Delivery problems are not all spam related

Not every delivery failure is due to poor reputation or spam. Sometimes ISPs just have problems on their mailservers and so mail doesn’t get through. It’s often hard for delivery experts (and their bosses and their customers and their clients) to watch email delays or rejections without being able to do anything about it.
Sometimes, though, there is nothing to do. The rejections are because something broke at the ISP and they have to sort through it. Just this week there’s been a lot of twitter traffic about problems at a major cable company. They are rate limiting senders with very good reputations. They have admitted there is a problem, but they don’t have a fix or an ETA. From what I’ve heard it they’re working with their hardware vendor to fix the problem.
Hardware breaks and backhoes eat fiber. Yes, ISPs should (and all of the large ones do) have backups and redundancies. But those backups and redundancies can’t always handle the firehose worth of mail coming to the ISPs. As a result, the ISPs start rejecting some percentage of mail from everyone. Yahoo even has a specific error message to distinguish between “we’re blocking just you” from “we’re shedding load and temp failing everyone.”

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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:

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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.

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It doesn't matter what you say

“What should we tell the ISP?” is a frequent question from my customers. The answer is pretty simple. It doesn’t usually matter what you tell the ISP. What matters are your actions.
If a sender is having delivery problems then the solution is not to call the ISP and talk to them about why the sender’s mail should not be delivered to the bulk folder. Instead, the solution is to evaluate the email and the address acquisition process and the list hygiene process. Identify where potential problems are and then resolve those problems.
Typically, the ISPs won’t need to be contacted. The changes to the email will register and delivery will improve. In some cases, particularly when there’s been some major mistake, contacting the ISP and explaining the mistake and what steps have been taken to stop the mistake from happening in the future may help resolve the issue faster. But if nothing has changed, then there’s no reason for the ISP to expect anything to change.
It doesn’t matter what you say. It matters what you do.

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