Ken speaks the truth
Ken Magill has a great article up today about how many marketers expect their ESPs to fix their delivery problems when in reality the marketers policies and practices are the real problem.
If enough recipients think a marketer’s e-mail program is garbage, no e-mail service provider in the world will be able to prevent spam complaints, and the resulting delivery troubles. Likewise, if a marketer refuses to clean dead addresses off their list because one of those addresses just might, maybe, someday make a purchase, there isn’t a single ESP out there who will be able to stop Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft from diverting the marketer’s messages into recipients’ spam folders or blocking them altogether.
A marketer can’t ride an ESP’s e-mail reputation, folks.
Go read the whole thing. Learn it. Live it.