Poor delivery can't be fixed with technical perfection

There are a number of different things delivery experts can do help senders improve their own delivery. Yes, I said it: senders are responsible for their delivery. ESPs, delivery consultants and deliverability experts can’t fix delivery for senders, they can only advise.
In my own work with clients, I usually start with making sure all the technical issues are correct. As almost all spam filtering is score based, and the minor scores given to things like broken authentication and header issues and formatting issues can make the difference between an email that lands in the inbox and one that doesn’t get delivered.
I don’t think I’m alone in this approach, as many of my clients come to me for help with their technical settings. In some cases, though, fixing the technical problems doesn’t fix the delivery issues. No matter how much my clients tweak their settings and attempt to avoid spamfilters by avoiding FREE!! in the subject line, or changing the background, they still can’t get mail in the inbox.
Why not? Because they’re sending mail that the recipients don’t really want, for whatever reason. There are so many ways a sender can collect an email address without actually collecting consent to send mail to that recipient. Many of the “list building” strategies mentioned by a number of experts involve getting a fig leaf of permission from recipients without actually having the recipient agree to receive mail.
Is there really any difference in permission between purchasing a list of “qualified leads” and automatically adding anyone who makes a purchase at a website to marketing lists? From the recipient’s perspective they’re still getting mail they don’t want, and all the technical perfection in the world can’t overcome the negative reputation associated with spamming.
The secret to inbox delivery: don’t send mail that looks like spam. That includes not sending mail to people who have not expressly consented to receive mail.

Spammer loses in the court of public opinion
Don't always believe the statistics

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The secret to fixing delivery problems

There is a persistent belief among some senders that the technical part of sending email is the most important part of delivery. They think that by tweaking things around the edges, like changing their rate limiting and refining bounce handling, their email will magically end up in the inbox.
This is a gross misunderstanding of the reasons for bulk foldering and blocking by the ISPs. Yes, technical behaviour does count and senders will find it harder to deliver mail if they are doing something grossly wrong. In my experience, though, most technical issues are not sufficient to cause major delivery problems.
On the other hand, senders can do everything technically perfect, from rate limiting to bounce handling to handling feedback loops through authentication and offer wording and still have delivery problems. Why? Sending unwanted mail trumps technical perfection. If no one wants the email mail then there will be delivery problems.
Now, I’ve certainly dealt with clients who had some minor engagement issues and the bulk of their delivery problems were technical in nature. Fix the technical problems and make some adjustments to the email and mail gets to the inbox. But with senders who are sending unwanted email the only way to fix delivery problems is to figure out what recipients want and then send mail meeting those needs.
Persistent delivery problems cannot be fixed by tweaking technical settings.

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How to disable a domain

Sometimes you might want to make it clear that a domain isn’t valid for email.
Perhaps it’s a domain or subdomain that’s just used for infrastructure, perhaps it’s a brand-specific domain you’re only using for a website. Or perhaps you’re a target for phishing and you’ve acquired some lookalike domains, either pre-emptively or after enforcement action against a phisher, and you want to make clear that the domain isn’t legitimate for email.
There are several things to check before disabling email.
1. Are you receiving email at the domain? Is anyone else?
Check the MX records for the domain, using “host -t mx example.com” from a unix commandline, or using an online DNS tool such as xnnd.com.
If they’re pointing at a mailserver you control, check to see where that mail goes. Has anything been sent there recently?
If they’re pointing at a mailserver that isn’t yours, try and find out why.
If there are no MX records, but there is an A record for the domain then mail will be delivered there instead. Check whether that machine receives email for the domain and, if so, what it does with it.
Try sending mail to postmaster@ the domain, for instance postmaster@example.com. If you don’t get a bounce within a few minutes then that mail may be being delivered somewhere.
2. Are you sending email from the domain? Is anyone else?
You’re more likely to know whether you’re sending mail using the domain, but there’s a special case that many people forget. If there’s a server that has as it’s hostname the domain you’re trying to shut down then any system software running no that server – monitoring software, security alerts, output from cron and so on – is probably using that hostname to send mail. If so, fix that before you go any further.
3. Will you need mail sent to that domain for retrieving passwords?
If there are any services that might have been set up using an email address at the domain then you might need a working email address there to retrieve lost passwords. Having to set email back up for the domain in the future to recover a password is time consuming and annoying.
The domain registration for the domain itself is a common case, but if there’s any dns or web hosting being used for the domain, check the contact information being used there.
4. How will people contact you about the domain?
Even if you’re not using the domain for email it’s quite possible that someone may need to contact you about the domain, and odds are good they’ll want to use email. Make sure that the domain registration includes valid contact information that identifies you as the owner and allows people to contact you easily.
If you’re hosting web content using the domain, make sure there’s some way to contact you listed there. If you’re not, consider putting a minimal webpage there explaining the ownership, with a link to your main corporate website.
5. Disabling email
The easiest way to disable email for a domain is to add three DNS records for the domain. In bind format, they look like:

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Ownership of the inbox

Marketers often treat recipient inboxes with a certain level of ownership. They talk about getting mail to the inbox with the underlying implication that inboxes are for use by marketers and they tend to forget that recipients use email for a lot of things, not just being marketing targets.
This was crystallized for me a few years ago when I was running a conference session. The session had a very diverse group of attendees and as part of the session they broke up into smaller groups to talk about various email related topics. One of the questions was how do people use email. Those groups with more ISP representatives produced a list with dozens of ways people use email. The groups dominated with email marketers, though, came up with a much more limited set of uses, all of them related to marketing or commerce. They didn’t mention mailing lists or one on one discussions or connecting with friends as part of the things people use email for.
Marketers seem to forget that email was not adopted by users so they could be marketed to. In fact, email is primarily used by people to interact with friends, colleagues, allies and family members. Most recipients really don’t really care about marketing in their inbox. They’re much more interested in the mail from mom with pictures of the new puppy. They’re looking for that mail from a friend linking to a silly video. They’re deeply involved in an online discussion with friends or colleagues about anything at all.
This doesn’t mean they don’t want marketing in their inbox. Every subscription is an invitation to visit the recipient’s mailbox. They are inviting a sales person to visit them at home or at work;  spaces where marketers are not traditionally invited.
The problem is that a lot of email marketers do not respect the space they’ve been invited into. They assume, usually incorrectly, they are being given ownership of that space. The marketer sees the inbox as their marketing space, not as space that the recipient feels ownership over.
When someone buys a magazine or watches TV, there are a lot of ads, but that’s OK because they don’t feel any ownership of those spaces. But when they subscribe to something in email, they don’t cede ownership of their inbox to the senders. It is still their inbox and marketers are there only because the recipient invited them. The recipient will kick marketers out if they start writing on the walls or otherwise disrespecting their space.
Many delivery consultants talk about engagement and sending timely, relevant email. All of those are really coded phrases meaning “when you’re invited into somebody’s house don’t scrawl on the walls or poop on the carpets.”

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