Broken record…

The Return Path In the Know blog listed 4 reasons mailing those old addresses is a bad idea.
Ashley, the author, is completely right and I endorse everything she said. (Although I’d really like to hear what happened to the customer that added back all those addresses. What was the effect on that campaign and future email marketing?) As I was reading the article though, I realized how many times this has been said and how depressing it is that we have to say it again. And again. And again.
A number of folks have told me that the reason they don’t pay any attention to delivery professionals is because we don’t provide enough real data. They can show that sending mail to old addresses costs them nothing, and makes them real money.
That’s not really true, though. We do provide data, they just don’t like it so they don’t listen to it. Return Path publishes lots of numbers showing that mailing unengaged recipients lowers overall delivery. I can provide case studies and data but companies that are committed to sending as much mail as possible throw up many reasons why our data isn’t good or valid.
The biggest argument is that they want hard numbers. I do understand this. Numbers are great. Direct and clear answers are wonderful. But delivery is a squishy science. There are a lot of inputs and a lot of modifiers and sometimes we can’t get exactly one answer. The data is noisy, and difficult to replicate. One of the reasons is that filtering is a moving target. Filters are not, and cannot be, fixed. They are adaptive and are changing even between one hour and the next.
Delivery experts are about risk management. They are the parents requiring everyone in the car wear seat belts, even though the driver has never had an accident. They are the fire department enforcing fire codes, even though it’s the rainy season.
Risk management isn’t about the idea that bad things will absolutely happen but rather that it is more likely that a bad thing will happen in some cases.
In this case, it’s more likely that delivery problems will happen when mailing old addresses. And if those addresses aren’t actively contributing to revenue, it’s hard to argue that their presence on a list is more beneficial than their absence.
But I repeat myself. Again.

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The other one is a bit more interesting. The error message a lot of people are seeing is 554/421 RLY:SN. Senders should only be getting this error message when they are sending email from a banned address.

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Data hygiene

I talk about data hygiene with clients a lot. In my experience, poor data hygiene is the number one reason that legitimate, permission based marketing ends up in the junk folder. Too many marketers don’t remove abandoned addresses from their mailing lists. As the abandoned addresses build up, eventually the list accumulates enough zombie addresses that it looks similar to a spammer’s list.
I’ve talked in depth about zombie accounts previously (part 1, part 2, part 3, apocalypse) and they talk a lot more about why we have zombies accounts and why they’re just starting to be a bigger issue for marketers. Not only are we just starting to hit critical mass with zombie accounts, but ISPs are really starting to weigh engagement in their delivery decisions. Zombie accounts are not engaged with mail. Heck, they’re not even engaged with their own email addresses.
Many marketers, though, hate the idea of data hygiene. They hate thinking about losing a potential customer. They can show me numbers that say someone didn’t open an email for 18 months and then spent hundreds of dollars on a purchase. Or they can tell me that 10% of their revenue came from people who hadn’t opened an email in more than 12 months.
I don’t want to take those subscribers away from you, the ones who are engaged with your brand or your mail in some un-trackable way. But I do want to stop the zombies from eating your delivery.

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What's the best ESP?

I often get clients and potential clients asking me to tell them what the absolute best ESP is.
“You’re an expert in the field, which ESP will give me the best inbox delivery?”
The thing is, there isn’t an answer to that question.
ESPs have expertise in sending large amounts of mail.  All have staff that manage and monitor MTAs. Most have staff that provide advice on delivery issues. Many have staff that handle abuse complaints, FBLs and blocks.
What they don’t have is magic delivery fairies or bat phones into postmaster desks.
Simply moving mail to an ESP won’t give you delivery. For the most part, delivery is the responsibility of the sender, whether they send mail through an in house system or through an ESP.
Delivery is primarily about how recipients react to a particular mail stream. Send mail recipients want, interact with and relate to and you usually see good delivery. The IP addresses or infrastructure contribute but do not dominate the equation. Sending from an ESP won’t fix poor content, irrelevant mail or unengaged recipients.
I can hear everyone now shouting at their screen “What about shared IPs!!!?!?!” Yes, yes, if you use an ESP with shared IP addresses and the ESP gets a bad customer you may see poor delivery for a time because one of their other customers was bad. It’s a fact, it happens. Plus, if you use an ESP with dedicated IPs and the ESP gets a bad customer you may see poor delivery for a time because one of the other customers was bad and their IP is near yours.
So clearly the answer is to bring email in house. That way no other company can affect your delivery, right? Yes. Kinda.
Are you willing to invest money in hiring email and DNS savvy sysadmins? Invest money in a MTA designed to handle bulk mail? Invest in an expert who not only understands bounce handling, but can explain to your developers what a good bounce handling system must do? Invest in someone who can manage authentication like DKIM? Who can handle delivery issues and understands how to talk to ISPs? Invest in development to write a FBL processor?
For some companies, the internal investment is the right answer, and bringing mail in house makes business sense.
For a lot of companies, though, they just want to use email to communicate with customers. They don’t want to have to invest in multiple staff members (as it’s very rare to find a single person with all the various skill sets needed) to just send a weekly newsletter, or daily sales email. They need a tool that works, they don’t need to know how to sign up for a FBL, they don’t need to know how to handle bounces. They can outsource that work and focus on the communication value.
Finding the best ESP starts with finding out how you want to use email.
Question 1: What role does email play in my business?

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