So we recorded and setup detailed notifications for every email bounce, to make sure that we are always aware of what’s happening (thanks Mailgun!). And we soon started to see patterns.

People would misspell their email addresses and be unaware of it, resulting in a delivery failure and a lost user. And it got even more interesting - most of these invalid email addresses were a result of a misspelled domain; “hotmail.con”, “gnail.com”, “yajoo.com”. A clear opportunity for improvement.

You can get the Mailcheck.js plugin at Github. Neat.

Broad-ranging and intriguing:

Gourville talks about the ’9X problem’ — "a mismatch of 9 to 1 between what innovators think consumers want and what consumers actually want."1 The 9X problem goes a long way to explaining the tech industry folk wisdom that to spread like wildfire a new product has to offer a tenfold improvement over what’s currently out there.

On the persistent problem, and why it should be thought of more like tweets - not necessary to read - than must-read:

there’s a problem with changing the mentality about email because most people don’t get as much email as [venture capitalist Fred] Wilson or I do. So it just looks like we’re complaining for being popular or something. BUT the fact of the matter is that as more and more of the world spends more time online, more and more people will feel email overload.