Dealing with ISPs when you are blocked

Here is some advice on dealing with ISPs over a blocking issue.

  1. Do know what IP is blocked if it is an IP based block.
  2. Do know what domain is blocked if it is domain based block.
  3. Do know what the rejection message is and have it handy.
  4. Do be polite.  Most of the ISPs get hundreds of contacts a day, many of which are decidedly impolite. If you are the polite one you’re much more likely to float to the top than if you are one of the thousand screamers.
  5. Do not make threats. There is nothing you can threaten that they have not been threatened with before.
  6. Do not lecture them about the law. It is unlikely you understand the legal issues better than they, and their lawyers, do
  7. Do respect everyone’s time. Arguing is not productive. Asking for information and clarification is productive.
  8. Do remeber that they’re extremely busy. The ISP does not need to hear about your business model – brevity is a virtue.
  9. Do not mention CAN SPAM. That’s like saying “I do the bare minimum the law requires and expect you to accept my mail anyway.”
  10. Do not ask them to remove the block. Ask them what you did to get blocked and how to avoid being blocked in the future.
  11. Do remember this is probably the same person you will need to deal with in the future and that this is not a one time conversation. Leave them remembering you, if not fondly, at least productively.

The above all go for talking to the major blacklists, too.
Edited to add: 12. Do use the proper channels to contact them. 

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They’re not blocking you because they hate you.

Really. They’re blocking you because you’re doing something that is triggering their blocking mechanisms.
This has happened over and over and over again. Some political or activist website sends out an email that gets blocked by some large ISP and the political site turns it into a giant crisis that means the ISP hates them or is trying to shut them up or is trying to silence their message.
Except that’s not what is going on. The folks at the large ISPs who handle blocking and incoming mail are incredibly smart and conscientious . They take their jobs seriously. They, both personally and corporately, want their customers (the end recipients) to receive the email they want. Additionally, they do not want to deliver mail that the recipients did not ask to receive.
In almost no cases is the block a particular activist site encounters a result of the ISP not liking the content of the email. If an activist site is being blocked it’s due to complaints or reputation or something that ISPs measure and block on. Some person at the ISP didn’t read your email, decide they didn’t like what you had to say and then block that email. That email was blocked because something related to that email triggered the thresholds for blocking.
Of course, as with everything online, there are caveats. In this case it’s that the above statements really only hold true for large ISPs in free countries. There are some countries in the world that do block email based on content, and that is dictated by the government. Likewise, some small ISPs will block based on the guy in charge not liking the email.
Generally, though, if an activist site is being blocked by a large ISP in the US or other free countries it is because their mailings are somehow not complying with that ISPs standards. Instead of starting an email campaign or blog campaign to shame the ISP for suppressing speech, it is much more productive to actually contact the ISP in question and find out what went wrong.

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The overall delivery consulting process here a Word to the Wise involves collecting detailed information about your mailing program and your technical setup, like:

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Q Interactive and Marketing Sherpa published a press release today about how fundamentally broken the “report spam” button is. They call for ISPs to make changes to fix the problem. I think the study on recipient perceptions is useful and timely. There is an ongoing fundamental paradigm shift in how ISPs are handling email filters. ISPs are learning how to measure a senders collective reputation with end users, and, more importantly integrate that reputation into the equation used to determine how to filter and deliver incoming email.
Q Interactive and Marketing Sherpa acknowledge this change in the report:

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