We gave you a chance…

Our formerly feral cat was diagnosed with hyperthyroid disease earlier this year. This week she went in for treatment with radioactive iodine. Now that she’s home, we have some minor safety precautions (mostly around keeping radiation out of landfills and minimizing our exposure) for the next 2 weeks.
MC_forBlog
In previous careers, both Steve and I have been licensed to work with radioactivity so we’ve been swapping stories. Today I remembered an incident recounted during training. One lab had ordered some radioisotope and then mistakenly thrown out the isotope with the packaging material. An honest, but very expensive, mistake. Part of the fix was to have all radiation orders go through a central office on campus. This office would handle the opening and recording of the material and then distributing it to the appropriate research lab. As Steve put it, “We trusted you but you messed up, so now we have to institute some controls.”
This actually is how a lot of email compliance is done, too. Companies are allowed to do what they’re going to do. If they do something bad, even by mistake, there is often a lot of expensive cleanup. After the cleanup, the network (either the ESP or ISP) puts in place processes to limit the chance of this kind of mistake in the future.
In the email space the processes usually involves a couple things. First, the sender needs to change their acquisition process. This change limits the bad addresses getting onto a list in the future. Second, the sender needs to address the bad part of their current list. This often involves purging and/or re-engaging non-responsive addresses.
The fixes are painful for everyone involved. But when cleanup is expensive, prevention is important.

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Where do subscribers come from?

Do you know all the ways subscribers can get on your lists?
Are you sure?
I recently used the contact form belonging to a marketing company to inform them that someone had stolen my email address from their database and I was receiving spam to the address only they had.
They had an opt-out link on the form, allowing me to opt-out of personal contact and a demo of their product. But that opt-out didn’t translate to not adding me to their marketing list.
When I contacted the person who was talking with me about the address leak, he told me it was the contact form that led to my address ending up on their marketing list. I asked, just to make sure, if I did remember to check the opt-out link. He confirmed I had, but there was an oversight when they updated their contact page and there was no opt-out for marketing mail.
I believe that the majority of delivery problems for real companies that “only send mail with permission” come from these types of oversights. The biggest problem with these oversights is how long they can go on until companies notice the effect. With the overall  focus on aggregate delivery statistics (complaint rates, bounces, etc) oversights like this aren’t noticed until they cause some massive problem, like a SBL listing or a block at a major ISP.
The company involved in this most recent incident was very responsive to my contact and immediately corrected the oversight. But there are other companies that don’t notice or respond to the notifications individuals send. This leads to resentment and frustration on the part of the recipient.
Every company should have at least one person who can account for every address on their marketing list. Who is that person at your company?
 

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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.

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Technology does not trump policy when it comes to delivery

Recently Ken Magill wrote an article looking at how an ESP was attempting to sell him services based on the ESPs ‘high deliverability rates.’ I commented that Ken was right, and I still think he is.
Ken has a followup article today. In the first part he thanks Matt Blumberg from Return Path for posting a thoughtful blog post on the piece. Matt did have a very thoughtful article, pointing out that the vast majority of things affecting delivery are under the control of the list owner, not under the control of the ESP. As they are both right, I clearly agree with them. I’ve also posted about reputation and delivery regularly.

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