Compliance vs. Deliverability

Most people I know handling delivery issues for senders have some version of delivery or deliverability in their job title. But as I talk to them about what they do on a daily basis, their role is as much policy enforcement and compliance as it is delivery. Sure, what they’re telling customers and clients is how to improve delivery, but that is often in the context of making customers comply with relevant terms and conditions.
Some delivery folks also work the abuse desk, handling complaints and FBLs and actually putting blocks on customer sends.
I think the compliance part of the delivery job description that is often overlooked and severely downplayed. No one likes to be the bad guy. None of us like handling the angry customer on the phone who has had their vital email marketing program shut down by their vendor. None of us like the internal political battles to convince management to adopt stricter customer policies. All of these things, however, are vital to delivery.
Despite the lack of emphasis on compliance and enforcement they are a vital and critical part of the deliverabilty equation.

Related Posts

Deliverability versus delivery

Deliverability is a term so many people use every day, but what do we really mean when we use it? Is there an accepted definition of deliverability? Is the concept different than delivery?
At a recent conference I was running a session talking about email delivery, senders and the roles senders play in the email industry and at that particular organization. The discussion went on for a while, and the subject of deliverability versus delivery came up. J.D. Falk had a comment about the difference that resonated with me. Paraphrased, he said:

Read More

Confirmed opt-in

I spent the morning in multiple venues correcting mis-understandings of confirmed opt-in. The misunderstandings weren’t so much that people didn’t understand how COI works, but more they didn’t understand all the implications.
In one venue, the conversation centered around how small a portion of deliverability the initial subscription process affects. Sure, sending unwanted, unexpected email can and does cause reputation problems, but merely using COI as a subscription methodolgy doesn’t automatically give a sender a good reputation or good delivery. Senders using COI as a subscription practice need to also need to send relevant and engaging mail that their recipients expect to receive. They need to handle their bounces well and purge or re-engage inactive subscribers. They need to keep their complaints low and their responses high.
How you manage subscriptions is only one factor in reputation schemes, and even if the subscription method is COI other factors can negate any bonus involved.
The second conversation involved Ken challenging me on the comment I left on his quiz yesterday. I said COI wasn’t foolproof and he challenged me to explain how. I did, and he’ll be following up next week.

Read More

Poor delivery is not always about spam

There are days I think we have trained people too well to believe every delivery problem is a misplaced spam block. We also have people trained to expect near 100% immediate delivery from send to inbox.
The problem is, email isn’t 100% reliable. It’s close. Very close. But sometimes mail just fails. It’s not because the ISPs hate you. It’s sometimes not even because the mail looks like spam.
Sometimes Mail Just Fails.
One of the challenges of working in email delivery is knowing enough to be able to separate out the random delivery failures from real delivery issues.

Read More