Details matter

I field a lot of delivery questions on various online fora. Often people try and anonymise what they’re asking about by abstracting out the question. The problem is that there are very few answers we can give in the abstract.

Outline of a head with a gear inside it.

What are some examples of these types of questions?

  • Should you always remove an address that hard bounces? Well, in general, yes. But there are a small number of cases where the hard bounce is a mistake on the part of the receiver and you shouldn’t remove that address.
  • Should you send email to recipients who haven’t engaged in 3 years. Well, in general, no. But I’ve seen and managed campaigns to recipients much older than that. What are you really trying to do?
  • If we limit our sending to people who’ve opted in to email, we’ll solve our spamtrap problem, right? Well, first, why do you think you have a spamtrap problem? If you’re Spamhaus listed, there’s a lot more you need to do. If you’re seeing one or two traps at the commercial sensor networks, then what’s your overall deliverability look like?
  • Why would our mail suddenly start to go to bulk? Overall, it wouldn’t. What did you change? Did your website get compromised? Have you linked to a new image server? Did you publish a DMARC record? Did you mention a domain with a bad reputation?
  • If we change the from address of our mail will it affect our deliverability? It can, but what from domain you’re talking about, what you’re changing it from and what you’re changing it to all matter before anyone can actually answer the question.

Deliverability is not a science. There are no hard and fast rules. Even the rules I wish were true, like only send opt-in mail, aren’t really hard and fast. A lot of folks get decent delivery using purchased or otherwise non-opt-in lists. I don’t like it, but I acknowledge it.

In order to get good deliverability advice for a situation the full situation needs to be described. History, specifics, IPs, and domains all matter. Where your email addresses came from and how you’ve maintained your database matters. It all matters. Abstracting out a question just means you get an abstract and generic answer, and that doesn’t help anyone.

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Looking towards the future

I had the opportunity to go to a seminar and networking event hosted by Return Path yesterday evening. The topic was “Email trends in 2012” and it was presented by Tom Sather.
If any of you get the opportunity to go to a talk presented by any of the Return Path folks I encourage you to do so. They know their stuff and their presentations are full of good information.
One of the trends mentioned is the increase in reliance on domain reputation. It’s something I’ve been thinking about more and more recently. I wrote a little bit about it recently, but have focused more on the whole realm of content filtering rather than just domain reputation.
Domain reputation is where delivery is going. And I think a lot of senders are going to struggle with delivery as they find that IP reputation is not enough to get into the inbox.
 

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ESPs and deliverability

There’s an ongoing discussion, one I normally avoid, regarding how much impact an ESP has on deliverability. Overall, my opinion is that as long as you have a half way decent ESP they have no impact on deliverability. Then I started writing an email and realised that my thoughts are more complex than that.

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Wildfires and deliverability

A few weeks ago we took a drive down I5 to attend a service at Bakersfield National Cemetery. Amid the acres and acres of almond farms there were patches of black from recent grassfires. Typical but boring California landscape. Wildfires are a hugely destructive but continual threat in California. Growing up on the east coast, I never really understood wildfires. How can acres and acres and square miles just burn?
Having lived in California for almost as long as I lived on the east coast, I understand a bit better. In some ways, I have to. Even living right on the bay, there’s still some risk of fire. Like the grass fire a few miles from here across the street from the FB headquarters a few years ago. Further up the hills, there’s an even bigger risk of fire. Every driver can see the signs and precautions. Fields have plowed firebreaks around the edges. CAL FIRE posts signs alerting the public to the current fire risk status.
Fire Danger
What do wildfires have to do with deliverability?
I associate wildfires and deliverability together because of a radio show I did a few years ago. It was pitched as a “showdown” between marketers and deliverability. I was the representative of deliverability. During the conversation, one of the marketers mentioned that deliverability people were too focused on the worst case scenario. That we spoke like we expected a fire to break out at any moment. His point was that deliverability spent too much time focused on what could happen and not enough time actually just letting marketers send mail.
His overall point was deliverability people should put out the fires, rather than trying to prevent them in the first place.
I thought about that conversation during the long drive down I5 the other day. I saw the firebreaks plowed into fields at the side of the road. And I saw the patches of blackness from fires reach along the highway where there were no firebreaks.
There are a group of marketers who really hate the entire concept of deliverability. Their point of view is that deliverability is hampering their ability to make money. I’ve even heard some of them assert they don’t care if 70% of their mail goes to the bulk folder. They should be allowed to send blasts of mail and deliverability shouldn’t tell them what they can do. Deliverability, so the complaint goes, is simply out to hurt marketers.
The only good deliverability is that which gets them unblocked when their behavior triggers IP based blocks. When the field is burning down, they’d like us to come spray water on it. And then go away and let them keep throwing lit cigarettes out their car windows.
But that’s not all that firefighting is about. Much of the work is preventing fires in the first place.  In the US, a lot of that work is done through building codes. There are mandates like smoke detectors, fuel free spaces around dwellings, and sprinklers for some buildings. Monitoring local conditions and enforcing burn bans are also a large part of what the fire service does.
I like the fire fighter motif a lot. Much of what deliverability does is actually about preventing the block. ESPs have building code like standards for what mail is good and what is bad and what can be sent on their networks. Many of us publicly speak and educate about good practices and preventing blocks in the first place.
Fire prevention is about risk management and understanding how little things add up. Deliverability is similar. All the little things senders do to improve their deliverability adds up to a lower risk of fire. Yes, things like listbombing happen where even the best deliverability advice wouldn’t have prevented it. But, overall, deliverability wants to help senders get their mail in front of the people who can act on it. Some of that advice, though, takes the form of risk management and saying no.

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