Email Jammed Up? Two Ways We Overcome Email Bottlenecks

I'll admit it. I'm a hardware junkie.

It started when I built my first PC in 1999. I spent hours reading articles on Tom's Hardware and pouring over Egghead and TigerDirect catalogs, obsessing over what components would provide the best bang for my buck. I settled on a K6/2 running at 380 MHz with 128MB of RAM and managed to scrounge a hard drive from a family member who had recently upgraded their PC. 128MB of RAM! I couldn't believe it!

Whether you are a hardware junkie or not, I’d like to share with you some insight into how we select hardware here at DRH. In this post, I’ll focus on performance. While there are reliability considerations to keep in mind when choosing hardware (redundancy, error correction, etc.), I’ll save those for another blog post.

In the Driver's Seat with GreenArrow Software.

Imagine a sports car—a really fast one. How do you know it’s fast? Is it the speedometer? The engine? The collection of speeding tickets wedged in the glove box?

Now imagine your email sending software. Is it fast? Exactly how fast is it? And perhaps more important, why does it matter to your bottom line? Today, I want to show you under the hood of our own GreenArrow, and take you for a spin around the track so you can better understand how fast it really is. First, let’s define what kind of speed we’re talking about here. This article is not about how fast your email loads in a user’s mail client, or how fast the ISPs accept your mail. Those topics are important, but they are completely separate from what I want to show you. This article is about the software speed itself—what it can really do for you.

Discover tools our support team says: 'you shouldn't go without'.

Over the past 5+ years working at GreenArrow I've had the opportunity to troubleshoot and solve nearly every different kind of email issue possible. When I do, customers are often curious about how I came up with the answer I provided. Maybe it’s because I’m nerdy, which I am (my wife tells me that all the time). But it’s probably more because our software has so many different tools and resources to make email administration easier.

Are You “Out of the Loop”?

Ever heard the phrase, “Out of the loop?” It means a critical piece of information has been withheld from you (either on purpose or by accident) that you need in order to make a decision. No one wants to be left out of the loop, especially when it comes to things that can cost you time and money, like customer feedback.

I have to confess, I am thrifty. Ask my wife. 

She might say I'm a penny-pincher; I say 'frugal' and 'penny-wise.' If there’s a deal or a promotion, I’m in! If there’s not, you bet I’m going to ask for one. I like quality stuff too and I believe you-get-what-you-pay-for, but that doesn’t mean you have to overpay, right?

Naturally, this finance-saavy trait follows me in my personal and professional life too. So when I made a $462 blunder at work, my heart sank. But when I took the leap to share that blunder with our staff, I was surprised how it felt. This mistake felt like…freedom.(Right back at you, George Michael.)

In today's team meeting our CEO, David Harris offered a comparison between the kind of maintenance we often perform on live email servers and something far more dangerous (and cooler). 

Take a look and tell us what you think.

We’re happy to announce the launch of our brand new website! After months of hard work, brainstorming, (and several cups of coffee), we are delighted to officially announce the launch on March 30^th, 2016.  Take a look and let us know what you think.

After the recent Mandrill announcement, I was confused as many of you were.

When I read their blog post which describes moving from the "utility" or "dumb pipe" path, and embracing the "personalized transactional" path, I wasn't really sure what this meant. This may mean they are discontinuing the ability to give them email for delivery via SMTP after the migration. (But it's not yet possible to tell until I can merge a Mandrill and MailChimp account and try.)

Ahhh, the challenge of managing multiple senders. 

You’ve heard the expression – "one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch." It's not just an old-timey expression – it’s actually true.

But why should you care? These days we don’t worry about long-term storage of our apples. Instead, we find fresh apples every time we go to the grocer. The same kind of "Bad Apple" problem can happen in email delivery. One client sending bad email can ruin the reputation of your entire mail flow and cause email for other clients to be blocked or directed to the Spam folder. 

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are 6 ways ESP's protect their 'good apples' just like a good produce manager.