Going to MAAWG

Following on from last weeks post about MAAWG, I thought I’d write a bit about actually going to MAAWG. You’re an ESP and you’ve been accepted into the organization. Now you have some decisions to make.

Who should go to MAAWG from your company?

Send at least one person from your compliance or abuse desk. At the very, very least send someone who sets your policies. Don’t just send high level executives or anyone who sets the goal to collect as many business cards as possible.

Who shouldn’t go to MAAWG from your company?

People who have nothing to do with stopping abuse from your systems shouldn’t go. People who think that this is a marketing conference shouldn’t go. People who think it is acceptable to follow someone into the bathroom and ask them for a business card at a urinal, shouldn’t be allowed out of the house without supervision.

What should you do at MAAWG?

There are a lot of things to do at MAAWG, and a wide breadth of sessions about messaging abuse. Many of them don’t always have to do with sending mail, some of them are from elected officials (or their representatives), law enforcement or policy makers.

  1. Go to all the sender sessions.
  2. Pick at least one session that doesn’t have to do with sending mail. Even if it isn’t your area, listen to what other people are talking about and doing in the field of messaging abuse.
  3. Respect people’s time. A lot of participants have packed schedules and may not have time to talk to strangers.
  4. Outside of sessions talk about things other than email.
  5. Inside sessions don’t be afraid to comment, but avoid making every comment about how that isn’t going to work for marketers or bulk senders or is going to make things harder for them.

What shouldn’t you do at MAAWG?

To quote Wil Wheaton: don’t be a dick. Need some examples?

  1. Don’t hover around the edges of conversations waiting to be able to hand an ISP rep your business card.
  2. Don’t start every conversation with “we don’t send spam.”
  3. Don’t chase people into restrooms looking to exchange cards.
  4. Don’t expect ISP reps to be interested in talking to you about your specific email problems in the hallway, or at the social events.

Related Posts

State of the Industry

Over the last few weeks I’ve had a series of posts on the blog from various authors who are active in the email space.
I posted A very young industry commenting on the lack of experience among email marketers. I think that some of the conflict between ISPs and ESPs and receivers and marketers can be traced back to this lack of longevity and experience. Often there is only a single delivery expert at a company. These people often have delivery responsibilities dropped on them without any real training or warning. They have to rely on outside resources to figure out how to do their job and often that means leaning on ISPs for training.
JD Falk described how many at ISPs feel about this in his post With great wisdom…

Read More

Delivery resources

I’m working on a few projects designed to help provide mentoring for other delivery people and to bridge the communication gap between the various groups active in email. One of those projects is collecting, linking to, and publishing more delivery resources. Some will be linked to directly from the blog, others will be linked to from the wiki. While I’m reasonably familiar with what’s out there, it is impossible for me to know about all the useful resources available. So I ask you readers:

Read More

Freemail opens

Justin Coffey commented on my check your assumptions post pointing out his data on opens related to ISPs. He says:

Read More