There is no bat phone

I don’t have much to add to Al’s post about the lack of people to call at different ISPs to get mail delivered. I will say there was a time some ISPs had staff that would deal with senders and blocking problems. But those positions have gradually been eliminated over the last 2 or 3 years. In some cases the employees left for greener pastures, in others they were subject to layoffs and budget cuts. In most cases, though, the employees were not replaced.
ISPs have moved to complex and multi-tired spam filtering. They’ve removed the ability of most employees to actually interrupt the filtering and special case a sender. Getting mail delivered is about sending mail that recipients want. It’s not about who you know. It’s about how much recipients like your mail.

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They are all Barry. Listen to Barry

Al has a guest post up from an ISP rep (now universally referred to as Barry) about senders contacting ISPs. It lists things senders do that Barry Don’t Like.
Listen to Barry.
There are also comments from various other Barrys in the comments. Those are worth reading, too.

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Filters and windmills

A colleague of mine was dealing with a client who is experiencing some difficulty delivering to the bulk folder. Said client spent much of a one hour phone call repeating “This is not how a free society works!!”
After the call my colleague commented, “I refuse to get ranty about filter systems.”
I know that filters, and the people who write and maintain them, are a frequent scapegoat for senders. The filters are always the problem, not anything the senders do.
Now, I’ll be the last person who will claim spam filters are perfect, they’re not. Filters sometimes do unexpected things, sometimes they do boneheaded things, sometimes they are broken.
We can’t forget, though, that filters perform a vital role in protecting users from malicious emails. Phishing emails, scams, fake products, viruses are a constant threat. Many end users don’t need to worry about this because filters are so good. But an unfiltered account can get thousands of scams and spams a day (ask me how I know).
Most of us in the delivery space can tell when a filter is working as intended and when there’s an underlying problem. And when the filter is working as intended there’s not a lot of use complaining about them. Ranting about filtering systems often delays a resolution. Senders that focus on what they can control tend to have more success reaching the inbox than those senders that focus on ranting about filtering systems.
Tilting at windmills doesn’t get the mail through.

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Facebook blocking spam: parallels to email filtering

Last month a Dangerous Minds posted numbers that indicated their Facebook posts were reaching fewer users.  They suggested that this was a conspiracy by Facebook to make more money and soak small publishers with “exorbitant” advertising fees. I didn’t pay that much attention to it. I use Facebook to communicate with friends. The only commercial entities I “like” or are “friends” with are small local businesses that I shop at.
Today, I see a tweet from Ben Chestnut that looked intriguing.

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