Monetizing the complaint stream

What if ESPs (and ISPs, for that matter) started charging users for every complaint generated? Think of it like peak pricing for electricity. In California, businesses can opt for discounted power, with the agreement that they are the first companies shut off if electrical demand exceeds supply. What if ESPs and ISPs offered discounted hosting rates to bulk senders who agreed to pay per complaint?
I see pricing scheme something like this.

  • $5.00 per FBL message.
  • $50 for a hand written complaint.
  • $150 for a  report of a spamtrap hit.
  • $500 for an ISP temporary block.
  • $10K for a major blacklisting (SBL, other filtering company).
  • $5K per customer if the blacklisting affects other customers’ ability to send.

ESPs could give a threshold of complaints that are covered. For instance, every per-complaint customer gets 0.05% of their total volume in free FBL complaints. Hand written complaints they get one or two every billing cycle, not to exceed 12 complaints a year. 6 spam trap hits a year. There is a bit of grace in the handling. I can think of lots of ways to make this sender friendly.

Benefits to the Sender

Good senders benefit because they get lower rates and don’t risk much in the way of complaint related expenses. They don’t have to pay that hidden compliance fee that all ESPs customers currently pay.
Senders with more aggressive email programs benefit because they’re able to shoulder the risks associated with those programs directly. The ESP has less to say about buying or renting lists because instead of the ESP paying the cost of problems, the customer assumes that cost. Even better, the sender can pass the compliance cost back onto their list vendor. Imagine being able to tell a vendor they have to discount a list based on the number of complaints or delivery problems. Instead of the vendor selling a list with no incentive for that list to perform well, the vendor now has an incentive to make sure those opt-in addresses really are opt-in.

Benefits to the ESP

The ESP benefits because no longer is their abuse and compliance desk a cost center. With the right mix of clients it may even become a profit center. Plus, the compliance desk is guaranteed to be funded at a rate that covers the work needed to maintain a reasonable delivery rate for customers. The ESP can stop spending so much time telling customers they can’t do something and more time raking in the cash.
It’s a total win for everyone.
Monetize complaints. It’s the future of email.

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Gmail pilots new FBL

Yes, it’s true. Gmail announced last Thursday at M3AAWG that they were piloting a new Feedback loop.
The Gmail FBL is currently for ESPs only. The announcement during MAAWG was that only MAAWG ESP members were eligible. They are requiring a DKIM signature for the FBL, but ESPs using individual customer d= values can get a FBL based on IPs. They are also not providing ANY information that reveals the complainer. Gmail’s intention is only to give ESPs feedback so that ESPs can prevent abuse. They are not giving feedback so complainers can be removed.
The email has a .csv attachment that has 3 columns: date, identifier and complaint rate.
The identifier is an ESP provided customer identifier. One of the ESPs I talked to said they were adding an X-header into their emails.
I’ve heard from beta testers that there is a minimum of 100 complaints before you’ll get any report.
Reports are sent daily if there is sufficient traffic to trigger them.
If you’re a MAAWG member, check the senders list for the signup URL.

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Do you have an abuse@ address?

I’ve mentioned multiple times before that I really don’t like using personal contacts until and unless the published or official channels fail. I don’t hold this opinion just about resolving delivery issues, but also use official channels when reporting spam to one of my addresses or spam traps.
My usual complaints contain a plain text copy of the mail, including full headers and a short summary of the email address it was sent to. “This is an address that was part of a leak from…” or “This is an address scraped off my website. It’s been removed from the website since 2004” or “This address isn’t used to sign up for any mail.”
Sadly, there are a number of “legitimate” ESPs that don’t have or don’t monitor their abuse address. In some cases it’s an oversight or a break down of internal mail handling. But in most cases, it’s a sign that the ESP doesn’t actually handle abuse.
It’s frustrating to watch an ESP post long blog posts about “best practices” and “effective delivery” and “not spamming” and yet not be able to actually stop their own customers from spamming. It’s not even that I necessarily want them to disconnect their spamming customers (although that would be nice) but suppressing the address that I’ve told them was a spamtrap seems trivial. And yet, a month after my first complaint and weeks after escalating to a personal contact, I’m still getting spam.
The 5 things every ESP should do to handle spam complaints.

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Sendgrid's open letter to Gmail

Paul Kincaid-Smith wrote an open letter to Gmail about their experiences with the Gmail FBL and how the data from Gmail helped Sendgrid find problem customers.
I know a lot of folks are frustrated with Gmail not returning more than statistics, but there is a place for this type of feedback within a comprehensive compliance desk.

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