MediaPost had an article written by George Bilbrey talking about how 2010 could be a difficult year for marketers with marginal practices. George starts off the article by noticing that his contact at ISPs are talking up how legitimate companies with bad practices are causing them problems and are showing up on the radar.
This is something I talked about a few weeks ago, in a series of blog posts looking at the changes in 2010. The signs are out there, and companies with marginal practices are going to see delivery get a lot more difficult. George lists some practices that he sees as problems.
- It’s not clear what the subscriber is signing up for
- No action was required to sign up
- The mailings are not targeted
- The volume of messages from the sender is very high
The consequences are harder blocks and more difficult unblocking. It’s been a while since I have been able to contact some of the ISPs and get blocks lifted just on my word. Removing blocks now involves significant changes in a sender’s mailing practices. Senders can’t just make promises, but need to provide real solutions and specifics to the ISPs.
It is much, much easier to make improvements before a hard block happens. Fixing sloppy practices now will pay off in the long term.
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I have been following the spam issue less closely in the last few years.
While it is good that bad senders will find it harded to send, is there any prospect that ISPs will start tackling the huge number of zombies?
I suspect that Comcast like many others are avoiding tackling this.
Perhaps you could do a post on what is stopping ISPs from tidying their back yard. Is it the expense of new equipment?
I couldn’t agree with you more. Email marketers need to tidy up their practices or else they’re going to feel the impact on their wallets. Once that happens they’ll make a knee jerk reaction, but it will be to late. That’s why I focus on trying to teach email marketers best practices, so they stop annoying people and lower their complaint rates by setting the proper expectations. If marketers understand that email is different then it was 10 years ago, I’m sure they will see the benefit of using clean email marketing practices.
Keep up the great posts!