Bad year coming for sloppy marketers

MediaPost had an article written by George Bilbrey talking about how 2010 could be a difficult year for marketers with marginal practices. George starts off the article by noticing that his contact at ISPs are talking up how legitimate companies with bad practices are causing them problems and are showing up on the radar.
This is something I talked about a few weeks ago, in a series of blog posts looking at the changes in 2010. The signs are out there, and companies with marginal practices are going to see delivery get a lot more difficult. George lists some practices that he sees as problems.

  • It’s not clear what the subscriber is signing up for
  • No action was required to sign up
  • The mailings are not targeted
  • The volume of messages from the sender is very high

The consequences are harder blocks and more difficult unblocking. It’s been a while since I have been able to contact some of the ISPs and get blocks lifted just on my word. Removing blocks now involves significant changes in a sender’s mailing practices. Senders can’t just make promises, but need to provide real solutions and specifics to the ISPs.
It is much, much easier to make improvements before a hard block happens. Fixing sloppy practices now will pay off in the long term.

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With my clients, I work through delivery issues and can solve 80 – 90% of the issues without ever having to contact anyone at the ISPs. 90% of the remaining issues can be handled using the publicly available contacts and websites provided by the ISPs.
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