A series of warnings

Over the last month there have been a number of people sounding warnings about coming changes that ESPs are going to have to deal with. There has been mixed reaction from various people, many people who hear these predictions start arguing with the speaker. Some argue that our predictions are wrong, others argue that if our predictions are right then the senders will just start acting more like spammers.
I have put together a collection of links from recent blog posts looking towards the future and how things may be changing.

Permission: Posted by Jamie Tomasello on the Cloudmark blog.

[ESPs] need to require permission practices of your clients, or you need to reconsider your relationship with these clients. Is what the client is paying you enough to cover the cost of resolving deliverability issues and the damage to the reputation of your IP addresses and the reputation of your company?

Did you catch that: Posted by Al Iverson on the Spamresource blog.

This all ties in to my recent thoughts on the whole concept of email service providers and marketers repeatedly asking for ISPs to tell them what the rules are. I run into people who say stuff like this all the time: “We just need the ISPs to tell us what the rules are, and we’ll stick to them.” Except, ISPs have been telling you what the rules are for years now. Stop feigning deafness. I wish I had a dollar for every time an IP address got blocked at (big ISP) and somebody asked me, “can’t we just assign another IP address?” instead of showing any desire toward fixing the problem that caused the block.

Permission vs. Request: Posted by Christine Borgia on the AOL Postmaster blog

Permission isn’t enough. Our best practices document says “Ensure that you are only sending mail to users who specifically requested it.” Look at your opt-in process. Are people really requesting your mail? If not, I’d bet you aren’t seeing the inbox delivery you’d like to see.

Spammer is as spammer does: Posted by Mickey Chandler on Spamtacular.com

If those of us who work for ESPs start acting like spammers do, then don’t we become what we claim to hate?

Lead, Follow or get our of the way: Another post by Jamie at Cloudmark

It is time for ESPs and senders to [address problem mail]. ESPs, if you are serious about reducing abusive messages being sent through you as well as preventing your company (reputation, account managers, deliverability folks, etc) and industry from being abused, then I am willing to help and provide as much input and insight as I can. However, if it is just lip-service, I cannot help you unless you are willing to help yourselves.

Why is my window fogged up?: from Annalivia Ford, Senior Account Manager at AOL

My frustration lies in the fact that I can’t helpfully answer those questions any more, because of the ESPs and hosting companies that don’t do a really good job. This trend is not exactly a secret. […] [senders] do the least amount they could get away with to still comply with the existing standards… and no more than that. Sometimes, they’d go to great lengths to attempt to game the systems. Naturally, this behavior was noticed, adjustments were made to counter-act these tricks, and transparency decreased to virtual opacity over time, thus ruining it for the good guys.

Barry Speaks: We won’t shut-up and eat your spam: A guest post by a ISP rep on the Spamtacular blog.

What the we are trying to do is keep our own customers happy by delivering less spam and more wanted mail, and to keep our mail systems from falling over under the load. […] Clean up your mailing lists and your networks, senders, and you will find that your problems disappear without having to explain your business model for the 473895966578675560909th time to people who have already heard it 473895966578675560908 times.

ISPs are speaking is anyone listening? from: Word to the Wise

No longer are there hard metrics driving delivery decisions. ISPs are moving from complaint based filtering schemes to something a lot more squishy. The ISPs want mail that their recipients want. They don’t want mail their recipients don’t want.

The coming changes from: Word to the Wise

The ISP […] are seeing spam coming from an ESP and they expect the ESP to make it stop. This is it, ESPs, you’ve now been accepted as full members of the email ecosystem and are now expected to police the traffic coming off your IP space. It is no longer sufficient to segregate customers onto their own IPs and let the ISPs block unwanted mail. ESPs are now expected to do their own policing and their own monitoring.

Legitimate Email Marketers need to take a stand from: Word to the Wise

Being a legitimate email marketer means taking sides and taking the side aligned with the general public’s interest. It does not mean that you get a free pass against blocking and filtering at ISPs, it means that you adhere to a higher standard. It means doing the right things, rejecting the bad things and standing up against those who adopt poor practices.

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How to fix delivery

For all of you that are asking “What do the ISPs want from us” Annalivia has posted a list of specifics that you can do to improve delivery.

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A blast from the past

I’m sitting here watching Iron Chef (the real one, not the American version) and surfing around on SFGate.com. It’s a slow night catching up on all the news I’ve missed this week while off traveling. I see a link on the front page: “Web marketer ordered to pay Facebook $711M.” As I click I wonder if I know the web marketer in question. A former client? A name I recognize?

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The coming changes

Yesterday I talked about how I’m hearing warnings of a coming paradigm shift in the email industry. While these changes will affect all sender, ESPs in particular are going to need to change how they interact with both ISPs and their customers.
Currently, ESPs are able to act as “routine conveyers.” The traffic going across their network is generated by their customers and the ESP only handles technical issues. Responsible ESPs do enforce standards on their customers and expect mailings to meet certain targets. They monitor complaints and unknown users, they monitor blocks and reputation. If customers get out of line, then the ESP steps in and forces their customer to improve their practices. If the customer refuses, then the ESP disconnects them.
Currently standards for email are mostly dictated by the ISPs. Many ESPs take the stance that if any mail that is not blocked by the ISPs then it is acceptable. But just because a certain customer isn’t blocked doesn’t mean they’re sending mail that is wanted by the recipients.
It seems this reactive approach to customer policing may no longer be enough. In fact, one of the large spam filter providers has recently offered their customers the ability to block mail from all ESPs with a single click. This may become a more common response if the ESPs don’t start proactively policing their networks.
Why is this happening? ISPs and filtering companies are seeing increasing percentages of spam coming out of ESP netspace. Current processes for policing customers are extremely reactive and there are many ESPs that are allowing their customers to send measurable percentages of spam. This situation is untenable for the filtering companies or the ISPs and they’re sending out warnings that the ESPs need to stop letting so much spam leave their networks.
Unsurprisingly, there are many members of the ESP community that don’t like this and think the ISPs are overreacting and being overly mean. They do not think the ISPs or filtering companies should be blocking all an ESPs customers just because some of the customers are sending unwanted mail. Paraphrased, some of the things I’ve heard include:

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