AOL switching from FBL to ARF
I know this has been news for a little while now. I’ve been getting alot of emails about AOL’s ARF format from a certain Email Round Table I am part of. I’ll explain the meaning of ARF and what it means for the future of email marketing.
As taken from AOL’s postmaster website here, ARF literally means Abuse Reporting Format.
What is the difference between the traditional AOL Feedback Loop format and ARF?
The traditional format is a MIME multipart message with one empty text part and one message/rfc822 part with the original message being complained about. Parts of the header of the message being complained about are redacted out, where normally the AOL ScreenName recipient would be present.
ARF is defined in a internet draft located at http://www.mipassoc.org/arf/ . ARF messages have three mime parts, one part for general information, one machine parsable and meta data part, and the last part as the original message being complained about. The original message is redacted to protect clear text occurrences of AOL screen names and email addresses.
ARF can not be read in most major e-mail clients. The format assumes that parsing and decoding will be done via script. Please do not contact AOL with questions about reading ARF FBL emails.
What this means to you is that your email marketing platform will need to have certain features enabled to properly read AOL’s new format and process the removes. With AOL’s old FBL (Feedback Loop), the MTA could easily remove the complainer by pulling the email from the header or body of the message in text format. Now with the ARF format, there needs to be a way to easily parse the complainer from the message. Email addresses will not display in the header or footer of the message. As mentioned on the roundtable , one way to become ARF compliant is to use VERP strings.
Taken from Wikipedia:
Variable envelope return path (VERP) is a technique used by some electronic mailing list software to enable automatic detection and removal of undeliverable e-mail addresses. It works by using a different return path (also called “envelope sender”) for each recipient of a message.
Most of the larger MTA’s (Mail Transfer Agent’s) are VERP enabled. VERP helps automate the process of bounce removal by using a different return path string in the header of the message. As mentioned above, each string is unique, therefore when an email bounces, the software is able to determien the type of bounce and remove accordingly.
Another soultion to be ARF complaint is to use links to your advantage. By placing the subscribers email address in the mailing link or unsubscribe link, you are able to easily track where the complaint is comming from. Additionally, your links will be able to track openers, click throughs, and unsubscribes efficiently.
Filed under: ISP News
2 Responses to “AOL switching from FBL to ARF”
February 9th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
For sometime I have been using your new email foremat, and frankly I do not like it !
It’s too difficult to read, because it is all bunched up together, instead of
being wide open so I can read all of my email at a glance,instead of seeing in tunnel vision
Please return me to the former trasditional foremat, because it is my preference ! Or please explain to me
how I can switch back to where I was
more comfortable !
herbpilgrim@aol.com
Mon. AM
February 9, 2009
July 18th, 2009 at 8:04 am
It’s so confusing. I gets continuing alerts from scomp@aol.net. But I haven’t read it properly to act against the spammer. Can anybody tell me how to read the ARF format and find out the spammer?