Reading between the lines

laura
Industry
July 1, 2017

Reading between the lines an important skill in deliverability.
Why? Over the last few years there’s been an increasing amount of collaboration between deliverability folks at ESPs and ISPs. This is great. It’s a vast improvement on how things were 10 years ago. However, there are still ongoing complaints from both sides. There probably always will be. And it’s not like a blog post from me is going to fix anything. But I see value in talking a bit about how we can improve our ability to collaborate with one another.

Can’t say officially

When we’re addressing deliverability issues, we’re often dealing with representatives of large corporate entities. Most of the widely used filters and blocklists are subsidiaries of large companies. The big exception is Spamhaus, but even they have rules and processes on releasing data. Every participant in the conversation has internal processes and directives to follow.
In some cases an employee is not authorized to release information even though that information isn’t secret or private. We often have meetings, where some employees are sharing data about how filters work without their PR department approving every bit of the statement. A few years ago I asked someone who’d just finished on a panel if the information they shared could be shared outside the room. They looked me in the eye and said, “I really wish you wouldn’t ask me that, as I have to then go talk to people if you do.”
OK. Message Received. Loud and Clear.
This is only one example, in a long line of examples, where ISP reps have made statements about their systems without direct attribution. I’m sure astute readers read between my lines in these kinds of cases.

Lawyers are involved

Twenty years ago, when I first started fighting spam, there was a community of folks who fought spam. Many of them, like me, started because we were trying to defend our inboxes. Other folks in the community actually handled abuse@ for some of the ISPs. Brian Williams wrote about a lot of the personalities in Spam Kings. There wasn’t anything called deliverability then. There weren’t postmaster pages and FBLs. We were just a group of people trying to fight spam and protect our mailboxes.
Things are significantly different now. Filtering is a formal part of ISP product development. Twenty years of case history proves filtering is legal, but some folks will still sue for filtering. How an ISP communicates their filtering has legal implications. Thus, the lawyers stepped in.
In practical terms the legal oversight restrains responses. I know that legal teams participate in complaint and customer handling processes a ESPs and ISPs. There is a process and process must be followed. In some companies, legal approves communications individually. In other companies they dictate language and boilerplates.
Legal oversight means we sometimes have to read between the lines on boilerplates and responses. The ISP reps may not be able to give us the actual information, but they may also drop broad hints that can lead us to the right solution. Sometimes the boilerplates specifically say things like “we see no problems with your mail delivery.” Often senders read this and wonder why the mail is going to bulk. Deliverability experts must read between the lines and know this means more work to get to the inbox.

Privacy policies apply

Sharing customer information is a violation of most privacy policies. This includes an abuse desk explaining the actions taken against a customer. Back in the community era, abuse@ often sent personal replies to complaints. One abuse person, in particular, was famous for entertaining descriptions of how the spammer was handled. There’s no way they could do this now. I kinda miss the community, but the change reflects how critical the Internet is and how important it for commercial use.
As abuse@ I often dealt with complainants who asked for the full legal information of a customer. I know that current abuse@ reps still get those requests. I couldn’t, and they can’t, give out customer information to third parties. In many cases this is good, we don’t want random employees deciding that customer privacy isn’t important. Doxxing is an issue and is a problem, and we don’t want to contribute to that. On the other hand, when I’m vetting a customer, contact data and history are useful bits of information.
The struggle between sharing warnings and protecting customer privacy is real. Many of us in the deliverability and abuse spaces are good at leaving hints and bread crumbs. If a company or spammer comes up in discussion we might find a couple public sources of information and share them. We have to write between the lines, as well as read between them.

Silence is an answer

The biggest challenge with reading between the lines is when there are no lines, when there is no answer at all. Silence is an answer. Actually, silence is many answers, depending on context.
For instance, sometimes the answer is no. The ISP can’t provide all the information you’re asking for, so they just don’t answer at all. It’s a defensive mechanism. Too many people think a no answer is the start of a negotiation. It’s not.
In other cases the asker has worn out their welcome. What typically happens is a client demands specifics and the deliverability rep reaches out. The client keeps pushing back on deliverability. Deliverability keeps reaching out to the ISP. Eventually, the ISP doesn’t answer. No one is happy. The client’s upset. Deliverability is stuck. The ISP is irritated.
Silence happens to me, as well. Clients want to hear the problems and solutions directly from the ISP or filtering company. But if the ISP isn’t answering, it’s my job to interpret that silence. I contextualize the lack of a response and provide action items for the client.

It’s a skill

Reading between the lines is a skill we can all learn. It’s also something we need to practice regularly. This post doesn’t cover all the ways we speak in code to each other. But I hope it helps readers realize how critical it is in our industry.

Truth, myths and realities

For a long time it was a known fact that certain ISPs recycled abandoned addresses into spamtraps. There were long discussions by senders about this process and how it happened. Then at a conference a few years ago representatives of ISPs got up and announced that they do not recycle addresses. This led to quite a bit of consternation about how deliverability folks were making things up and were untrustworthy and deceptive.

In the early 2000’s ISPs were throwing a lot of things at the wall to deal with mail streams that were 80 – 90% bulk. They tried many different things to try and tame volumes that were overwhelming infrastructure. ISPs did try recycled traps. I know, absolutely know, two did. I am very sure that others did, too, but don’t have specific memories of talking to specific people about it.
At that time, a lot of deliverability knowledge was shared through word of mouth. That turned into a bit of an oral history. The problem with oral history is that context and details get lost. We can use the story of the ISP that did/did not recycle traps as an example.
Deliverability folks talk about an ISP that recycles traps. They don’t mention how often it happens. Some folks make the assumption that this is an ongoing process. It’s not, but anyone who knows it’s not risks violating confidences if they correct it. Besides, if senders believe it’s an ongoing process maybe they’ll be better behaved. Eventually, the story becomes all ISPs recycle traps all the time. This is our “fact” that’s actually a myth.
Then an ISP employee goes to a conference an definitively states they don’t recycle traps. I believe he stated the truth as he knows it to be. That ISP moved on from recycled traps to other kinds of traps because there were better ways to monitor spam.
We were talking about this on one of the deliverability lists and I told another story.
[ISP] recycled addresses once – back when JD was there which must have been, oh, around 2005/6 or so. I heard this directly from JD. It wasn’t done again, but a whole bunch of people just assumed it was an ongoing thing. Since my knowledge was a private conversation between JD and me, I never felt comfortable sharing the information. Given the circumstances, I’ve decided it’s OK to start sharing that end of the story a little more freely.
No one set out to create a myth, it just happened. No one intended to mislead. But sometimes it happens.

January 2017: The Month in Email

Between client work and our national political climate, it’s been a very busy month around here and blogging has been light. Things show no sign of slowing down in February, so we’d love to hear from you with questions and suggestions of what you’d most like to see us focus on in our limited blogging time this month. We got a great question about how senders can access their Google Postmaster tools, and I wrote up a guide that you might find useful.

We’re also revisiting some older posts on often-requested topics, such as spamtraps, so feel free to comment below if there are topics you’d like us to address or update. One topic that comes up frequently, both on the blog and in our consulting practice, is about what to do when you’re on a blocklist. I revisited an old-but-still-relevant post on that topic as well.
On the Best Practices front, I wrote about how brands can use multiple channels to connect with customers and prospective customers to promote and enhance email delivery. I also took a moment to look back over 2016 and forward to 2017 in the realm of email security.
I continue to be annoyed by B2B spam, and have started responding to those “requests” for my time directly. Steve also wrote a long post about B2B spam, focusing on how these spammers are using Google and Amazon to try to work around reputation issues.
In case you missed it, I contributed some thoughts to a discussion on 2017 email trends over at Freshmail with my exhortation to “Make 2017 the year you turn deliverability into a KPI.”
I’m also still in the process of completing my 2017 speaking schedule, so I’m looking for any can’t-miss conferences and events you’d recommend. Thanks for keeping in touch!

You can't always get what you want

It’s a problem anyone who has done any delivery work has faced. There’s a client who is having blocklist problems or ISP delivery problems and they won’t pay any attention to what you say. They insist that you talk to the blocklist or the ISP or hand over contacts directly so they can “dialog with” someone internally. They don’t like what they’re hearing, and they hope that the answer will be different if they find a new person to talk to.
The reality is many of the people at ISPs and blocklists don’t want to talk to these types of senders. They may answer a friendly question from someone they know and trust, but sometimes not even then.
Some very large ISPs and major blocklists don’t even take sender questions. They won’t communicate with anyone about any delivery issues.
I’ve had to tell more than a few clients recently that various ISPs and blocklists weren’t interested in helping those clients with their delivery problems. There are two classes of reactions I get from clients. Some clients focus on moving forward. “OK, now what? How can we identify the issue, what data do we have and how can we figure out what the problem is?”
Other clients continue to look for ways to talk to whomever is blocking their mail. They’re convinced if they can just “explain their business model” or be told what they’re doing wrong, that all their delivery problems will magically disappear.
Needless to say those clients who focus on moving forward and looking at the information they do have have much better success resolving their delivery problems. What many senders don’t understand is the wealth of data they have that will help them resolve the issue. And even if they know it’s buried in their files, they don’t always know where to start looking or even what they’re looking for.
But that is, of course, why you hire someone like me who understands spamfiltering and email. I help senders understand how email filters work and identify what parts of their programs are likely to be responsible for delivery issues. I often find the most valuable service I provide to clients is a fresh set of eyes that can see the forest. With my help, they manage to stop obsessing unproductively about one particular symptom and focus on the underlying problems.
Senders who think the holy grail of problem resolution is speaking to the right person at an ISP or blocklist generally are disappointed, even when they hire someone who knows all the right people at the ISPs. They can’t always get what they want. But I can often help them get what they need.