The source of deliverability problems

Most deliverability problems don’t start where many people think they do. So very often people call looking for deliverability help and tell me all about the things they’re doing to reach the inbox. They’ll tell me about content, they’ll tell me about bounces, they’ll talk about complaints, engagement, opens and clicks. Rarely will they bring up their list source without some prompting on my part.
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The reality is, though, that list source is to root of deliverability success and deliverability problems. Where did those addresses come from and what do the people who gave them think you’re going to do with them?
Outsourcing collection to a third party can cause significant issues with delivery. Letting other people collect addresses on your behalf means you lack control over the process. And if you’re paying per address, then there monetary incentive for that company to pad the list with bogus addresses.
Sometimes there are even issues with having your own employees collect addresses from customers. For instance, a retailer requires sales associates collect a minimum percentage of addresses from customers. The company even ties the associates’ evaluations to that percentage. Associates have an incentive to submit addresses from other customers. Or a retailer will offer a discount for an address and customers want the discount but not the mail, so they give a fake address.
All of these things can affect deliverability.
Address collection is the key to delivery, but too many companies just don’t put enough attention to how they’re collecting addresses and entering into the relationship with subscribers. This is OK for a while, and delivery of small lists collected like this can be great. But as lists grow in size, they come under greater scrutiny at the ISPs and what used to work doesn’t anymore.
The first step to diagnosing any delivery problem is to look at the list. All of the things ISP use to measure reputation measure how well you’re collecting addresses. Changing IPs or domains or content doesn’t change the reason mail is being filtered. It just means the filters have to figure out something new to key on.
Want great deliverability? Start with how you’re collecting addresses.
Want to fix deliverability? Start with how you’ve collected addresses, how you’ve stored them and how you’ve maintained them.
 

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My panels from #EEC16

I had the privilege to be a part of two panels at EEC16, with some of the best folks in the business.
The first panel was “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Deliverability, but Were Afraid to Ask.”  eec_deliv_slide
We had a lot of great audience questions.
The first question, which was awesome (and I don’t think planted) was: “What is the most important thing we can do to improve our deliverability?”
All of us had really similar answers: pay attention to your data and your acquisition. Deliverability starts with your data: good data = good deliverability, poor data = poor deliverability. How you acquire addresses is vital to any email program.
I’ve had dozens of sales calls with potential clients over the years. Most of them tell me lots of stuff about their marketing program. I hear details of engagement, data hygiene, response rates, CTRs, bounce handling. But very, very few people spontaneously tell me how they’re acquiring addresses. That’s so backwards. Start with acquiring addresses the right way. Deliverability is all in the acquisition step. Of course, you need to nurture and care for those subscribers, sent the right message at the right time and all the good things we talk about. None of that matters if you don’t start with good data.
Another question was about spamtraps. The panel had me take this one. I’ve written extensively about spamtraps and what they do and what they mean. The important thing to remember, though, is that a spamtrap is a signal. If you have spamtraps on your list, then there is a problem with your data acquisition. Somehow, people are getting addresses that do not belong to them on the list.
Spamtraps are a problem, but not for the reasons many people think they are problems. Folks get upset when their mail is blocked because of spamtraps. Blocking isn’t the only damage, though. For every spamtrap on a list that is one less responsive addresses. It’s one customer who you are not reaching. If there are spamtraps on a list, it’s likely there are deliverable addresses that don’t belong to your customers, too. These recipients are going to view that mail as spam. They didn’t sign up, they didn’t ask for it, they don’t want it. They’re going to complain, hurting your reputation. Too many of these recipients and delivery will suffer.
Spamtraps are a warning that something is wrong. That something is usually your data acquisition process.
Questions went on through the session and ranged from things like how to get mail to B2B inboxes and is there value in certification. We also had some insightful questions about authentication.
The second panel I was on was the closing keynote panel: “ISP Postmasters & Blacklist Operators: Defending Consumer Inboxes.” This was where I got to show my incoming mail chops, a bit. I was a last minute fill in for the panel and I am honored that Dennis and Len thought I could represent the incoming mail folks. It’s not like I’m out there writing filters, but I do pay attention to what the filter operators are saying and doing.
I think it is important for marketers to get a feel for what’s really going on at the ISPs. They aren’t trying to stop real mail, they’re trying to stop malicious mail. Matt from Comcast talked a lot about how marketers and ISPs share customers and the ISPs are trying to keep those customers safe and happy. Jaren discussed some of the decision making processes his company goes through deciding whether to err on the side of letting spam through or filtering good mail. Tom discussed how his blocklist works with some brands to help stop phishing attacks against those brands.
Overall, I think the session was a great success. The conference was great and I am looking forward to going back next year.
Were you at either panel? What did you think?
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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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August 2015: The month in review

It’s been a busy blogging month and we’ve all written about challenges and best practices. I found myself advocating that any company that does email marketing really must have a well-defined delivery strategy. Email is such vital part of how most companies communicate with customers and potential customers, and the delivery landscape continues to increase in complexity (see my post on pattern matching for a more abstract look at how people tend to think about filters and getting to the inbox). Successful email marketers are proactive about delivery strategy and are able to respond quickly as issues arise. Stay tuned for more from us on this topic.
I also wrote up some deliverability advice for the DNC, which I think is valuable for anyone looking at how to maintain engagement with a list over time.  It’s also worth thinking about in the context of how to re-engage a list that may have been stagnant for a while. A comment on that post inspired a followup discussion about how delivery decisions get made, and whether an individual person in the process could impact something like an election through these delivery decisions. What do you think?
As we frequently point out, “best practices” in delivery evolve over time, and all too often, companies set up mail programs and never go back to check that things continue to run properly. We talked about how to check your tech, as well as what to monitor during and after a send. Josh wrote about utilizing all of your data across multiple mail streams, which is critical for understanding how you’re engaging with your recipients, as well as the importance of continuous testing to see what content and presentation strategies work best for those recipients.
Speaking of recipients, we wrote a bit about online identity and the implications of unverified email addresses in regards to the Ashley Madison hack and cautioned about false data and what might result from the release of that data.
Steve’s in-depth technical series for August was a two-part look at TXT records — what they are and how to use them — and he explains that the ways people use these, properly and improperly, can have a real impact on your sends.
In spam news, the self-proclaimed Spam King Sanford Wallace is still spamming, despite numerous judgments against him and his most recent guilty plea this month. For anyone else still confused about spam, the FTC answered some questions on the topic. It’s a good intro or refresher to share with colleagues. We also wrote about the impact of botnets on the inbox (TL;DR version: not much. The bulk of the problem for end users continues to be people making poor marketing decisions.) In other fraud news, we wrote about a significant spearphishing case and how DMARC may or may not help companies protect themselves.

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