Return Path released an white paper today offering the Secrets of Successful Senders. I don’t think any of my readers will be surprised that it boils down to identity, reputation, and engagement. Return Path treats these as separate things and I understand why they do. I think however, that the identity and reputation are supporting players to the overarching issue of engagement.
When I’m dealing with clients and troubleshooting deliverability problems and offering solutions, I focus on the root cause. To me the root cause is almost always a data problem. Either there’s a problem with data collection or there’s a problem with data maintenance. These problems result in mail going to people who don’t really want or care about it.
Yes, identity is important. But, realistically, anyone mailing through a decent ESP has SPF and DKIM in place, at least on some level. There may be better ways to authenticate, but the boxes are checked.
Yes, reputation is important. But here’s the thing, reputation just means that the ISP knows how users are going to react to an email. Reputation isn’t some nebulous concept made up by ISPs. It’s an actual measurement. It quantifies the history of an IP or a domain or a mail stream and says we know that this IP sends wanted mail. We know that this domain sends mail our users ignore. It’s a history. Past performance does indicate future results.
Identity says who a sender is. Reputation tells us that sender’s history of sending. Those are the two factors that enable ISPs to make delivery decisions. Mail comes in and the ISP looks at it. They use identity to determine what reputation to assign to a mail. Reputation drives delivery, whether into the inbox or the bulk folder.
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