Project Omnivore

Ben at Mailchimp has posted some information about Project Omnivore. This is a predictive system that not only predicts potential abuse, but can also be used to predict poor campaigns. Steve and I had a chance to see Omnivore in action when we were in Atlanta last fall, and were impressed by the accuracy for bad stuff. It seems, however, that Omnivore is useful to predict good behaviour as well.

The reason we built Omnivore was because we wanted to change the way we think about abuse. The project involved so much data crunching that it resulted in some interesting byproducts. Our subject line suggester is one example, as well as the engagement ranking and segmenting tools we mentioned earlier.
[…]Omnivore is learning more every day, and is actually getting good at predicting not just bad behavior, but good behavior too.

Related Posts

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.

Read More

Keep subscribers happy

Mark Brownlow writes about engagement. “…the people we really need to keep happy are the subscribers.” Go read the whole thing.

Read More

AOL EWL: low complaints no longer enough

This morning AOL announced some changes to their Enhanced White List. Given I’ve not talked very much about the AOL EWL in the past, this is as good a time as any to talk about it.
The AOL Enhanced Whitelist is for those senders that have very good practices. Senders on the EWL not only get their mail delivered to the inbox, but also have links and images enabled by default. Placement on the EWL is done solely on the basis of mail performance and only the best senders get on the list.
The new announcement this morning says that AOL will take more into account than just complaints. Previously, senders with the lowest complaint rates qualified for the EWL. Now, senders must also have a good reputation in addition to the low complaint rates. Good reputation is a measure of user engagement with a particular sender.
This change only reinforces what I and many other delivery experts have been saying: The secret to good delivery is to send mail recipients want. ISPs are making delivery decisions based on those measurements. Send mail that recipients want, and there are few delivery problems.
For a long time good delivery was tied closely to complaint rates, so senders focused on complaints. Spammers focused on complaints too, thus managing to actually get some of their spam delivered. ISPs noticed and started looking at other ways to distinguish wanted mail from spam. One of the better ways to separate spam from wanted mail is to look at user engagement. And the ISPs are measuring engagement and using that measurement as part of their decision making process. Send so much mail users don’t read it, and your reputation goes down followed by your delivery rates.

Read More