What to expect from your delivery consultant

Every once in a while I get a phone call asking me what delivery consultant do. What can I do for them? How can I help them? Delivery consulting is a very new field and it is understandable a lot of people do not know what we do.
The overall delivery consulting process here a Word to the Wise involves collecting detailed information about your mailing program and your technical setup, like:

• where do you get your addresses?
• how do you handle bounces?
• what MTA do you use?
• do you monitor delivery with a commercial service?
• do you monitor your bounce logs?
• do you have FBLs set up with various ISPs?
• are you whitelisted anywhere?
• what expectations do you set with your subscribers?
• where do your subscribers opt in?
• do you do any sort of address verification?
• what are your IP addresses?
• what domains do you use in email?
• are you publishing SPF records?
• are you signing with Domain Keys/DKIM?
• what HELO values do you use?
• are you using VERP to send email?
• what MTA are you using?
• do you send mail through a smarthost?

Other delivery consultants will have a similar set of questions. You should also expect your delivery consultant to sign up for your email. I like to sign up as a customer would, go through your full process and see what your subscribers see, and what is presented to them. If you only send to purchasers or collect significant amounts of personal information, then I will just have you send me an email from your mail program
Once your consultant has the information from you, expect a report on your processes. This report should include the things you are doing well, the things you could improve on and the things that may make receivers identify your email as spam.
As part of the report, there should also be suggestions on how to improve things, what potential changes to make. These recommendations should also include risk assessment so you can make informed decisions about implementing the consultant’s recommendations.
A delivery consultant, any delivery consultant, should be able to clearly explain to you why your email delivery is how it is. They should have contacts and the ability to escalate issues, and the experience to know when something needs to be escalated and when patience is called for. Good delivery consultants should also participate in industry events, maintain professional relationships with ISPs and blocklists, keep up with current delivery changes at various ISPs and be able to share the data with you in ways that help you further your own business goals.