Barry

Naming Names

One of the things that regularly happens at email conferences is a bunch of representatives from various ISPs and sometimes deliverability companies get up on stage and entertain questions from the audience about how to get email to the inbox. I’ve sat in many of these sessions – on both sides of the stage. The questions are completely predictable.
Almost invariably, someone asks if they can quote the ISP representative, because there is this belief that if you connect a statement with an employee name that will give the statement more weight. Except it doesn’t really. People who aren’t going to listen to the advice won’t listen to it even if there are names attached.
A lot of what I publish here is based on things the ISP reps have said. In some cases the reps actually review and comment on the post before I publish it. I don’t really believe attaching names to these posts will make them any more accurate. In fact, it will decrease the amount of information I can share and will increase the amount of time it takes to get posts out.
Last night I was joking with some folks that I should just make up names for attribution. Al did that many years ago, coining the pseudonym Barry for ISP reps. Even better, many of the ISP employees adopted Barry personas and used them to participate in different online spaces. Barry A. says X. Barry B. says Y. Barry C. says W. Barry D.
It doesn’t matter what names I attach.
I think I’m going to start adding this disclaimer to the appropriate blog posts:
Any resemblance to persons living or dead should be plainly apparent to them and those that know them. All events described herein actually happened, though on occasion the author has taken certain, very small, liberties with narrative.
Because, really.

There is no bat phone

I don’t have much to add to Al’s post about the lack of people to call at different ISPs to get mail delivered. I will say there was a time some ISPs had staff that would deal with senders and blocking problems. But those positions have gradually been eliminated over the last 2 or 3 years. In some cases the employees left for greener pastures, in others they were subject to layoffs and budget cuts. In most cases, though, the employees were not replaced.
ISPs have moved to complex and multi-tired spam filtering. They’ve removed the ability of most employees to actually interrupt the filtering and special case a sender. Getting mail delivered is about sending mail that recipients want. It’s not about who you know. It’s about how much recipients like your mail.

Troubleshooting the simple stuff

I was talking with one of my Barry pals recently and was treated to a rant regarding deliverability experts that can’t manage simple things. We’ve been having an ongoing conversation recently about the utterly stupid and annoying questions some senders ask. Last week, I was ranting about a delivery person asking what “5.7.1. Too many receipts this session” meant. This morning I got an IM.

How NOT to get your mail unblocked

My friend Barry™ contacted me earlier this week to rant about senders contacting him asking for blocks to be lifted.

They are all Barry. Listen to Barry

Al has a guest post up from an ISP rep (now universally referred to as Barry) about senders contacting ISPs. It lists things senders do that Barry Don’t Like.
Listen to Barry.
There are also comments from various other Barrys in the comments. Those are worth reading, too.