ANyone else seeing a drop in Rev from AOL? We are seeing an across the board drop in Open/Clicks over the last few weeks.
huge - glad to know it's not just me - but only in the last few days TBH, up until then it had been very steady
I had posted in another thread earlier in the week about a jump in inbox - must have been just before they flipped the switch. I hope it's temporary.
I have noticed a huge drop in AOL rev as well that started last Thurs, haven't noticed a huge decrease in delivery though, just don't seem to be inboxing. I hope it's temporary too, also saw this on their postmaster blog but don't know if there's any relation: http://postmaster-blog.aol.com/2013/08/26/delays-sending-to-aol/
Same here. IPs that were inboxing are all now junking, starting Sunday for me. Delivery rates are actually up - fewer blocks. But I'd rather be fighting blocks and getting into the inbox. Hopefully this is temporary, but I'm not so sure.
Out of curiosity, were you guys respecting the 421/Service Unavailable (if any) and pausing or retrying continually non-stop through them?
I have an excellent backoff feature (Robo) & instantly shut down (pause) all 421's for 24hrs along with all of the other bs that they constantly throw at us. So yes I have been respecting that all along. I don't know if they know what they are doing or not and not sure which I would want it to be. Either way I am much more concerned about the inbox than these temps that come and go daily.
Your last post mentioned you were inboxing still, so all is good? Or are you saying even with the above you're junking now?
I posted the below meaning inboxing was vg good and now all junk as most everyone else seems to be. "I had posted in another thread earlier in the week about a jump in inbox - must have been just before they flipped the switch. I hope it's temporary."
Same here in regards to ROBO and smtp back off. This definitely increases the life of your ranges. I am still able to inbox as well. The biggest changes I am seeing is in how much volume AOL will allow through on particular ranges. It seems there is something at work here, which I am guessing must be ip reputation and a hard block. You can rehab a range, and get around this. But it's something new I have only seen in the past couple of weeks where beat up ip's are capped at something like 15k or there about.
Are 421s the only thing you use the smtp backoff for or do you use it for all bounces/ blocks? I see random spikes of CON:B1 blocks that I don't do much about because they're sporadic and seem to be content related a lot of times. As for 421s I have a maximum retry set but should I scale that down since I don't have a backoff feature in the ESP I'm using (I may be able to get them build one for me).
A lot of this comes down to how you manage your ip's. For myself, I tend to be very conservative and moreso manage the reputation and look for longevity. The trade off is, you're not pushing the ranges as hard and revenue will reflect that. However, I do appreciate having ranges that will last for months by comparison. I am not sure what all ROBO has in there by default, and I have added some over time, but even their default were fairly good as a starting point. It's some level of frustrating at first if you're not used to the back offs and autoblock as it will sometimes kill your devliver-ability for a period of time while forcing you to cool off ranges. The bright side is, you're ranges can bounce back in a few days and be back to the 90-99% and you keep the ranges much longer. Which is always good if you're doing term commitments or just do not want the grief of losing ranges, warm up, and so on.
I'm typically conservative as well, I'm usually able to keep my ranges for long periods of times (at least 6 months, some I've had for years) and I don't typically churn and burn a range unless I get a poor one to begin with. I've had success with AOL until only recently and this is why I'm inquiring about the back off strategy. Another option I'm considering is a resting strategy where I'm not mailing the range daily, I've see a little success so far testing this. Is this what you were referring to when you talked about rehabing a range?
First the smtp backoff has unlimited custom settings, (DMH) I only use a handful of their default settings and have about 35 of my own custom settings for all /deferrals/bounces/blocks for all domains with various restart times ranging from 5-1800 minutes. It took months to perfect. Secondly, it backs off ip pairs. In other words your ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xx is blocked/deferred to aol receiving ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xx and is taken out until your specified times, but your ip is OK to other aol,yahoo ips and keeps sending. So if you don't have a backoff I would suggest pausing at least an hour for 421's as it would be very difficult to replicate. Con:B1's are a different story as they sometimes dissapear for days with the same mailing. I agree with DMH that this latest inbox blocking is reputation related. After testing my good reputation ips are landing inbox with links enabled and not so good reps are junking. My guess is that they are continually testing trying to determine the next evil thing to inflict on us very hard working people. To some of those that have pmed me robo stands for Robomail and to some others yes I have available
Indeed. I noticed this a few weeks back after their latest changes and have done plenty of testing on this since. As long as you know how to effectively manage your ip space + smtp back offs, you should be good and keep your AOL ranges from burning out as well as get them back to inboxing or improved deliver-ability. It's a level of frustration at times as you have to rehab a range and it can take 24-48 hours for the cycle to run. But if longevity is the goal, it's worth learning if you do not know.
I am not going to detail it all out on a public forum, but I'll throw you a few bones. You should use some level of common sense when you think of "backing off" and should not try and 'power through it' if your goal is to rehab the ranges and not lose them. With that said, here are a few things for you to consider. 1. Thread Count per Drop. 2. Drop Volume Sent. Volume Sent per Day per Range. 3. Number of Retries per Drop. 4. Type of Offers Being Ran 5. Scomps Over 24 Hour Period. 6. Proper MTA Configuration for Automation SMTP Back Off Strings 7. Number of Hours in between Drops. Once you have rehabbed the range, you can start scaling back up to normal again. I would give it a day or so otherwise it WILL drop back off again. The goal should be to keep a range both inboxing, and/or delivering in the 90-99% when possible. One good drop is worth more than 3 shitty 25% one's. Good luck! Agreed. ConB are content related. As for AOL, I find they are fairly forgiving as ISP's go, however, you have to learn to play within the every changing rules and you should be alright. I have not found it all that hard to keep mailing to AOL despite all of the grief of the past 3-4 months. The goal line just keeps being moved around a little here and a little there. At no point has it stopped me from mailing on a daily basis.
Thanks DMH for clarifying. I've been focusing too much on volume per ip/ drop and have been neglecting some of the other points you listed since (until recently) that was enough to keep my delivery up.
Happy to help. With AOL, it takes a bit more management now. It's not all that difficult I do not think. But it is an annoyance as you have to be a bit more calculating on which offers you run when and why. As I see it, you really need to make sure you have the right offers in rotation (conversions/scomps) and focus on managing your ip space effectively with the latter being key.
