September 2016 Summaries

The importance of dedicated IPs is being reevaluated as domain reputation continues to play a significant role in email delivery. With ISPs becoming less reliant on IP reputation, using your own domain in DKIM signatures and personalizing the return-path are key strategies for senders to make the most of shared IP environments. While IP addresses still matter, domain reputation is increasingly tied to the sender's identity, particularly with DMARC alignment pushing the focus towards the domain owner. Dedicated IPs are reserved for large senders, while smaller senders benefit from sharing reputation across multiple good senders. The goal is to achieve a balance between IP and domain reputation to ensure reliable email delivery.

Today Postmark is launching Domain Verification, a feature that allows users to verify an entire domain for email sending by adding a couple of DNS records. This makes it easier for companies and agencies to send email from multiple addresses on their domain without having to verify each individual address. With Domain Verification, users will automatically get the benefits of DKIM and SPF verification, which can improve deliverability and build reputation. The feature is available for all customers today, and existing customers who have a verified domain with unique DKIM records will be able to send from any email address on that domain immediately.

The Postmark team has been working on improving the performance and stability of their email service, aiming to deliver all emails to inboxes within 10 seconds or less. They have made significant improvements to their systems, including increasing Elasticsearch capacity, upgrading RabbitMQ cluster to v3, and moving SMTP services to Packet.net data centers. Additionally, they published two new guides on transactional email best practices and using Gmail Inbox Actions. The team has also fixed 18 bugs in July and August, with a focus on ongoing bug fixing and customer support. Looking ahead, the Postmark team is preparing to launch link tracking and domain verification features, which will allow users to verify entire domains for sending.