Filters do what we tell them

In the email space we talk about filters as if they were sentient beings. “The filters decided…” “The filters said…” This is convenient shorthand, but tends to mask that filters aren’t actually deciding or saying anything. Filters are software processes that follow rules dictated by the people who create and maintain them. The rules flow from the goals set by the mailbox provider. The mailbox provider sets goals based on what their users tell them. Users communicate what they want by how they interact with email.

What we end up with is a model where a set of people make decisions about what mail should be let in. They pass that decision on to the people who write the filters. The people who write the filters create software that evaluates email based on those goals using information collected from many places, including the endusers.
What mail should be let in is an interesting question, with answers that differ depending on the environment the filter is deployed in.
Consumer ISPs typically want to keep their users happy and safe. Their goals are to stop harmful mail like phishing, or mail containing viruses or malware. They also want to deliver mail that makes their users happy. As one ISP employee put it, “We want our users to be delighted with your mail.”
Businesses have a few other goals when it comes to filters. They, too, need filters to protect their network from malicious actors. As businesses are often directly targeted by bad actors, this is even more important. They also want to get business related email, whether that be from customers or vendors. They may want to ensure that certain records are kept and laws are followed.
Governments have another set of goals. Universities and schools have yet another set of goals. And, of course, there are folks who run their own systems for their own use.
Complicating the whole thing is that some groups have different tolerances for mistakes. For instance, many of our customers are folks dealing with being blocked by commercial filters. Therefore, we don’t run commercial filters. That does mean we see a lot of viruses and malware and rely on other strategies to stop a compromise, strategies that wouldn’t be as viable in a different environment.
Filters are built to meet specific user needs. What they do isn’t random, it’s not unknowable. They are designed to accomplished certain goals and generally they’re pretty good at what they do. Understanding the underlying goals of filters can help drive solutions to poor delivery.
Use the shorthand, talk about what filters are doing. But remember that there are people behind the filters. Those filters are constantly maintained in order to keep up with ever changing mail streams. They aren’t static and they aren’t forgotten. They are updated regularly. They are fluid, just like the mail they act on.

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Use all the channels

One of the hardest deliverability situations to address is when all mail from a certain sender is going to the bulk folder. I’ve had numerous clients come to me to address this situation over the years. Ideally, clients come to me before all their mail is going to bulk. Then we can make some tweaks and changes to their mail program, repair the reputation and then recover other addresses. We have knobs we can twist to fix things if some people are still getting messages in their inbox. We have data to measure.
When all mail is going to bulk, though, we lose access to the knobs and the data. There are zero complaints if mail is going to bulk. There are no opens or clicks, because many ISPs disable images and links in the bulk folder. Our normal “fixing reputation” tools are taken away from us.
Senders with all their mail going to bulk are faced with a profound challenge. How can they engage customers who are unengaged and who are not seeing mail at all? How can we fix deliverability when our normal tools and metrics are unavailable?
If we can get even a small percentage of recipients to go pull mail out of bulk or spam and move it to their inbox, then we’re well on our way to repairing reputation. But how can we get them to go look for the mail in the bulk folder. Recent Litmus research suggests that a significant percentage of folks regularly check their spam folder, but this isn’t always enough to repair reputation,
The question becomes how can the senders encourage recipients to go digging through their spam folder. 
This is the point where I start quizzing clients on what other channels they use to communicate with their customers. I’ll run through the whole list: social media, snail mail, push notices through apps, SMS, website popups, Facebook ads. I work with them to identify users who are engaged with their brand and brainstorm ways to get those users to look for mail.
I’m always pleased to see large brands using these strategies. Just recently Blizzard used twitter to communicate with their users about email problems. They tweeted.
BlizzardTweet
The link takes you to the Blizzard support site. Where they give specific instructions on how to whitelist mail and what mail to whitelist.

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It depends… no more

The two most hated words in deliverability. Many people ask general questions about deliverability and most experts, including myself, answer, “It depends.”
There are a lot of problems with this answer. The biggest problem is that it’s led to the impression that there are no real answers about deliverability. That because we can’t answer hypothetical questions we are really just making the answers up.
Depositphotos_53649203_original
The reason we use “it depends” is because the minute details matter when it comes to deliverability. Wether or not something will hurt or help deliverability depends on the specific implementation. Who’s doing the sending? What is their authentication setup? What IP are they using? How were the addresses collected? What is their frequency? What MTA is used? Are they linking to outside sites? Are they linking to outside services? Where are images hosted? The relevant questions go on and on and on.
I am going to stop saying it depends when answering generic deliverability questions. Instead I will be using the phrase “details matter.” Details do matter. Details are everything. Details drive deliverability.
Details Matter
The importance of details is why many deliverability people hedge their answers. The details do matter.
I will do my best to stop answering It Depends to deliverability questions. Instead, I’ll be answering with question and pointing out the details matter.
 

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Spamhaus rising?

Ken has a good article talking about how many ESPs have tightened their standards recently and are really hounding their customers to stop sending mail recipients don’t want and don’t like. Ken credits much of this change to Spamhaus and their new tools.

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