Typical ESPs

Yesterday, I gave examples of good ESPs and the benefits that their customers receive from their high standards and standards enforcement. Today I’ll be talking about typical ESPs and the things they say and do.
A few caveats before I get started. Most of these quotes are composite quotes. I am not quoting one particular person or ESP, rather, the statement is representative of a common view point. None of these quotes is a one off, all of these quotes have been said by more than one person. These where chosen as a representation of some of the attitudes and policies that leads ISPs and filtering companies to throw up their hands at the ESPs.

  • Consent is paramount to us […] well, yes we do allow customers to purchase lists and do epending.
  • We know the customer is spamming, but they’re too big and too valuable to disconnect.
  • We rotate IP addresses so when there is a block, we can switch to an unblocked IP.
  • We know people are putting addresses that don’t belong to them into the subscription form, but as long as the client is making money, we aren’t going to stop them or make them confirm permission.
  • Our mail is CAN SPAM compliant.
  • Complaints are low, so our customers can’t be spamming.
  • We honor all unsubscribes.
  • They’re a reputable brand, they can’t be spamming.
  • We do not allow advertising scams or viagra mail.
  • Our customers assure us the mail is opt-in.

ESPs are struggling in a crowded and competitive field to maintain standards as high as they can while not losing high value customers. If they set standards too high, their customers will flock to competitors with lower standards. ESPs in the typical category are not all bad, though. In many cases, particularly with the very large brands, they do act as forces of good on senders. The ESPs educate senders and force them to adhere to better practices than the senders would do on their own. The presence of ESPs results in less spam and unwanted email in the ecosystem and in recipients’ inboxes.
Also, many of the individuals working for the typical ESP spend a lot of time working with customers and with management to improve standards and decrease the bad mail coming through their network. They are a dedicated group of people and their actions do have a positive effect over all.

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Blocking of ESPs

There’s been quite a bit of discussion on my post about upcoming changes that ESPs will be facing in the future. One thing some people read into the post is the idea that ISPs will be blocking ESPs wholesale without any regard for the quality of the mail from that company.
The idea that ESPs are at risk for blocking simply because they are ESPs has been floating around the industry based on comments by an employee at a spam filter vendor at a recent industry conference.
I talked to the company to get some clarification on what that spam filtering company is doing and hopefully to calm some of the concerns that people have.
First off, and probably most important, is that the spam filtering company in question primarily targets their service to enterprises. Filtering is an important part of this service, but it also handles email archiving, URL filtering and employee monitoring. The target market for the company is very different than the ISP market.
The ISPs are not talking about blocking indiscriminately, they are talking about blocking based on bad behavior.
Secondly, this option was driven by customer request. The customers of the spam filtering appliance were complaining about “legitimate” mail from various ESPs. Despite being reasonable targeted the mail was unrequested by the recipient. While ESPs use FBLs and other sources of complaints to clean complainers off rented or epended lists at ISPs, the option is not available for mail sent to corporations. Enterprises don’t, nor should they have to, create and support FBLs. Nor should employees be expected to unsubscribe from mail they never requested.
This option is the direct result of ESPs allowing customers to send spam.
Thirdly, this option is offered to those customers who ask for it. It is not done automatically for everyone. The option is also configurable down to the end user.
While I haven’t seen the options, nor which ESPs are affected, I expect that the ones on the list are the ones that the filtering vendor receives complaints about. If you are not allowing your customers to send spam, and are stopping them from buying lists or epending, then you probably have not come to the attention of the filtering company and are not on the list of ESPs to block.

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What she said

Jamie Tomasello on the Cloudmark Blog:

ESPs who require and enforce best permission practices should be applying peer and industry pressure within the ESP community to adopt these policies. Ultimately, ESPs need to take responsibility for their clients’ practices. If you are aware that your clients are engaging in questionable or bad practices, address those issues before contacting an ISP or anti-spam vendor to resolve the issue.

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Time to step up

Neil Schwartzman reacts to yesterday’s link post.

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