What to expect from your delivery consultant

Every once in a while I get a phone call asking me what delivery consultant do. What can I do for them? How can I help them? Delivery consulting is a very new field and it is understandable a lot of people do not know what we do.
The overall delivery consulting process here a Word to the Wise involves collecting detailed information about your mailing program and your technical setup, like:

  • where do you get your addresses?
  • how do you handle bounces?
  • what MTA do you use?
  • do you monitor delivery with a commercial service?
  • do you monitor your bounce logs?
  • do you have FBLs set up with various ISPs?
  • are you whitelisted anywhere?
  • what expectations do you set with your subscribers?
  • where do your subscribers opt in?
  • do you do any sort of address verification?
  • what are your IP addresses?
  • what domains do you use in email?
  • are you publishing SPF records?
  • are you signing with Domain Keys/DKIM?
  • what HELO values do you use?
  • are you using VERP to send email?
  • what MTA are you using?
  • do you send mail through a smarthost?

Other delivery consultants will have a similar set of questions. You should also expect your delivery consultant to sign up for your email. I like to sign up as a customer would, go through your full process and see what your subscribers see, and what is presented to them. If you only send to purchasers or collect significant amounts of personal information, then I will just have you send me an email from your mail program
Once your consultant has the information from you, expect a report on your processes. This report should include the things you are doing well, the things you could improve on and the things that may make receivers identify your email as spam.
As part of the report, there should also be suggestions on how to improve things, what potential changes to make. These recommendations should also include risk assessment so you can make informed decisions about implementing the consultant’s recommendations.
A delivery consultant, any delivery consultant, should be able to clearly explain to you why your email delivery is how it is. They should have contacts and the ability to escalate issues, and the experience to know when something needs to be escalated and when patience is called for. Good delivery consultants should also participate in industry events, maintain professional relationships with ISPs and blocklists, keep up with current delivery changes at various ISPs and be able to share the data with you in ways that help you further your own business goals.

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Predictions for 2008

I did not have a lot of predictions for what will happen with email at the beginning of the year so I did not do a traditional beginning of the year post. Over the last 3 – 4 weeks, though, I have noticed some things that I think show where the industry is going.
Authentication. In January two announcements happened that lead me to believe most legitimate mail will be DK/DKIM signed by the end of the year. AOTA announced that approximately 50% of all email was currently authenticated. They did not separate out SPF/SenderID authentication from DK/DKIM authentication, but this still suggests email authentication is being widely adopted. AOL announced they will be checking DKIM on their inbound mail. I expect more and more email will be DKIM signed in response to this announcement.
Filtering. The end of 2007 marked a steady uptick in mail being filtered or blocked by recipient domains. I expect this trend to continue throughout 2008. Recipient domains are rolling out new technology to measure complaints, evaluate reputation and monitor unwanted email in ways that tease out the bad actors from the good. This means more bad and borderline email will be blocked. Over the short term, I expect to see more good email blocked, too, but expect this will resolve itself by Q2/Q3.
Sender Improvements. As the ISPs get better at filtering, I expect that many borderline senders will discover they cannot continue to have sloppy subscription practices and still get their mail delivered. Improved authentication and better filtering let ISPs pin-point blocks. Instead of having to block by IP or by domain, they can block only some mail from a domain, or only some mail from an IP. There are a number of senders who are sending mail that users do not want mixed with mail that recipients do want. Right now, if there is more mail that recipients want in that mix, then ISPs let the mail through. This will not continue to happen through 2008. Senders will need to send mail users actively want in order to see good delivery.
Less is more. A lot of other email bloggers have talked about this, and I will echo their predictions. Less email is more. Send relevant mail that your customers want. Target, target, target. Good mailers will not send offers to their entire database, instead they will send mail to a select portion of their database.
Feedback loops. Use of feedback loops by recipient domains will continue to grow.
Mobile email. More recipients will be receiving email on mobile devices.
Suggestions for 2008

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SenderScore Certified expands

ReturnPath announced yesterday that SenderScore Certified now covers 1.2 billion inboxes, including mail handled by Hotmail, Time Warner Cable, GoDaddy and eventually Yahoo. A number of filters are also using SSC, including Spam Assassin, IronPort Systems, Barracuda Networks and Cloudmark.

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Best practices and ISPs

A couple articles came out today talking about ISP requirements and how to find them.
EmailInsider talks about ISP best practices and how merely complying with CAN-SPAM is not enough to get good delivery at the ISPs.
Meanwhile, over at ClickZ, Stefan talks about what the ISPs want from you and how to find the information online.

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