Delivery consulting: it's all about the credibility

A few months ago I found a great blog post written by an ER doctor about how to convince other doctors to come in and deal with a patient in the middle of the night. There are quite  few similarities between his advice and the advice I would give delivery experts, ISP relations folks and ESP representatives when dealing with ISPs and spam filtering companies.

Credibility is the sole currency you have in this relationship. Hoard it carefully and spend it wisely.

Delivery is not a matter of life and death, so failing to get what I need from an ISP does not result in anyone dying. But over the long term, I am much more likely to get contacts, help and information if I demonstrate that I am an ally and that I can be trusted to work with them to get their users email that they want while stopping email they don’t want.
Here’s my not-so-patented recipe for success in getting information from ISPs.

  1. Never contact without first knowing exactly what it is that you want. Are you looking for information? Are you looking to get a block lifted? Do you need help translating a cryptic bounce message? Whatever it is, be clear about what you want. If you’re opening a ticket, give them all the information they ask for. If they have a text box where you can give more details do so, but be concise and clear.
  2. Never lie or shade the truth. The ISP reps have heard it all before, they know that a significant portion of people with “ISP relations” in their job title will lie, cheat or run their grandmother over on the street if it will get their mail delivered better. This is the reputation (right or wrong) of our industry. You can overcome this, if you always shoot straight. Don’t promise anything your customer (or client) can’t deliver.
  3. Have your data together. Have all the data you will need to deal with before opening a ticket or escalating. This means you need to know the dates the mail was sent, the IP it was sent from, what the bounce message was if it was rejected, how long this has been happening, what URLs are in the message, what the from: line of the message is. Being able to provide all the data that the woman on the other end needs to help you is going to make the process so much easier for everyone.
  4. Be reasonable. You know how over worked and behind you are? How many clients and customers you have screaming at you for a response? The ISP folks are at least that behind, and are generally not making near as much money as you are. Don’t open a ticket, then send an email to the guy you met at that conference and then open an IM conversation with him. Give them a chance to get back to you before escalating
  5. Be pleasant. Social lubrication is a good thing, keep it light. Again, most of us who do this are incredibly busy. “Hi, How are you, do you have a minute” is a great opening line. “Hey, what’s the new law in CA say?” is less so.  If they are open to a bit of chatter then that’s great, if they say they are busy ask your question and get out.
  6. SAY THANK YOU. This is especially true when you’re escalating something and using a personal contact. Thank them for helping you. It’s even nice to send a (very brief) followup once your customer or client has fixed whatever the problem was. “Thanks for your help the other day. Your information helped me to convince client to do X, and now they are getting good inbox delivery.”

Consistency is key to establishing a personal reputation that you are someone who is both pleasant to deal with, trustworthy and not going to waste their time.

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The delivery communication gap

There seems to be a general uptick in the number of specific questions that ESPs and commercial senders are asking recently. I’m getting them from clients, and I’m hearing similar stories from my various contacts over on the ISP side. The questions cover a wide range of areas in email delivery, but the underlying issue is really that there are no real fixed rules about email delivery anymore. The only rule is “send mail users want to receive” and there are no specific guidelines to how to do that.
This is frustrating for a lot of people. They want to know exactly how many complaints they need to stay under. They want to know what “engagement” means and how exactly the ISPs are measuring it. They want to know all of the metrics they need to meet in order to get mail to the inbox.
There is a lot of frustration among senders because they’re not getting the answers they think they need and they feel like the ISPs aren’t listening to them.
Likewise there is a lot of frustration among ISPs because they’re giving answers but they feel like they’re not being heard.
Some of the problem is truly a language difference. A lot of delivery people on the ESP side are marketers first and technologists second. They don’t have operational experience. They don’t have that any feel for the technology behind email and can’t map different failure modes onto their causes. Some of them don’t have any idea how email works under the covers. Likewise, a lot of postmaster people are technologists. They deeply understand their customers and their email servers and don’t speak marketing.
The other issue is the necessary secrecy. Postmasters have been burned in the past and so they have to be vague about what variables they are measuring and how they are weighting them.
All of this leads to a very adversarial environment.
I’ve been talking with a lot of people about this and none of us have any real answers to the solution. Senders say the ISPs should spend more time explaining to the senders what they need to do. ISPs say the senders should stop sending spam.
Am I quite off base here? Is there no communication gap? Am I just cynical and missing some obvious solution? Anyone have any suggestions on how to solve the issue?

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State of the Industry

Over the last few weeks I’ve had a series of posts on the blog from various authors who are active in the email space.
I posted A very young industry commenting on the lack of experience among email marketers. I think that some of the conflict between ISPs and ESPs and receivers and marketers can be traced back to this lack of longevity and experience. Often there is only a single delivery expert at a company. These people often have delivery responsibilities dropped on them without any real training or warning. They have to rely on outside resources to figure out how to do their job and often that means leaning on ISPs for training.
JD Falk described how many at ISPs feel about this in his post With great wisdom…

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Deliverability versus delivery

Deliverability is a term so many people use every day, but what do we really mean when we use it? Is there an accepted definition of deliverability? Is the concept different than delivery?
At a recent conference I was running a session talking about email delivery, senders and the roles senders play in the email industry and at that particular organization. The discussion went on for a while, and the subject of deliverability versus delivery came up. J.D. Falk had a comment about the difference that resonated with me. Paraphrased, he said:

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