Spamhaus rising?

Ken has a good article talking about how many ESPs have tightened their standards recently and are really hounding their customers to stop sending mail recipients don’t want and don’t like. Ken credits much of this change to Spamhaus and their new tools.

Is their increased vigilance pissing you off? If so, your anger is misplaced. They are reacting quite sensibly to market conditions apparently imposed by Spamhaus. Ken Magill

While I agree with Ken that the ESPs are reacting to market conditions. Where we disagree is the idea that these conditions are imposed by Spamhaus. I don’t think all the uptick in ESP enforcement and compliance activity is the result of Spamhaus’ actions. I believe that many of the mass market ISPs are changing how they detect unwanted mail, and are fine tuning filters to reduce the amount of unwanted mail that shows up in the inbox.

One of the big changes is better tools for handling huge data sets. Bigger ISPs handle billions of messages a week. Even just collecting and storing the mail is a giant task. Storing it in a useable form was almost out of the question. But over the last few years there have been significant improvements in the speed and affordability of hardware to handle very, very large datasets. Likewise, there have been algorithm and software improvements in mining that data for useful correlations.

In practical terms, ISPs and filtering companies like Spamhaus don’t have to focus on complaints or trap hits or “simple” measurements. They can draw complex correlations and look at mail in a way that was simply impossible 2 or 3 years ago. This means they can better identify senders who had previously been able to slide in under the filters.

Spamhaus rolled out tools to monitor their spam feeds in a different way and have been listing a lot more “legitimate” senders because of it. ISPs are rolling out tools to better filter “greymail” and keep users inboxes full of mail that the users actually want.

One of the trends I’m noticing is that direct marketers are getting more aggressive. Whether it’s a response to the years of recession or a response to the slowly warming economy, I can’t tell. But there are a lot of direct marketers who are no longer afraid to break the law. For instance, my cell phone is getting multiple telemarketing calls a week, despite being a cell and despite being on the do not call list. My inbox is full of unsolicited email carefully engineered to get past standard filters, much of which violates CAN SPAM. I’m even getting the occasional unsolicited fax.

The increase in listings by Spamhaus are one example of the filtering screws being tightened. But it’s not just Spamhaus that’s driving this; ISPs and filtering companies are also filtering more aggressively. I’m seeing a lot more emphasis being placed on content and a good IP reputation is no longer a ticket to the inbox. Content must be clean and recipients have to want mail for it to get into the inbox.

Related Posts

Gmail and the PBL

Yesterday I wrote about the underlying philosophy of spam filtering and how different places have different philosophies that drive their filtering decisions. That post was actually triggered by a blog post I read where the author was asking why Gmail was using the PBL but instead of rejecting mail from PBL listed hosts they instead accepted and bulkfoldered the mail.
The blog post ends with a question:

Read More

Legitimate mail in spamfilters

It can be difficult and frustrating for a sender to understand they whys and wherefores of spam filtering. Clearly the sender is not spamming, so why is their mail getting caught in spam filters?
I have a client that goes through this frustration on rare occasions. They send well crafted, fun, engaging content that their users really want. They have a solid reputation at the ISPs and their inbox stats are always above 98%. Very, very occasionally, though, they will see some filtering difficulties at Postini. It’s sad for all of us because Postini doesn’t tell us enough about what they’re doing to understand what my client is doing to trigger the filters. They get frustrated because they don’t know what’s going wrong; I get frustrated because I can’t really help them, and I’m sure their recipients are frustrated because they don’t get their wanted mail.
Why do a lot of filter vendors not communicate back to listees? Because not all senders are like my clients. Some senders send mail that recipients can take or leave. If the newsletter shows up in their inbox they may read it. If the ad gets in front of their face, they may click through. But, if the mail doesn’t show up, they don’t care. They certainly aren’t going to look for the mail in their bulk folder. Other senders send mail that users really don’t want. It is, flat out, spam.
The thing is, all these senders describe themselves as legitimate email marketers. They harvest addresses, they purchase lists, they send mail to spamtraps, and they still don’t describe themselves as spammers. Some of them have even ended up in court for violating various anti-spam laws and they still claim they’re not spammers.
Senders are competing with spammers for bandwidth and resources at the ISPs, they’re competing for postmaster attention at the ISPs and they’re competing for eyeballs in crowded inboxes.
It’s the sheer volume of spam and the crafty evilness of spammers that drives the constant change and improvement in spamfilters. It’s tough to keep up with the spamfilters because they’re trying to keep up with the spammers. And the spammers are continually looking for new ways to exploit recipients.
It can be a challenge to send relevant, engaging email while dealing with spamfilters and ISPs. But that’s what makes this job so much fun.

Read More

Recipients are the secret to good delivery

Many, many people hire me to educate them on delivery and fix their email problems. This is good, it’s what I do. And I’m quite good at helping clients see where their email program isn’t meeting expectations. I can translate tech speak into marketing. I can explain things in a way that shifts a client’s perception of what the underlying issues are. I can help them find their own way into the inbox.
But…
Most of what I do is simply think about email delivery from the point of view of a recipient and help clients better meet their recipient’s expectations. This works. This works really well. If you send mail that your recipients want your mail gets to the inbox.
Here’s the secret: ISPs and most spam filters have a design goal to deliver mail their users want. They only want to block mail their users don’t want.
Filters are not designed to block wanted mail.
Sure there are complicated situations where senders have gotten behind the 8 ball and need some help cleaning up. There are situations where filters screw up and block mail they shouldn’t (and aren’t quite designed to). Spam filters are complicated bits of code and sometimes they do things unexpectedly. All of these things do happen.
But these situations happen a lot less than most senders think. Most of the time when mail is hitting the bulk folder, or is throttled at the MTA the issue is that recipients don’t care about the mail.
Recipients aren’t engaged with a particular sender or particular brand. So ISPs react accordingly and that mail ends up slowly delivered or bulked. This upsets the senders to no end, but the recipients? The recipients often don’t care that some mail shows up in bulk or arrives Wednesday afternoon instead of Tuesday evening.
When recipients are engaged with a particular sender or brand, though? Delivery is fast and reliable. Mail is rarely delayed or bulked. When recipients want mail, they interact with it. They look in the bulk folder. They miss it when it’s not there. They complain to the ISPs when they don’t get it. The ISPs react accordingly and prioritize or “red carpet” that email.
The secret to really good delivery is to get your recipients to handle your ISP relations for you. Send mail they miss when they don’t get it, and you’ll discover most of your delivery problems go away.
 
 

Read More