Email Authentication in the Financial Sector

Protection Against Cyber Threats and Ensuring Inbox Delivery: In today’s fast-paced and digitalised world, communication security is paramount. For many companies, email is a central […]

Marketing, Technical

The Certified Senders Alliance – Building Quality and Trust in the Email Ecosystem

The Certified Senders Alliance is a service of the eco Association of the Internet Industry, in cooperation with the German Dialogue Marketing Association (DDV). Since […]

CSA Certification Monitor – Improve email deliverability with data-driven insights

The CSA Certification Monitor is a self-service tool for certified Senders to monitor deliverability and maintain their certification status. CSA Senders gain access to valuable […]

CSA Host Verification

According to item 2.13 of the CSA criteria, an email sender must have sole control over the outbound email servers/hosts. In the new version of […]

CSA specific, Technical

The Legal Notice in Newsletters: This is What Counts!

Everyone knows it, but not everyone has it: The legal notice in a newsletter! A missing or wrong legal notice be very costly. Time and […]

Legal

“Secondary Lotteries”: a Type of Unlicensed Lottery

Due to a recent increase in questions about this issue, we would like to shed some light on advertising so-called “secondary lotteries”, a type of […]

Legal

Phishing and Spam in Times of Corona

What companies now have to consider when communicating by email with their customers Shops have closed, restaurants too, hotels are empty – the Corona pandemic […]

Marketing, Technical

What is a feedback loop and when can it be used by mailbox providers?

A feedback loop is a technical service provided by mailbox providers that reports back spam clicks from email recipients to the sender. This function is […]

Feedback loop

Legal, Technical

Email Transport Encryption STARTTLS vs. DANE vs. MTA-STS

This document deals with the encrypted transport of messages between two email servers. Encryption during transport is crucial for a basic level of security for […]

STARTTLS, DANE, MTA-STS

Technical

10 Resolutions for Successful Email Marketing in 2020

A good reputation, relevant content, and consistent list hygiene are the basis Resolutions belong to the New Year like fireworks and cava, but most of […]

Marketing

DMARC and Domain Alignment in Email Marketing

It’s not always the case that everything runs smoothly on the Internet. Spam, phishing,Man-in-the-Middle attacks, spoofing; the list of sophisticated methods villains of theInternet utilize, […]

DMARC

Technical

What is BIMI?

BIMI is an acronym of Brand Indicators for Message Identification. It is an open standardcreated jointly by several big players in the email market, such […]

BIMI

Marketing, Technical

One-Click Unsubscribe (RFC8058) is now a mandatory CSA criteria

Since the new CSA Rules of Procedure came into effect on 1 July 2019, One-Click Unsubscribe (RFC8058) is now a mandatory CSA criteria for newsletters. […]

Technical

DANE as Basis for Secure Data Transmission of Emails

Once you’ve ruined your reputation, life gets a lot simpler. This might be the case for private individuals, but it’s a different story in business. […]

DANE

Marketing, Technical

Attachment in Emails – Useful? Or Unwanted Baggage?

Since its emergence, the email has established itself as a fast and uncomplicated communication medium. Alongside pure text, the email is also suitable for quickly […]

Marketing

Transactional email, or newsletter?

During complaint procedures, the question arises again and again as to whether the mailing in question is considered a transactional email or perhaps a newsletter. […]

Legal

Effective Consent for Sponsoring Taking Recent Case Law into Account

Consent for the sending of marketing emails is only valid if the statement of purpose issufficiently specific and the consent is given based on an […]

Consent, Opt-In

Legal, Marketing

Can Suppression Lists be Used in a GDPR-Compliant Manner in Email Marketing?

It is standard practice for Email Service Providers (ESPs) to maintain client-specific or even global suppression lists (do-not-contact lists), in order to prevent the importation […]

GDPR

Legal, Marketing, Technical

Why CSA certification pays off?

Improve the delivery & deliverability of your commercial emails: Increase your inbox placement rate and reduce the impact of spam filtering on your communication. Protect […]

Marketing

Domain Alignment for Email Authentication

Authentication is absolutely essential for professional email transmission. If you want to go further than SPF and DKIM and use DMARC, then alignment is obligatory. […]

SPF, DKIM, DMARC, alignment

Technical

Obligation to Delete vs. Burden of Proof

In practice, CSA senders and their customers are faced with the problem that a recipient of an email (= data subject) can demand the deletion […]

GDPR

Legal

Report on the compliance of DMARC with the EU GDPR

DMARC stands for: Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance: domain-based message authentication, reporting and conformance of messages. The background to DMARC.org is to increase security […]

DMARC, GDPR

Legal, Technical

Unacceptable Harassment or Permissible Marketing?

In its decision from 15.02.2018 (Az.: 29U2799/17), the Higher Regional Court in Munich needed to deal with the question of whether the sending of a […]

Legal, Marketing

DKIM Recommendations 2018 with consideration of the DKIM Crypto Update

DKIM is a widely used method for the authentication of emails. But when DKIM is not used correctly, it is not effective and can offer […]

DKIM

Technical

Oh no, I have been sending phishing mails!

In the first place, what is phishing? Phishing is an invented word cobbled out of the two words “password” and “fishing”. Criminals use fake emails […]

Phishing, DMARC, DKIM, SPF

Legal, Technical

Important Decision for the Area of Email Marketing: Multichannel Consent Legal After All?

Following a long period of inactivity on the topic, the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) got to grips once more with the subject of […]

Consent

Legal

Bounce Management

Bounce management or bounce handling refers to the processing of returns, also known as non-delivery notification or non-delivery report (NDN or NDR), in email transmission. […]

Bounce Management

Technical

DOI: if not now, then when?!

The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will introduce numerous changes, with implications for the widest range of sectors. You can gain an overview of […]

DOI

Legal

The Declaration of Consent in E-Mail-Marketing According to the GDPR

It hasn’t arrived yet, but a lot is already being written and said about it: As of 25 May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation […]

GDPR

Legal

The Little Toolbox for Postmasters

Commissioning a mail server is initially not terribly complicated, but at the latest when it comes to keeping an eye on your reputation, or if […]

SPF, DKIM, DMARC

Legal, Technical

Using a valid From address

Validating an email address is a really hard task. Some tried huge regular expressions to solve this, but they are unreadable and do not cover […]

validation

Technical

When is a declaration of consent sufficiently “concrete”?

Recently, the German Federal High Court of Justice (BGH) looked at the question of whether a pre-formulated declaration of consent was “concrete” enough to serve […]

declaration of consent

Legal

Help! I hit a spamtrap!

What is a spamtrap and what is it good for? Who operates spamtraps & how to avoid spamtraps?

spamtrap

Technical

How Spam Filters work

In order to increase the quality of the sendings, brands often choose to work with anemail service provider (ESP) instead of sending the emails on […]

SPF, DKIM, authentication, spamfilter

Technical

The perfect Double-Opt-In (DOI) email

It’s often recommended, but how does an double-opt-in email actually work in practice? And why is it recommended in the first place? Senders of commercial […]

Opt-In, DOI

Legal, Technical

Tell-a-friend verdict

The German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) announced an important verdict (I ZR208/12) on the (im)permissibility of recommendation emails on 12 September 2013. The circumstances […]

tell-a-friend

Legal

The New EU General Data Protection Regulation

What will change for email senders?

GDPR

Legal

One-Click List-Unsubscribe Header

Back in 2015, the CSA wrote about the benefits of List-Unsubscribe headers in emails. Since then, more providers offer unsubscribe functionality within their web interface […]

RFC 8058

Technical

The legal situation for email marketing in Germany, Austria and Switzerland

Which differences and similarities exist?

Legal

DKIM setup the easy way

To put it in a nutshell, DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) enables a receiving email server to authenticate the sender of an email. The sending email […]

DKIM

Technical

The definition of advertising in email marketing

Advertising can take multiple forms. It is no wonder that there is often confusion about whether a mailshot is actually advertising as defined in competition […]

Legal

Protect your brand from phishing emails by implementing DMARC

Message from the Certified Senders Alliance supported by AOL, Microsoft and Google In the following article we want to clarify why marketers should implement DMARC […]

DMARC

List-Unsubscribe header

The List-Unsubscribe header is a simple way to offer the recipients an alternative way toeasily unsubscribe – with a single click – from a newsletter, […]

List-Unsubscribe

Technical

Service Provision in the Sense of § 7 (3) no. 1 UWG (German Unfair Commercial Practices Law): Paid or Unpaid Services?

Legal

What does IPv6 mean for delivery?

IPv4 allows for around 4 billion addresses, of which 3.7 billion are usable. This address space is becoming increasingly exhausted. At the end of July […]

Technical

The Legal Declaration of Consent in Promotional E-mails

There are still uncertainties in the formulation of the declaration of consent forpromotional e-mails. Under CSA complaints procedure this leads to more and more pronounced […]

Legal

Legal notice in a newsletter – What do you need to know?

Everybody knows they should, but not everybody does: Include a legal notice in the newsletter! Not having one or having a partially incorrect notice may […]

Legal

CSA Rules of Procedure

CSA specific

CSA Price List

CSA specific

CSA Conditions of Participation

CSA specific

CSA Criteria

CSA specific