Are you blocking yourself?

One thing that catches me up with clients sometimes is their own spam filters block their own content. It happens. In some cases the client is using an appliance. The client’s reputation is bad enough that the appliance actually blocks mail. Often these clients have no idea they are blocking their own mail, until we try and send them something and the mail is rejected.
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Typically, the issue is their domains are the problem. We mention the domains in email, and the filters do what filters do. We work around this by abbreviating the domains or calling, it’s not a big deal.
It’s a great demonstration of content filters, though. The content (the client’s domain) is blocked even when it comes from an IP with a good reputation. In fact, with Gmail I can often tell “how bad” a domain reputation is. Most mail I send from WttW to my gmail address goes to the inbox, even when the client is reporting bulk foldering at Gmail. But every once in a while a domain has such a bad reputation that any mail mentioning that domain goes to bulk.
Most folks in the deliverability space know the big players in the filtering market: Barracuda, Cloudmark, ProofPoint, etc. Those same people have no idea what filters their company uses and have never even really thought about it.
Do you know what filter your company is using to protect employees from spam?
 
 
 

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The death of IP based reputation

Back in the dark ages of email delivery the only thing that really mattered to get your email into the inbox was having a good IP reputation. If your IP sent good mail most of the time, then that mail got into the inbox and all was well with the world. All that mattered was that good IP reputation. Even better for the people who wanted to game the system and get their spam into the inbox, there were many ways to get around IP reputation.
Every time the ISPs and spam filtering companies would work out a way to block spam using IP addresses, spammers would figure out a way around the problem. ISPs started blocking IPs so spammers moved to open relays. Filters started blocking open relays, so spammers moved to open proxies. Filters started blocking mail open proxies so spammers created botnets. Filters started blocking botnets, so spammers started stealing IP reputation by compromising ESP and ISP user accounts.  Filters were constantly playing catchup with the next new method of getting a good IP reputation, while still sending spam.
While spammers were adapting and subverting IP based filtering a number of other things were happening. Many smart people in the email space were looking at improving authentication technology. SPF was the beginning, but problems with SPF led to Domains Keys and DKIM. Now we’re even seeing protocols (DMARC) layered on top of DKIM. Additionally, the price of data storage and processing got cheaper and data mining software got better.
The improvement in processing power, data mining and data storage made it actually feasible for ISPs and filtering companies to analyze content at standard email delivery speeds. Since all IPv4 addresses are now allocated, most companies are planning for mail services to migrate to IPv6. There are too many IPv6 IPss to rely on IP reputation for delivery decisions.
What this means is that in the modern email filtering system, IPs are only a portion of the information filters look at when making delivery decisions. Now, filters look at the overall content of the email, including images and URLs. Many filters are even following URLs to confirm the landing pages aren’t hosting malicious software, or isn’t content that’s been blocked before. Some filters are looking at DNS entries like nameservers and seeing if those nameservers are associated with bad mail. That’s even before we get to the user feedback, in the form of “this is spam” or “this is not spam” clicks, which now seem to affect both content, domain and IP reputation.
I don’t expect IP reputation to become a complete non-issue. I think it’s still valuable data for ISPs and filters to evaluate as part of the delivery decision process. That being said, IP reputation is so much less a guiding factor in good email delivery than it was 3 or 4 years ago. Just having an IP with a great reputation is not sufficient for inbox delivery. You have to have a good IP reputation and good content and good URLs.
Anyone who wants good email delivery should consider their IP reputation, but only as one piece of the delivery strategy. Focusing on a great IP reputation will not guarantee good inbox delivery. Look at the whole program, not just a small part of it.

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Horses, not zebras

I was first introduced to the maxim “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras” when I worked in my first molecular biology lab 20-some-odd years ago. I’m no longer a gene jockey, but I still find myself applying this to troubleshooting delivery problems for clients.
It’s not that I think all delivery problems are caused by “horses”, or that “zebras” never cause problems for email delivery. It’s more that there are some very common causes of delivery problems and it’s a more effective use of time to address those common problems before getting into the less common cases.
This was actually something that one of the mailbox provider reps said at M3AAWG in SF last month. They have no problem with personal escalations when there’s something unusual going on. But, the majority of issues can be handled through the standard channels.
What are the horses I look for with delivery problems.

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Content is the new volume!

I’m having a great time here at #EEC16. Today is my visit and go to sessions day, since tomorrow I’m speaking at 2 different sessions.
I was lucky enough to get into the Customer Experience session presented by Carey Kegel of SmartPak and Loren McDonald of IBM Marketing Cloud. It was an interesting session.
If you don’t know, SmartPak is a brand focused on selling horse tack and supplements. They initially started off by creating packs of supplements for your horse. This is great for horse owners, as it means the barn staff just needs to add one pack to your horse’s feed. No measuring, no confusion, it’s simple and means your horse gets what they need.
First they started talking about the volume of email sent by SmartPak. Their mails aren’t that consistent, but they mail between 25 and 30 emails a month. Some months last year they mailed every day.
What they started seeing, though, is that the volume of marketing mail drove list churn. The biggest reason users gave for unsubscribing was “too much volume.” The more mail they sent, the more unsubscribes they saw. Even worse, more volume did not translate into revenue. As email volume went up, email performance decreased.
They tested adding content to emails. Just a block on the side of the email with links to content on their website. Adding the content links increased click through rates by 9% and revenue per email by 15%.
These results don’t require the content be in the emails. Using emails to drive recipients to already existing content on the website, including videos and surveys.
The session didn’t specifically discuss deliverability directly, but I think there were some clear deliverability benefits to content marketing.  In fact, an email with no call to action, simply a post-purchase “what to expect” email had an open rate of 33%. These types of open rates help improve overall reputation and lead to more inbox deliveries.

The session really drove home how valuable content marketing is. One thing that was continually repeated during the session is that most marketers have the content already. Use email to drive users to the content you already have. Include that content in marketing mails. Meet the recipient’s needs and wants.
There are a couple takeaways I got from the session.

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