The Future of Email Looks Bright

CEO of SocketLabs, Keith Hontz, was recently featured in the Email Marketing 2019 Report, released by eMarketer, accompanied by 13 other email-industry leaders.  This report comes at a pivotal time, as growth in modern forms of communication and marketing leaves businesses questioning the current and continued relevance of email in the digital economy. The results are in, and the numbers tell a promising story about the future of email.  It turns out email isn’t slowing down at all – quite the opposite. 

Email Marketing 2019 Report Takeaways 

In a report centered around the future of email, SocketLabs was happy to join the conversation. The eMarketer report points to persistent email popularity and positive trends in the overall usage of email. As a matter of fact, “According to polling conducted by the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), checking email was the most cited activity among US internet users in both 2018 and 2019, on desktop and laptop PCs, as well as via mobile apps.”  And while the current numbers look good, you might be questioning how these numbers will change in the future as new, more advanced forms of communication come to surface. The chart below not only highlights the modest growth of email users from previous to current day, it also shows projections up to 2022.  

Yet despite positive trends in all the right places, the email industry still has its challenges. And with over 400 million business emails sent through our infrastructure every month, we have a pretty good idea of what the industry looks like and a lot of the challenges companies are looking to overcome.  Hontz offered invaluable insight into some of the realities that companies are facing with their email communication, “We see about 20% of legitimate, business-relevant emails just not getting to the inbox of the intended recipient,” he said. “It depends on the industry, and the use case, and type of email, and the data quality. It certainly has become more of an issue, more of a business-critical item for the whole customer experience.” 

But if email is so popular and shows such promising signs of growth, shouldn’t it be easier for these companies to hit the inbox? Let’s dive into some of the current challenges we are helping thousands of businesses solve every day. 

Challenges in the Email Industry and How to Overcome Them

With over 90% of people on the internet using email, and around 124 billion emails sent every day, there are inherently limitations and challenges that exist.  Even businesses sending good quality, high-volume email know how hard it can be to actually land in the inbox.  

Even if you are sending the safest type of transactional mail that should have the best chances of landing in the inbox, there are still many hurdles and barriers that must be overcome to successfully get there.  That’s where an email service provider like SocketLabs comes in. SocketLabs helps customers fix email problems in these three common areas:

Infrastructure

Often times businesses big and small don’t have the expertise, funding or want the hassle of running and managing their own email infrastructure.  The server maintenance, lack of support, and overall technical complexity involved in running an email infrastructure in-house will lead to more overhead costs and headaches than expected.  When your business depends on email, the last thing you want to worry about is infrastructure reliability, that’s why many companies will partner with an email service. 

Support and Consulting 

Sending email is even more of a science than just making sure your infrastructure is running full speed ahead.  There are tons of unspoken rules and regulations set by mailbox providers, like Gmail, that impact a business’s ability to successfully get their mail to the inbox.  SocketLabs has been in the email business for over 10 years and we know this space quite well.  The SocketLabs support and consulting team is always there to answer all of your deliverability and technical email questions.  Beyond having  someone to answer questions, our email experts can help guide you down the path of good deliverability with things like IP warming, suppression list management, white-labeling, and much more. 

*To learn more about why your emails might not be getting to the inbox, read my email deliverability best practices blog here*

Reporting

Email analytics are everything, businesses want to see how their email is performing.  Sending email through your own infrastructure can result in minimal or unreliable reporting. The SocketLabs email infrastructure provides detailed reporting that can be broken down by mail stream, by category (i.e. sent, opened, failed, delivered, etc.) and provides both high level performance overviews and very granular performance metrics that are completely customizable based on what you want to observe. 

What the Future of Email Means for Your Business 

Whether it is transactional or marketing email, your business depends on email as a major medium of communication between you and your stakeholders.  It should be reassuring to know that email is still, and will continue to be an effective way for big and small businesses to reach their customers. But as the scale of email expands, so do the complexities involved with hitting the inbox.  SocketLabs is here to help your business navigate the increasingly complex email landscape.

With growth comes new complexities, and SocketLabs is here to help you achieve your business goals.  To learn more about SocketLabs and sign up for a completely free plan,  view our plans and pricing page.

The post The Future of Email: Is Email Still Relevant? appeared first on SocketLabs.

Why Look For a Mailjet Alternative?

Acquisitions can be tough, not just for the company being acquired, but for the customers of that company too.  Employees can leave, contacts are lost, features and prices can change – there are a lot of moving parts.  If you are a current Mailjet customer looking for a Mailjet alternative after their acquisition by Mailgun, a migration to SocketLabs is quick, easy, and very beneficial to the success of your email.  No matter if you are a developer, IT admin, enterprise, or small business, SocketLabs is an easy Mailjet alternative.

Particularly with an email service like Mailjet, customers who are choosing to migrate to SocketLabs are often looking for access to:

• Our reliable APIs and SMTP service 
• Industry leading support/deliverability consulting
• Advanced reporting and analytics dashboard
• Quick and easy setup 

Luckily, migrating from your Mailjet account to SocketLabs has never been easier. 

About SocketLabs 

SocketLabs is built on the robust foundation of our fast, flexible, and reliable email infrastructure.  Whether you are sending with our APIs or our SMTP relay service, we provide all of the resources you need to maximize your deliverability, reporting insight, and most importantly your return on investment. 

If you are new to SocketLabs and would like to learn more before reading further, check out the email solutions we offer, and have a look through our developer hub to explore our APIs and more.  

In this guide we are going to show you how easy it is to get started with SocketLabs and take you through some of  our platform features that make us an obvious Mailjet alternative.

SMTP

How to get your SMTP Credentials

Sending with SMTP is easy.  Log into the Control Panel at https://cp.socketlabs.com. Once in the Control Panel, click the “View” button next to your Server to go to the Server Dashboard. From the Server Dashboard click the “Configuration” option, then select SMTP Credentials in the drop-down menu. Please keep your SMTP Credentials secure. While you are in the Control Panel, it might be a good time to look around and see all the reports, settings, features and functionality available to you.

If you’re sending via SMTP, there are a few things you should know. All SMTP connections should use the hostname smtp.socketlabs.com.

SocketLabs accepts SMTP connections on ports 25, 2525, 587, and 465. Please note that connections to port 465 require the use of implicit SSL.

SocketLabs supports up to 20 simultaneous SMTP connections with 500 recipients per connection.  

More information on connecting to SocketLabs over SMTP can be found in our Help Center.

APIs

Injection API (sending email)

First you’ll need to set up a SocketLabs account which you can do for free. Next, you should create an API key that you’ll use for sending. Once logged in, navigate to the Injection API key page to generate your API key. Further instructions to get started with the Injection API in your language of choice are available on this page.

API Libraries

We have six officially supported API Libraries to make integration easier for our customers. If you’re rewriting any code, or refactoring how you communicate with your ESP as part of your migration, now is a good time to evaluate these libraries:

• socketlabs-csharp – Official C# library
• socketlabs-go – Official Go library
• socketlabs-java – Official Java library
• socketlabs-nodejs – Official NodeJS library
• socketlabs-php – Official PHP library
• socketlabs-python – Official Python library

Injection API Features

The Injection API supports plain text and HTML messages, or you can create your own templates using the drag and drop editor in our Email Marketing Center. The API supports everything from a basic message to a single recipient all the way to a complex bulk message with unique merge data to many different recipients. 

We also make it easy to add attachments to your API request. Just encode your file as a Base64 string and embed it directly in the JSON payload alongside MIME content information. If you are using one of our official libraries, the library will even handle this part for you.

For more information about the Injection API, please see our full API documentation.

Webhooks

SocketLabs provides two webhooks: the Notification API for receiving real-time POST notifications about email related events such as delivered, failed, opened messages, and even unsubscribes. We also provide the Inbound Parse API for receiving emails, parsing the email into JSON and programmatically reacting to them.

If you are migrating from MailJet and use webhooks for event tracking or inbound email parsing, please review the documentation linked above for information on how to validate your endpoint with SocketLabs and the format of HTTP POSTs that we will send to your endpoint.

Other SocketLabs APIs

In addition to the Injection API and the webhooks described above, SocketLabs also offers additional API:

• SocketLabs Marketing API which allows you to programmatically manage contacts within your recipient lists for use with SocketLabs Marketing tools.
• SocketLabs Reporting API which allows you to query and access statistics about a mail stream in scenarios where webhooks are not appropriate.
• SocketLabs Suppression API which allows you to programmatically query your Suppression List to search for, add, or remove addresses. Available on Enterprise plans.

Marketing Campaigns

Another great benefit to using the SocketLabs platform is our Marketing Center.  This platform comes with all of the tools and technology you will need to maximize the success of your email.  With easy-to-use templates, drag and drop design, list segmentation and targeting, drip campaigns, and tons more, our email marketing center has everything you will need to manage, create, and send your email marketing campaign. 

Support

When you call SocketLabs customer service and support, something crazy happens – a real person will answer the phone.  We pride ourselves on our commitment to exceptional customer service and support that is unmatched by our competition. And as a commitment to our customers, no matter the size, all plan levels include access to our support staff of email experts.  These team members provide helpful tips, share email best practices, and work to maximize your experience with SocketLabs.

SocketLabs 

If you want to learn more about SocketLabs and the email solutions we offer, visit us on our website or you can call, chat or visit our help center.  If you are ready to choose SocketLabs as your Mailjet alternative, you can get a custom quote here.

SocketLabs FAQ

Q: Can I integrate SocketLabs email reporting into my application or website?

A: Yes, SocketLabs offers advanced statistical reporting which provides 24/7 real-time reporting into how your emails are performing.  You can integrate this reporting easily using our powerful reporting API. 

Q: Can I migrate my IP address and sender reputation from my existing email platform to SocketLabs?

A: We cannot migrate your existing IP address to our email platform however we always take the necessary steps to warm-up all new IP addresses and apply sending best practices so all senders using SocketLabs will be set up for success. 

Q: Will SocketLabs improve my email success rates?

A: SocketLabs offers real-time email analytics so senders can track every aspect of their email performance, automatic bounce processing and suppression list placement to help maintain a good IP reputation, and all of the latest authentication technologies that will help secure your email and improve your deliverability.

The post Easy Mailjet Alternative: SocketLabs Getting Started Guide appeared first on SocketLabs.

On June 28, 2018, Governor Jerry Brown put into motion the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), also known as Assembly Bill No. 375 (AB-375).  With all the talk of GDPR that was happening at the time, the CCPA was a topic of little discussion.  But with the CCPA going into effect on January 1, 2020, there has been an increase in chatter amongst businesses and consumers around the country.  

With January 1, 2020 approaching quickly, we are going to give you a rundown of what CCPA is, what it requires, and what it means for high-volume transactional or marketing email senders. 

What is the CCPA?

The CCPA or AB-375 is a comprehensive privacy law that grants specific rights to California residents in regard to the data that is collected on them.  This legislation comes at an important time in consumer rights as innovation in technology has allowed companies to collect and sell more unregulated personal data on users than ever before.  The CCPA is an attempt to give Californians more control over their data in three ways:

1. The right to access information collected on them.  This includes knowing what type of information is collected/sold, who it is being collected and sold by, and why it was collected.
2. The right to delete information collected on them.  California consumers will be able to request for the deletion of the personal data that has been collected on them.
3. The right to opt out of personal data collection.  California consumers will now have the right to tell a company that they cannot sell their information to any other third party organizations. 

Does The CCPA Apply to You?

According to the official CCPA bill, applicable California companies will fit the following criteria:

1. Has annual gross revenues in excess of twenty-five million dollars ($25,000,000).
2. Alone or in combination, annually buys, receives for the business’ commercial purposes, sells, or shares for commercial purposes, alone or in combination, the personal information of 50,000 or more consumers, households, or devices.
3. Derives 50 percent or more of its annual revenues from selling consumers’ personal information.

Aside from the three points above, the CCPA protects California residents across state lines as well. This means the companies working with California residents’ information will need to undergo the necessary policy adaptations to be CCPA compliant. 

What Does The CCPA Mean For SocketLabs Customers 

At SocketLabs, security and compliance have always been a top priority.  Because of this, we have always put the necessary rules, regulations, and policies into place to help customers around the world send email in a way that complies with major global government legislation. 

As with GDPR, we have worked to ensure that the most critical privacy controls are available as a standard part of our Email Service Privacy Policy, not just with the European Union. And with the upcoming enactment of the CCPA, we are once again working to re-emphasize our commitment to privacy by adopting all regulations set forth by the CCPA into our own policies.  

While other technology-based companies are quickly seeking ways to deal with the CCPA, SocketLabs has always had the necessary data and privacy regulations in place to give our customers the safest and most open platform to communicate important information with their stakeholders (See more information on this in the section below titled ‘The SocketLabs Security Promise’).  This means that SocketLabs customers concerned with CCPA will NOT have to worry about the policies and regulations set forth by SocketLabs as a third party organization complying with CCPA due to our extensive preparation and implementation of the policy. It’s important to note that while SocketLabs is CCPA compliant, the requirements and policies that CCPA demand of your business specifically may differ. 

What Does The CCPA Mean for High-Volume Email Senders?

When it comes to sending high-volume email, marketers are among the most well-known group to use personal consumer data to target their messages, maximize their efficiency, and increase their return.  The CCPA is all about corporations being completely transparent with the personal data they are collecting, buying, or selling from their stakeholders. At a high level, this means that if you fall into this category, you need to make the necessary changes to your policies to be able to be as well-equipped as possible to disclose this data to the consumer.  

With CCPA going into effect, we cannot emphasize enough how important it is to know what information you are collecting, where it is coming from, where it is going, and how it is being used.  It is now important to always have the consumer privacy in mind – asking to collect data or giving stakeholders the ability to opt-out of data collection or delete existing data is a huge part of the CCPA and will carry a lot of weight moving forward. 

Considering these points ahead of time for your organization will help you save tons of time and money in the long run.  

The Socketlabs Security and Compliance Promise

SocketLabs has always implemented the necessary controls and regulations to keep our senders secure.  As an email service provider we have always worked to help our customers simplify and improve the way they send emails.  We believe that time our customers spend worrying about security is time they lose building their businesses and accomplishing their goals. As described in more detail on our security and compliance page, SocketLabs has taken the time and made the necessary policy adaptations with our customers’ best interests kept top of mind by becoming:

 Privacy Shield Certified

The EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks were designed by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the European Commission and Swiss Administration to provide companies on both sides of the Atlantic with a mechanism to comply with data protection requirements when transferring personal data from the European Union and Switzerland to the United States in support of transatlantic commerce.

VeraSafe Certified

The VeraSafe Website Security Program is comprised of services that help participants ensure their compliance with these Program Criteria. The Program Criteria are based on industry best practices and consumer protection legislation such as the California Senate Bill 1386. The Criteria also go much deeper into topics like:

• Neutrality
• Contact information Security
• Data Security Controls
• Vulnerability Mitigation
• Data breach disclosure policies, and much more

  A M3AAWG Member

The Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG) is where the email industry comes together to work against botnets, malware, spam, viruses, DoS attacks and other online exploitation. M3AAWG is the largest global industry association, with more than 200 members worldwide, bringing together all the stakeholders in the online community in a confidential, open forum.

GDPR Compliant 

The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is a regulation designed to strengthen data protection for residents of the EEA (European Economic Area) which includes the EU, Iceland, Lichtenstein, and Norway. SocketLabs is dedicated to data protection and GDPR compliance. We offer a GDPR compliant Data Processing Addendum to customers (see below). If you would like to read more about the GDPR, please see our blog article or click here for a detailed guide.

The post What is CCPA: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on SocketLabs.

We spent some time with the Chief Technology Officer of SignUp.com, Patrick Dyson, to understand a little bit more about his company’s experience transitioning to SocketLabs.  You can watch the full conversation in, “The Science of Successful Email Migrations,” a webinar where Dyson explains his successful experience migrating to SocketLabs as his email delivery partner.

What can you tell us about SignUp.com and your process of transitioning your email delivery to SocketLabs?

SignUp.com is an online volunteer management platform. We send a high volume of transactional emails both to our event organizers and to their participants – about 4 million emails a month. A lot of that volume is to new participants that we’ve never sent to before, which typically makes it a challenge to hit inbox. Email is absolutely central and key to our business. Organizers depend on us to make the connection to the participants, tell them when their commitments are, and remind them to attend.

We had been using Dyn as an email service provider for about 10 years. In the middle of 2019 we decided to search for a new email partner after Dyn went through an acquisition and we lost confidence in their service.  We spent a couple of months picking a new provider. The search criteria was the quality of service, the knowledge level and availability of support, the feature set, and reputation. SocketLabs really stood head and shoulders above the other providers. In the pre-sales process I was really surprised. It’s kind of hard to ask deep technical questions when you’re not a customer, but that’s what you really need to do to understand how the migration is going to go. I was surprised because SocketLabs reached out to us very early on with strong support and they anticipated our needs going through the process. They shared their migration documents, which really helped us.

Why did you choose SocketLabs after your technical evaluation?

We tried SocketLabs and a couple other vendors, hitting their support and working with their API’s. Really there wasn’t much comparison because SocketLabs really stood out during that process, offering quick answers to our deep questions and giving us confidence. Also, something we didn’t really see at other places was a checklist. The checklist is a fairly dense technical document, but it was our guide through the whole process. We’d had trouble switching providers in the past. In particular, the first month of trying to send new emails at volume is really hard. But with SocketLabs, from day one, our deliveries were actually improved over the existing Dyn deliveries.

What about SocketLabs’ Simple Managed Migration (SMM) process impressed you?

When I did a lot of searching to learn about email migrations and potential partners, the overwhelming theme out there is to have very low expectations. Specifically, that you’ll need to be managing the process, controlling your volumes. In our case, from the pre-sales engagement to the implementation, the real surprise for us was that most of that burden was carried by SocketLabs. They handled the ramp up, they handle the IP sharing, and they handle all the things that are so important in moving things over.

The other thing that was really nice was the recording and tracking of email volume, which is a pretty difficult task. But we were able to use the existing SocketLabs set up without any customization to map to our tracking needs to see how our email is working. All of that worked right out of the box. I thought there would be a lot more customization and back-and-forth.

How would you summarize your experience working with SocketLabs?

Socketlabs, from the very first interaction all the way through, reached out to us and really asked us what they could do to make us successful. That’s so rare. I was expecting to bear most of the burden, but they really did. At the end of the day, I feel like we ended up with a partner.  Going forward there will be hiccups that can happen…mistakes can be made on our side…we can end up in in a honeypot somewhere and get blocked…or something like that. But I know that that SocketLabs will be there to help us out just like they have through the migration process.

The post Why We Partnered with SocketLabs appeared first on SocketLabs.

The unprecedented worldwide COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic crisis has introduced countless changes and new complexities into our daily lives, but also driven the use of new technologies and demand for increased digital communication. That said, SocketLabs encourages our customers to follow some simple advice to “remain calm and keep communicating effectively” during an ongoing crisis. This means treating your coronavirus outreach efforts with the same guiding principles and diligence you would typically leverage. SocketLabs offers 7 basic principles you can refer to as your guide for doing this. Companies following these principles are the ones creating the most positive outcomes for their audiences, their email sending reputation, and their business.    

What we’ve learned from countless customer situations over the last 12 years is the path to communications success is being proactive, while taking a steady, logical and measured approach. This combination consistently allows businesses to create a positive, engaging experience with their audience to form long-lasting relationships. While these 7 principles are time-tested, they are also supported by the ongoing observations of our in-depth analysis of the millions of messages we monitor and successfully delivery via our high-volume platform every day. 

Principle #1:  Make Your Content Relevant  

Think about your own experience and your own inbox. What are the messages you really appreciate seeing? If you’re like most people, it’s the messages with the most relevance and acknowledge the current situation we’re experiencing globally. But this is nothing new. Delivering a message with meaning will always be valuable. The key difference today versus a few months ago is the tone, urgency and empathy of the communication. We see two general categories of highly engaging content emerging during this time of crisis: 

• Alert Business Communications: there are a wide variety of alert communications for traditional business cases. These cover everything from public health announcements, offers of extended payment terms, and notices concerning service changes, to event cancellations and postponements. 

• New Products, Services & Relevant Offers: we see transactional and marketing traffic from emerging, event-driven use cases. These range from new online learning messages for our university clients, and expanded promotional outreach from online retailers, to new service offerings such as curbside pickup or delivery for restaurants. 

For the immediate future, it’s a great idea to model your message content to follow one of these two themes to maximize engagement with your audience. The content examples below are of an event rescheduling announcement and a business closure notice.  

If you are unfamiliar with crisis communications best practices, SocketLabs can help with guidance on the proper design, formatting, and authentication. We have assisted many organizations with alert communication throughout the years, including with templates to get you started. You can access these design templates or build your own from the ground up using our Marketing Center. 

Principle #2: “Zero in” on Your Target Audience 

Businesses that rely on high-volume email communications know the importance of targeting. It takes interested and engaged audiences to produce the activity and/or response that, in turn, will build your brand and your sender reputation. That said, it may be tempting in light of the current pandemic to wonder if the rules are now different. Simply put…they’re not. The rules of reputation management are every bit as valid now as they were before the coronavirus started making headlines.   

Engagement levels are very important factors in the formation of your sending reputation. Therefore, you should avoid sending messages blindly to your entire customers database from the last 10 years (you probably don’t enjoy receiving those emails either, do you?). Instead, choose audiences for your COVID-19 responses that have recently engaged with your brand are appropriate for the communications you’re sending. That means targeting groups of recently active folks who are most likely to appreciate your messages.   

Principle #3: Protect Your Emailing Reputation with Best Practices 

The critical importance of smart sending practices is hard to overstate. However, the email behavior we have observed in past couple of months is mixed. While most customers embrace and follow best practices with their COVID-19 customer announcements and service alerts (some examples are mentioned above), other well-intentioned organizations are less than perfect. Observance of accepted sending practices is the key to a strong sender reputation that will continue to improve your deliverability rates far beyond COVID-19 and into all future email communications.  

Principle #4: Be Prepared for Rapid Scale & Response  

SocketLabs is observing a tremendous spike in activity for many organizations as they send out one or more COVID-19 coronavirus notices on our high-volume, on-demand email platform.  With business-critical crisis communications, it’s important to maintain a delicate balance between under communicating and over communicating.  As SocketLabs continues to see record email volume, we are proud to offer an on-demand solution which can scale to support the largest email senders globally.  

Further, we’re proud to be handling this growth while at the same time forging ahead as a fully remote workforce.  Our CEO Keith Hontz was recently featured in an article by Workpuls discussing how we effectively and proactively prepared for working outside the office. We’ve made this transition smoothly and are able to fully support our customers’ growth without any service disruption.  

Since email continues to be a top channel for business–critical communications (especially crisis communications) it’s important that we can scale. But it’s also important that your organization is prepared for these types of volume surges. In fact, it’s more important than ever before.  Having a properly warmed email sending infrastructure and easily accessible, pre-defined recipient lists are important prerequisites to being able to get your messages sent and delivered in a timely fashion. 

Principle #5: Send Your Message at the Right Time 

Great content isn’t the only driver of relevance.  The timing of that message should be both appropriate and optimized.  Regardless of the message type, there’s always a right time and a wrong time. And the “right time” can change quickly to a “poor time”, especially under conditions such as these. So it’s important to keep your finger on the pulse of social, political and other environmental conditions.  

Regarding timing optimization. Consider A/B testing to find the best time of day to send your content. The ideal time is different for different audiences.  Since your audiences’ receptivity levels are always changing, frequent testing and recalibration should play a significant role in your planning process. Remember, the best performing messages make an impact because they find an audience who is ready to engage. 

Principle #6: Practice Good Hygiene (You and Your Lists!) 

The discussions of wellbeing, healthy habits, and diligent personal hygiene practices have taken off in the recent weeks. These concerns are high on everyone’s list of priorities and they are the driving force behind a large percentage of the communications growth we’ve seen.  

Less important on a human level, but very relevant for email success, is data hygiene and list accuracy. Strong data quality is a key contributor to email delivery success and is consequently essential to your sender reputation health. Validating data upon entry and conducting regular data cleansing or updating should be standard operating procedure.  

Principle #7: Be Well Working Remotely & Celebrate Virtually!  

This final principle applies to email communications and every facet of your business. Remember that we’re all in this together. SocketLabs invites you to make the best of the new business world that we’re operating in. We have established a working culture that frequently celebrates our individual achievement, our collective achievements, and the achievements of our customers (see our webinar on remote workplace success).  Don’t forget to take time to recognize your team’s contributions. It’s what makes you special! 

We also appreciate the opportunity to work together and serve our clients together – and we will not be deterred from celebrating because we’re now a fully remote work force! As evidence of our commitment to celebrate, see photo below which was taken late Friday afternoon during our first “Virtual Happy Hour”. We look forward to the time when we’re back together, but in the meantime, we’ll celebrate being well!  We’re in this together and will get through this together. 

Need Help With Your Email Communications During This Crisis? 

For more details on how SocketLabs can help support your crisis communication strategy as it relates to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, please contact us at sales@socketlabs.com.  Our SocketLabs ABC (Alert Business Communications) program provides a turnkey solution for our customers to leverage email as a key communication channel with pre-delivered email design templates to support your crisis communication strategic and outreach efforts. 

The post 7 Guiding Principles for Ongoing COVID-19 Crisis Communication Success appeared first on SocketLabs.

SocketLabs is excited to introduce the latest on-premise email server, Hurricane MTA 4.0,  available with increased performance, expanded security, and a host of new features which significantly enhance the overall user experience. Highlights include support for the latest security and encryption protocols and a new hybrid option for combining on-premise and cloud sending.  With SocketLabs’ new Hurricane MTA 4.0, customers whose data privacy and security standards require an on-premises email solution can now access to the latest and greatest in email delivery technology. 

What’s New With SocketLabs Hurricane MTA 4.0 

Hurricane MTA 4.0 is coming to market with a ton of exciting new features that will improve email delivery and performance, security and encryption, and overall user experience.  These new features are built on top of the solid foundation that is Hurricane MTA which helped pioneer the high-volume email industry when it was first introduced in 2007. The Hurricane MTA comes standard with advanced mail stream segregation, automatic suppression lists, bounce processing, dynamic block rules, and so much more (see the full list of current Hurricane MTA features here).  

Now let’s see what’s new in the SocketLabs Hurricane 4.0 on-premise email server: 

1. Increased Performance 

4.0 supports increased performance using the latest .NET framework and allows development of plug-ins and integrations using the latest Microsoft technologies. 

2. Availability of the Hurricane Hybrid MTA Solution 

The Hurricane MTA hybrid solution allows companies to access the best of both worlds between cloud and on-premise email sending capabilities. The Hurricane Hybrid MTA allows companies who typically send only via on-premises servers to: 

• Have an active cloud backup system to protect against IP blacklisting or deliverabilty issues 
• Achieve cost optimization by separating transactional or security-sensitive message streams (requiring on-prem delivery) from streams that may require the high-touch deliverablity assistance that’s available in the cloud solution.  
• Flexibly access cloud-platform delivery reporting, APIs, and additional features.

3. MTA-STS Support  

SocketLabs’ Hurricane MTA now supports MTA-STS (Mail Transfer Agent Strict Transport Security), becoming the first company to apply this security technology to their MTA for use on-premise and in the cloud.  With MTA-STS, senders will be able to deliver their mail with confidence, using the latest and greatest form of email security available to allow safe, authenticated email transfer.   

To learn more about Hurricane’s support for MTA-STS, download our full guide here on how it works and how you can use it.  

4. Secure HTTPS Engagement Tracking  

Hurricane MTA will now support secure engagement tracking by allowing opens, clicks, and unsubscribes to use TLS encryption.  

5. BIMI Header Signing in DKIM 

BIMI adds a visual representation and confirmation of email authentication to your emails. More specifically, it allows companies to add an official brand or image logo to authenticated emails that clearly identifies them as such in the recipient’s inbox.  

 6. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Support 

AMP allows email senders to create a new level of user experience and interactivity. It enables emails to dynamically display information and support search, data entry, and commerce functions – just like a web browser. SocketLabs has also added support for secure AMP Engagement Tracking.   

To read more about AMP, check out our blog here.  

 7. New User Interface 

The new UI allows for better visualization of performance tracking and a better overall experience for users. New graphs and charts are also standard features, including complaint analysis, engagement analysis, failure analysis, and a variety of other vital email metrics.   

With the release of Hurricane MTA 4.0, customers now have access to the latest email technologies in an on-prem setting.  If you are interested in implementing SocketLabs Hurricane MTA, you can request more information here, or you can view some other resources below: 

More About SocketLabs On-Premise Email Service 

Learn more about Hurricane MTA 4.0 

View the available features of Hurricane MTA  

Request more Information About Hurricane MTA 4.0

The post New SocketLabs On-Premise Email Server: Hurricane MTA 4.0  appeared first on SocketLabs.

View webinar replay here!

How do you smoothly transition your entire company to a remote workforce without disrupting your business? On Thursday, April 2nd at 1pm EST, SocketLabs experts will be answering this exact question in our webinar on remote work strategies! Click here to save your spot.

Many companies and their employees are struggling with the abrupt transition to remote work in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. With some foreplaning, SocketLabs has successfully and seamlessly transitioned to a fully remote workforce in a matter of days. To share some of our lessons learned and best practices with our clients, and others, we’ve put together a webinar which will be led by members of the SocketLabs executive team. The hope is to help ease the challenge of this process for the community at large. ​

Topics in this 30-minute webinar will include:

• Details on our full transition to remote working
• How we promote a remote-first mindset​ and culture
• Systems and tools that can aid the transition process​
• The “Top Ten” best practices that help drive success

What has SocketLabs done?

In short, we’ve implemented a comprehensive work-from-home policy that we’ve been operating for over two weeks now. We’ve made this transition while continuing to have our staff at full capacity. Our CEO Keith Hontz, who will be one of the webinar presenters, was recently interviewed by Workpuls. The question was “How is COVID-19 affecting your business and what are you doing to stay safe”. In his answer, Keith shared some of SocketLabs’ best practices on the process of planning and managing the conversion.

Among the keys we’ve identified are staying connected via email and collaboration tools. For example, we’re using Zoom (for hosting customer meetings and webinars) and Microsoft Teams (for internal gatherings) very regularly. With the help of these tools, we have successfully transferred all office communications there. What used to be face-to-face meetings are now online meetings that are just as effective. Among the most important steps, however, was ensuring that our customer service team did not miss a beat. One of the highlights of last week was Keith getting a personal message from a customer in Australia explaining what a great job our customer service team did in supporting him – all of this was done by our remote team from the safety of home!

Join us for the webinar on Thursday April 2nd to learn more from the panel:

• Keith Hontz – CEO, who brings great remote workplace insights garnered during 23 years at Germany-based SAP
• Brett Bair – SocketLabs Vice President of Product and Services, who spent 10 years with remote-first company Monetate​
• Joe Breslin – Vice President of Operations and Finance, formerly with Microsoft, who has also co-founded a virtual non-profit​ organization

We hope you can join us live or get value by watching the recording which will be available after the event.

The post SocketLabs Hosts Educational Webinar: Strategies for a Successful Remote Workplace appeared first on SocketLabs.

March activity was on the rise for the majority of organizations

Email activity in March showed mixed results as the global pandemic gripped the business world. Analyzing 50 high-volume email senders from a cross-section of industries, SocketLabs saw several interesting changes in sending patterns that reflect the changing nature of commerce.

As we all have observed, most businesses have reacted to these unprecedented times with unprecedented levels of communication. Without question, email was heavily upon as a channel through which to reach key audiences. Overall, the volume across our platform surged by 15% from February to March. From technology businesses shifting to work-from-home policies to restaurants and other retailers adopting new delivery and curbside pickup policies, the rising volumes reflected the many ways companies are adapting to the circumstances — which have been changing on an almost daily basis.

Interestingly, the increase in volume was not consistent across all companies. In fact, only 60% of the sample saw increased traffic, while 40% sent reduced volumes.

SaaS Email Volumes Rising

To understand the situation better, we took a look at the types of businesses that had increased volumes. Increases were seen across a variety of industries, but there was a clear concentration in marketing communications. More specifically, SaaS software applications – especially CRMs, marketing automation, customer service, and payroll apps – saw email traffic volumes jump by 300% to 500%.

Additionally, there were significant month-over-month increases in industries such as ecommerce (where the volume doubled), health and wellness, and media. Many of the gainers were delivering marketing messages in industries that had large audiences to educate about changes in their service availability or to promote new modes of business operations. For example, many professional services businesses, such as healthcare and business consultants, increased volumes as they transitioned to remote business operations with online appointments.

Of those businesses that saw declining volume, more than half were sending transactional messages. Their decline mirrors the obvious decline in economic activity in these industries. The largest volume losses were observed in sports, real estate, and financial services businesses who experienced volume drops of 30-40%.

Mail Quality Matters

Only time will tell if the increases in March will become trends that continue, or if they will level out or decline in April. Many observers expect declines since the marketing messages that were sent in the first few weeks of the pandemic were large, one-time general awareness or alert notices. Now that this initial wave of messages has been sent, the value of sending additional messages is unclear and many organizations are confused about how to proceed. In fact, there has been an overwhelming sentiment building that sending bulk announcements to large audiences is counterproductive and is potentially damaging to a company’s email sending reputation. The best advice from SocketLabs for protecting your reputation is to simply continue following normal email best practices.

In addition, however, according to findings recently explained in Axios there are also some new “COVID-19 best practices” and concepts of good sending etiquette that companies should also be aware of. For example, this article explains that companies should not simply talk about their own internal responses to the pandemic or attempt to aggressively sell their products or services. Rather, many email recipients (consumers in particular) still expect a more somber tone from companies. They’re happy to receive messages from marketers as long as they seem in touch with the fact that many people are facing difficult times. Further, they only want to receive promotions about ideas or products that can help them now. Nothing else is relevant.

Offer a Helping Hand

As they become available, we look forward to bringing you additional statistics and insights about how the pandemic is impacting the world of email. In the meantime, we encourage you to please help those in need. If you are able, we invite you to join SocketLabs in supporting the Philly Pledge which provides assistance to organizations supporting the Philadelphia community during this crisis.

The post COVID-19’s Impact on Email Volume appeared first on SocketLabs.

As a provider of high-volume email solutions to thousands of companies around the globe, data privacy is a topic that SocketLabs takes very seriously. While protecting customer data has always been critically important, recently minted regulations such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the US are raising the stakes for businesses around the world in the form of dramatic fines and penalties. Increased enforcement of these regulations is a major concern for many SaaS companies, but SocketLabs – through our relationship with a leading privacy strategy and consulting firm – has taken a leadership position in this arena.

SocketLabs Privacy Pledge

SocketLabs is committed to protecting our customers’ data – period.

We don’t use, sell, or package customer data for any secondary commercial purpose. Customer data is only used for providing our industry-leading email delivery service. And the process is simple:

• Customer data is securely uploaded into the SocketLabs cloud platform
• The customer maintains control of that data
• The data is ONLY used for sending email

Our goal is to be at the forefront of the dynamic and increasingly complex privacy/compliance landscape. To that end, we are constantly challenging ourselves to go “above and beyond” industry and client requirements. The partnership with VeraSafe ensures that we live by these words and embrace them in our daily operations.

A Culture of Privacy and Compliance

With offices in the US and the Czech Republic, VeraSafe provides an array of privacy and cyber-security solutions which address compliance with various US and international privacy laws, including GDPR compliance. Their independent, third-party privacy compliance verification service ensures that Socketlabs:

1. Complies with a high standard for privacy and data protection,
2. Maintains appropriate internal policies and procedures pertaining to privacy and data protection, and
3. Stays compliant over time by completing an annual audit of our data protection management system.

As a result, SocketLabs customers can have peace of mind knowing that their data (and their customers’ data) is handled with the same degree of care and concern that they provide themselves– or better.

With VeraSafe’s guidance, SocketLabs has updated our privacy policies, reviewed our internal procedures, and ensured that our 3rd party vendors are doing the same to protect our customers’ data. They help ensure that we are in alignment with both current regulations and our customers’ data protection requirements. Further, SocketLabs can provide the supporting documentation required to evidence our compliance and support customers’ own internal compliance audits.

Supporting Email and Data Privacy

Because handling customer data is central to providing our email service, SocketLabs has always taken a strong stance with respect to privacy and security. Trust is paramount because we ask our customers to trust us with their data millions of times every day. VeraSafe has helped us take several specific steps to build this trust by proactively meeting the challenges of today’s dynamic, internet-driven economy:

Privacy Shield Certification

SocketLabs is Privacy Shield Certified, and complies with the Privacy Shield Principles including:

• • Data integrity and purpose limitation
  • Data security and privacy notice
  • Accountability for third-party data transfers, and
  • Conducting annual Privacy Shield compliance verification

GDPR Compliance

SocketLabs offers a GDPR-compliant Data Processing Addendum to address customers’ data protection requirements. VeraSafe’s Matthew Joseph, Chairman of their Privacy, Data Protection and Cybersecurity Practice, serves as our GDPR Data Protection Officer and provides ongoing GDPR support. VeraSafe Ireland Limited serves as SocketLabs’ EU Data Protection Representative in accordance with Article 27 of the GDPR.

Data Security Practices

VeraSafe’s attorneys and certified privacy and IT security consultants regularly conduct a range of in-depth IT security reviews to help ensure the security of SocketLabs’ platform. These include penetration testing of our web-facing apps as well as detailed vendor risk assessments.

Our ongoing relationship with VeraSafe will ensure that these protections are regularly maintained and updated, and that we are able to proactively mature our data protection management before new regulations or compliance practices emerge.  For more information regarding SocketLabs’ data privacy and security practices, contact our Infrastructure and Security team

The post VeraSafe Partnership Helps SocketLabs Ensure Email Privacy & Data Security appeared first on SocketLabs.

“Email infrastructure has yet to be optimized.”

I introduced myself to the SocketLabs team with this bold statement during my first company meeting. No doubt a loaded statement, though it is something that I firmly believe. Not just that, I believe SocketLabs is best positioned to solve this problem; I wouldn’t have accepted this job if I didn’t.

While optimizing email infrastructure is our North Star and destination, we have a long journey until we reach that point. So, before we change the email infrastructure landscape, I wanted to share a little bit about what drew me to SocketLabs and what our customers and the email industry should look forward to.

Doubling Down on Superior Customer Service

I think it’s easy for companies to presume they provide excellent customer service, however what I see here is on a different level.  We don’t just support our customers – we know them. We understand their businesses, we know how they can maximize the value of our platform, and we take the time to build sincere relationships (yes, the ones with REAL humans!). There is no better area to double down than this. I hope that sharing our team’s journey in blogs and other content will help our customers get to know SocketLabs a bit better, too. Stay tuned for more of what’s going on down in the Labs!

Emphasis on Analytics (But Not Like Everyone Else)

One of my passions within my 15-plus years of email experience is diving deep into email data to identify ways to optimize performance. This is what separates email from other channels – the data is vast and provides valuable untapped opportunities to drive bottom-line impact. Many providers will show these data points in a variety of ways. The problem is analytics without context are nothing more than last week’s weather report. The SocketLabs approach is centered on providing identification and proactive remediation, solving your problems before they become problems. As we continue to invest in our product, delivering analytics with the proper context for each sender will be a central theme.

Leveraging Product Versatility

My first week here concluded with a two-hour, in-depth product deep dive. After being fortunate enough to get to work closely on some of the email industry’s most innovative products, I was expecting to see a powerful product; one that generally aligned with other similar products in the industry. Afterall, I knew before joining that SocketLabs was well regarded as a talented product organization. However, what I saw was something well beyond my expectations. The power, performance, and reliability we’ve become known for were absolutely there. Additionally, what I saw was the most flexible email platform I’ve witnessed. As email senders evolve and become more sophisticated with increasingly complex needs, I see many still using one-size-fits-all solutions. The team here and I share a vision that finding the exact right solution for each customer is within our reach. We’ll look forward to sharing a variety of exciting announcements in this area.

The team here is agile, talented, and hungry. When we talk about investing in the product and driving change, we don’t mean years in the future. For us, this means immediate improvements, imminent significant releases, and looming evolutionary change. The email infrastructure and delivery platform industry is one that is due for change – we plan on driving that change to deliver maximum value to our customers!

The post Our North Star: A Message from Tim Moore, CEO appeared first on SocketLabs.