Looking forward

I had a number of very good talks with folks at the Email Innovations Summit earlier this week. I’m still digesting it all. It’s clear that getting to the inbox isn’t a solved problem. Around a decade ago I figured that the explosion of complaint feedback loops would make my job obsolete. That more data would mean anyone could manage delivery. That’s not the case for a couple reasons. The biggest is that filters don’t look just at complaints and there aren’t FBLs for all the other factors.
For whatever reason, many companies are still struggling with delivery.
Even more interesting is how changes in filters and inboxes are making it harder to measure delivery.   In some ways I feel like we’re losing ground on inbox measurement. Filters changes and will keep changing, both to address emerging threats and to meet the needs and wants of subscribers. Gone are the days where  Panels have their problems. Seed lists have their problems.  There’s a longer blog post here, but it’s nearly the weekend and I’ve had a long week.
Hope you have something great planned.

 

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Email is a fluid and ever changing landscape of things to do and not do.
Over the years my clients have frequently asked me to look at their technical setup and make sure that how they send mail complies with best practices. Previously, this was a good way to improve delivery. Spamware was pretty sloppy and blocking for somewhat minor technical problems was a great way to block a lot of spam.
More recently filter maintainers have been able to look at more than simple technical issues. They can identify how a recipient interacts with the mail. They can look at broad patterns, including scanning the webpages an email links to.
In short, email filters are very sophisticated and really do measure “wanted” versus “unwanted” down to the individual subscriber levels.
I will happily do technology audits for clients. But getting the technology right isn’t sufficient to get good delivery. What you really need to consider is: am I sending email that the recipient wants? You can absolutely get away with sloppy technology and have great inbox delivery as long as you are actually sending mail your recipients want to receive.
The perfect email is no longer measured in how perfectly correct the technology is. The perfect email is now measured by how perfect it is for the recipient.

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