Typical ESPs

Yesterday, I gave examples of good ESPs and the benefits that their customers receive from their high standards and standards enforcement. Today I’ll be talking about typical ESPs and the things they say and do.
A few caveats before I get started. Most of these quotes are composite quotes. I am not quoting one particular person or ESP, rather, the statement is representative of a common view point. None of these quotes is a one off, all of these quotes have been said by more than one person. These where chosen as a representation of some of the attitudes and policies that leads ISPs and filtering companies to throw up their hands at the ESPs.

  • Consent is paramount to us […] well, yes we do allow customers to purchase lists and do epending.
  • We know the customer is spamming, but they’re too big and too valuable to disconnect.
  • We rotate IP addresses so when there is a block, we can switch to an unblocked IP.
  • We know people are putting addresses that don’t belong to them into the subscription form, but as long as the client is making money, we aren’t going to stop them or make them confirm permission.
  • Our mail is CAN SPAM compliant.
  • Complaints are low, so our customers can’t be spamming.
  • We honor all unsubscribes.
  • They’re a reputable brand, they can’t be spamming.
  • We do not allow advertising scams or viagra mail.
  • Our customers assure us the mail is opt-in.

ESPs are struggling in a crowded and competitive field to maintain standards as high as they can while not losing high value customers. If they set standards too high, their customers will flock to competitors with lower standards. ESPs in the typical category are not all bad, though. In many cases, particularly with the very large brands, they do act as forces of good on senders. The ESPs educate senders and force them to adhere to better practices than the senders would do on their own. The presence of ESPs results in less spam and unwanted email in the ecosystem and in recipients’ inboxes.
Also, many of the individuals working for the typical ESP spend a lot of time working with customers and with management to improve standards and decrease the bad mail coming through their network. They are a dedicated group of people and their actions do have a positive effect over all.

What makes a good ESP?
Holiday Break

Related Posts

The good, the typical and the ugly

In the theme of the ongoing discussions about ESPs and their role in the email ecosystem, I thought I’d present some examples of how different ESPs work.
The good ESPs are those that set and enforce higher standards than the ISPs. They invest money and time in both proactive and reactive policy enforcement. On Monday I’ll talk about these standards, and the benefits of implementing these policies.
The typical ESPs are those that have standards equivalent to those of the ISPs. They suspend or disconnect customers when the customers generate problems at the ISPs. They have some proactive policy enforcement, but most of their enforcement is reactive. On Tuesday I’ll talk about these standards and how they’re perceived by the ISPs and spam filtering companies.
The ugly ESPs are those that have low standards and few enforcement policies. They let customers send mail without permission. Some of the ugly ESPs even abuse other ESPs to send some of their mail, thus sharing their bad reputations across the industry. On Wednesday I’ll look at some of their practices and discuss how they affect other players in the industry.

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What she said

Jamie Tomasello on the Cloudmark Blog:

ESPs who require and enforce best permission practices should be applying peer and industry pressure within the ESP community to adopt these policies. Ultimately, ESPs need to take responsibility for their clients’ practices. If you are aware that your clients are engaging in questionable or bad practices, address those issues before contacting an ISP or anti-spam vendor to resolve the issue.

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A series of warnings

Over the last month there have been a number of people sounding warnings about coming changes that ESPs are going to have to deal with. There has been mixed reaction from various people, many people who hear these predictions start arguing with the speaker. Some argue that our predictions are wrong, others argue that if our predictions are right then the senders will just start acting more like spammers.
I have put together a collection of links from recent blog posts looking towards the future and how things may be changing.

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