struggles that we just don’t have insight into. So I am interested in seeing what they come up with. I just hope they are ready for it when it actually debuts.
[00:32:16] Eric Trinidad: I’ve been telling folks what those that are still seeing some of those issues, just retry ’em, you know, that’ll usually you know, just kick it once.
Boom, go.
[00:32:24] Jonathan Torres: Just retry.
[00:32:24] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: Just unplug it and plug it back in.
[00:32:27] Jonathan Torres: Turn the internet off and on back again, you know.
[00:32:29] Eric Trinidad: Three times.
[00:32:30] Alison Gootee: Unplug it. It’s funny too, because that’s kinda the issue, right? Like I’ve had senders definitely say before like, oh, we got a lot of bounces. What does this mean? They didn’t bounce before.
And it’s like, I mean, you can try it again. It’s not the end of the world. Even if it’s a hard bounce, a permanent failure, trying it one more time. If you suspect that it’s legit, it’s not gonna be the end of the world. Just be careful. Keep an eye on it.
[00:32:50] Jonathan Torres: I can’t pick up the phone and say like, Hey, Microsoft, this customer’s a really good customer, like, let their email through.
And I think sometimes being in this part of the industry, people expect that’s what you’re doing and that’s what’s going on. And I think it’s kind of, you know, the other way around is we want to understand, you know, what we’re doing as senders and in the part of the industry that we live.
And we wanna know what they are doing as the, you know the processors the, you know, who we’re sending to the ISPs that’s helping people get to those messages. And this is, I think a big part of that relationship is that, Hey, Microsoft, something’s broken. You know, and for them to have the confidence that we’re not just gonna say like, oh, they’re just trying to get more mail through it.
We have to make sure that we’re doing the right thing, that we’re, you know, communicating things with our customers to let them know, hey. We see something that’s an anomaly, we see something that doesn’t look exactly right and then have the trust in us to say, you know, and provide the right information and doing that.
And I think that’s a really good thing about the industry. So I just wanted to call that out as like a thing that still continues through this year and hopefully continues for forever. And that’s one of the nice things about it and the nice things about being in this part of it.
[00:33:51] Alison Gootee: Yeah, I agree. It’s nice to have that kind of exchange of information. I mean I get why it happens. It’s just the constraints of reality. No one wants to give away all their secrets because you know, then that will reveal too much and those things will become vulnerabilities. But I’m always curious when we do get into these industry wide conversations, like for a minute when this was happening, we had somebody at Microsoft saying, oh, just send us the failures.
And it’s like, what do you mean send you the fail? Like everyone has their own way of talking about things, and it was almost like. They didn’t understand that. We just had like some copy of the message that we could be like, here it is. But that’s not the way we send it and the way they receive it maybe isn’t the way that we would assume.
And so it is very nice that we have these channels where we can kind of exchange this information. However, I get that again, they’re working at such big organization that is, has such longevity. They may not always be able to give us. The level of transparency that we desire, which I get it, and also hate it at the same time.
[00:34:51] Jonathan Torres: Yeah, it is a fun challenge, I think, you know, in the space that we live in. But it is what it is. Again, the communication piece and the openness for the most part of the industry is also a really good thing.
[00:35:02] Alison Gootee: I mean every time Gmail or Microsoft or Yahoo or even GMX as we referenced earlier, every time they change something it’s like, Ooh, my job just got harder.
But also job security because I am struggling to understand all the ins and outs of this. I bet my brand marketers or, even transactional senders via API are also struggling to understand exactly, you know, how this relates to their life. One thing that doesn’t seem to be slowing down adoption wise is BIMI.
Are your customers like going for the BIMI? Are they still waiting that one out? Eric?
[00:35:31] Eric Trinidad: Yeah. Actually several of my customers have, you know, since go and they’ve been, you know, really into it. You know, I think some of the changes that we’ve seen recently has kind of made it, show up in some instances and like not show up in others for specific providers. So we’ve had a couple like issues that we’ve had to work through with that. But like working with our teams internally and talking with you know, our friends over at Red Sift as well, you know, working stuff out with them we’re able to get it going so, or at least understand what the issue is and how we can reach out to other folks like at Apple and understand like, Hey, what is it, what are y’all doing? Something’s not working right. You know?
[00:36:08] Alison Gootee: I am curious. I mean, I think it is a cool feature for those not in the know BIMI, allows you to have an image that shows in the mailbox to let people know that you are your brand.
Obviously spammers can also have a brand, so it doesn’t necessarily mean that if you use BIMI you are legit, but it does kind of bolster some of that confidence. I do sometimes wonder if it’s one of those things that senders are like very excited about ’cause it’s new and shiny and something that has a visible impact.
But I wonder, is there a lift? Like are they seeing an increase in actual engagement or conversions, or is it just one of those things that’s like, oh, I’ve heard this was the new hotness. I’m supposed to do it. Just like looking at their reputation or their inbox placement or whatever information they have.
I am wondering how it aligns with their overall goals, because if it’s a huge uplift, maybe that would be better spent, making your emails accessible or something. Yeah, something else that is optional in some parts of the world. But overall, a good move for your brand.
[00:37:00] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: Yeah, it’s like a, what Matt Vernhout was saying, ” why would you not want to use that?
You wanna make sure your recipients, like actually know that, hey, this is coming from said big name brand, when people are using AI now to pose as banks or you know, other big brands . Cyber criminals are getting smarter, so we’re having to get smarter with our authentication.
So it’s like, yeah. Push comes to shove.
[00:37:21] Eric Trinidad: I think that’d be really dope to see like, a customer coming up and start implementing that. The customers that I’ve worked with have already been established for some time, so they already had that process in place. So having that measure is not something that we have readily access to.
But yeah, we should reach out to some of our TAMs and see if that’s something that they can help with.
[00:37:39] Jonathan Torres: Definitely something to take a look at because the way that I view a lot of those emails coming through
like it’s the visibility, you know? Seeing no logo or just like, you know, colored initials like, doesn’t really mean a whole lot anymore. And I think that’s where it’s really changing, is that now I can see the customer logo, whoever’s sending the email to me, I can see their logo. And if it’s a brand that I like or something that I know I want immediately because I am gonna need that t-shirt real soon you know, I’ll go and click on it.
So, it just really provides that, and that’s nice to see. For me, and I’m hoping that they see that benefit too. And yeah, I think that’s a really good point that we do need to track that.
[00:38:15] Alison Gootee: I wonder, I mean, I don’t know how we would test this. I guess you could, but I am curious if you are somebody using a screen reader or some other kind of like adaptive technology will, you know, if your email has BIMI, will it be like, this is a certified BIM sender?
I can see their logo right now.
[00:38:32] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: That’d be good.
[00:38:33] Alison Gootee: Yeah, I’m just curious how all these things kind of roll together. I obviously, like AI has been big on everyone’s lips. I think that’s gonna continue to be something big in the industry. Sneak peek. I have a blog post coming up in December. Yeah, watch out bookmark your calendars.
[00:38:50] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: Whoa.
[00:38:52] Alison Gootee: About kind of a concept that I’m like batting around, which is like inbox optimization and like user optimization. ’cause everyone was all about like SEO search engine optimization. Now they’re talking about like AI optimization. They want their name to come up when someone is talking to chat GPT or to whoever.
Whatever about their product or technology. And so I think the advice to me as a consumer and from an email perspective is like, just keep your user in mind. Your goal is not necessarily to like blast your name as far and wide as it goes. You’re not gonna always like casting the biggest net doesn’t always get you the best fish.
It just gets you like a lot of garbage in the net with all that other stuff. And so you have to be really careful with what you’re putting out there. And so I am pretty excited to see kind of the rise of maybe finally senders will be thinking about like, oh my God, what do my customers actually want?
Not like, what is the board telling me? Or What does everyone else doing? Or this and that. You know your customers best. You have so much information about them at your disposal. Like use that to give them more of what they want.
[00:39:49] Jonathan Torres: Yeah. Build that brand.
[00:39:51] Alison Gootee: Yeah. Keep going. When they see that little BIMI logo, make ’em be like, Ooh, can’t wait to click.
Any trends? Yeah. Specifically you guys are looking forward to in 2026 or we’re just like gonna see what shakes out.
[00:40:08] Jonathan Torres: I feel like 2026 is a reactionary year. Like it’s, everything is up in the air. There’s so many changes. It’s like, okay, like where do we go? Like what do we do? What do we adapt to?
[00:40:16] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: What authentication will be popular by the end of the year of next year?
That’s what I’m curious about.
[00:40:21] Alison Gootee: What new acronym will we be talking about at
this time next year that we’ve never heard of yet?
[00:40:25] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: But it’s like you had Yahoo and Google happen about a year and a half ago. Microsoft hopped on this year. It’s like, okay, like what authentication trend is gonna, not trend, but like just course of action is going to continue for everybody.
[00:40:37] Jonathan Torres: Yeah. When we moved to that p=quarantine requirement.
[00:40:40] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: Yeah, exactly.
[00:40:41] Eric Trinidad: Yeah. Oh yeah.
[00:40:42] Alison Gootee: Watch out. Oof.
[00:40:43] Eric Trinidad: I know p=reject. I know. Marcel man, he’s pushing for that super hard, so.
[00:40:48] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: Oh yeah.
[00:40:49] Alison Gootee: I’m gonna start using that when people send me like cold email.
I don’t want like p=reject. Get outta here.
[00:40:55] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: You’re rejected.
[00:40:58] Jonathan Torres: Your p=rejected.
[00:41:02] Alison Gootee: I got my own policy.
[00:41:04] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: There you go.
[00:41:05] Alison Gootee: Outta here.
[00:41:06] Jonathan Torres: Love it.
[00:41:09] Eric Trinidad: Oh man. Well, Allison, well really appreciate you coming out with us and you know, looking back on some of the things that we saw this year and talk about a little bit, what we’re looking forward to.
Just a little bit though, because who knows what the future hold for any of us.
[00:41:21] Alison Gootee: A lot could change.
[00:41:22] Eric Trinidad: Yeah, for sure. But you know, thank you and thanks to all of our listeners out there. Like, thanks for hanging out with us this year. You know, we got some cool stuff that we’re looking forward to doing next year.
Hopefully doing some more meet and greets. Come on out, say hi. Come out to the conventions and hopefully we’ll see y all out there. You know, I guess, what else do we got, Thomas?
[00:41:40] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: All right, ladies and gentlemen, yeah. Just big thank you for listening to us and we know you can listen to other podcasts out there, but thank you for choosing us as your email podcast. But you can also listen to us at all of your streaming podcast providers, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, all those fun things, Google as well.
But you can find us mailgun.com/resources/ podcast. Also, these episodes are available on our youtube. www.youtube.com/mailgun Yeah, just thank you to everyone listening. We have a full schedule already lined up for next year’s season. It’s gonna be season seven with this gang.
So super excited about this. We’ve been doing this since 2019, so it’s pretty wild that we’re still doing this.
[00:42:20] Alison Gootee: The longest one year period ever.
[00:42:22] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: Yeah. We slowly but yeah.
[00:42:27] Eric Trinidad: Allison what do you got going on? Bounce house. You wanna throw that out there?
[00:42:30] Alison Gootee: Yep. I do have a blog series on the Mailgun blog called Bounce House with Allison Gootee, and so I post those monthly in addition to some of the other updates that we come out with from time to time.
The Bounce House, it’s my favorite because it’s where I get to be a little bit more myself, not just the Mailgun voice, but give some of my own thoughts and opinions. So I definitely think you should check it. Out that December issue is going to definitely be about the future of inbox optimization, user optimization, and kind of what I think about the AI trend and email.
So yeah, again, bookmark that, follow the blog. I definitely post about it on LinkedIn, so you can just follow me there if you wanna read more.
[00:43:08] Thomas “T-Bird” Knierien: And also December 3rd if you want to not work during your work time. Alison and I are doing Deliverability Academy again, December 3rd, 10:00 AM. We’re talking about all the same stuff actually today.
Everything that happened in 2025 and more. So if you want to just throw us on in the background while you’re working or eat lunch or just living life, hey, we’ll be right there.
[00:43:29] Alison Gootee: If you just like this so much, go and check that out too.
[00:43:32] Jonathan Torres: Look, if you’re work in the email space, that is work.
It’s just the fun part of work. So yeah, don’t sell yourself short on it. Come on.
[00:43:38] Eric Trinidad: Yeah. You’re better. You’re good. You’re real good. Well, everybody, thanks again. Appreciate y’all and yeah, until next year, take care y’all.
