First step in delivery

Ever trawl through your logs and notice that there is a delivery problem somewhere? I’m sure everyone sending email in any volume has.
What’s the first thing you do when you discover a block?

A: Decide that something broke on your end and set about trying to figure out what you did to trigger the block.

B: Decide that something broke on the ISP end and set about trying to find a human to fix it.

C: Unsub the recipients and stop mailing that domain.

D: Decide it’s a temporary failure. Wait and see if it happens again.

E: Call a delivery specialist or Return Path or your ESP to demand they pick up the bat phone.

F: Dig through cards you acquired at MAAWG and contact some random person at that ISP for help.

G: Run around in circles wildly.

H: Ask every other ESP you know if they are being blocked too.

What are your first steps when you discover a block?

OOPS!
Hunting the Human Representative

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We're gonna party like it's 1996!

Over on deliverability.com Dela Quist has a long blog post up talking about how changes to Hotmail and Gmail’s priority inbox are a class action suit waiting to happen.
All I can say is that it’s all been tried before. Cyberpromotions v. AOL started the ball rolling when they tried to use the First Amendment to force AOL to accept their unsolicited email. The courts said No.
Time goes on and things change. No one argues Sanford wasn’t spamming, he even admitted as much in his court documents. He was attempting to force AOL to accept his unsolicited commercial email for their users. Dela’s arguments center around solicited mail, though.
Do I really think that minor difference in terminology going to change things?
No.
First off “solicited” has a very squishy meaning when looking at any company, particularly large national brands. “We bought a list” and “This person made a purchase from us” are more common than any email marketer wants to admit to. Buying, selling and assuming permission are par for the course in the “legitimate” email marketing world. Just because the marketer tells me that I solicited their email does not actually mean I solicited their email.
Secondly, email marketers don’t get to dictate what recipients do and do not want. Do ISPs occasionally make boneheaded filtering decisions? I’d be a fool to say no. But more often than not when an ISP blocks your mail or filters it into the bulk folder they are doing it because the recipients don’t want that mail and don’t care that it’s in the bulk folder. Sorry, much of the incredibly important marketing mail isn’t actually that important to the recipient.
Dela mentions things like bank statements and bills. Does he really think that recipients are too stupid to add the from address to their address books? Or create specific filters so they can get the mail they want? People do this regularly and if they really want mail they have the tools, provided by the ISP, to make the mail they want get to where they want it.
Finally, there is this little law that protects ISPs. 47 USC 230 states:

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Amendment is futile, part 2

When Yahoo filed for dismissal of the Holomaxx complaint, they ended the motion with “Amendment would be futile in this case.” The judge granted Yahoo’s motion but did grant Holomaxx leave to amend. Holomaxx filed an amended complaint earlier this month.
The judge referenced a couple specific deficiencies of Holomaxx’s claims in his dismissal.

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It's not illegal to block mail

My post “We’re going to party like it’s 1996” is still getting a lot of comments from people. Based on the comments, either people aren’t reading or my premise wasn’t clear.
Back in 1996 the first lawsuits were brought against ISPs to stop ISPs from blocking email. These suits were failures. Since that time, other senders have attempted to sue ISPs and lost. Laws have been written protecting the rights of the ISPs to block content they deem to be harmful.
Dela says that he was just attempting to open up a conversation, but I don’t see what he thinks the  conversation is. That ISPs shouldn’t block mail their customers want? Sure, OK. We’re agreed on that. Now, define what mail recipients want. I want what mail I want, not what someone else decides I might want.
Marketers need to get over the belief that they own end users mailboxes and that they have some right to send mail to people. You don’t.
When marketers actually start sending wanted mail, to people who actually subscribe – not just make a purchase, or register online or happen to have an easily discoverable email address – then perhaps marketers will have some standing to claim they are being treated illegally. Until and unless that happens, the ISPs are well within their rights to block mail that their users don’t want.

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