ISPs speak at the EEC conference

Massimo Arrigoni has a great blog post up summarizing the final session of the EEC conference with representatives from major mailbox providers. This session a number of representatives from major mailbox providers spoke about what it takes to get to the inbox. They discussed what engagement really was, why you need to warmup and what the mailbox providers are measuring.
The short version is delivery is becoming more and more personalized. It’s not about if a mailbox provider thinks mail is spam, it’s about if a mailbox provider thinks this recipient thinks the mail will be spam. It’s all about connecting with each individual recipient.
None of this should be news to any of our regular readers. We’ve long talked about how ISPs measure things differently than senders. We’ve also talked about personalized delivery and how IP reputation isn’t the most important part of delivery.
Know your recipients. Make them want your mail and it will end up in the inbox. ‘
Edit: EmailCopilot also has more information on the ISP session at EEC.

Amazon launching new email service WorkMail
MessageSystems Acquires Port25

Related Posts

Cheetahmail on appending

Experian CheetahMail believes that opt-out email appending is no longer an acceptable practice, and that marketers should no longer use of this practice to acquire customer email addresses. EmailResponsibly

Read More

Guaranteed email delivery

Ben over at Mailchimp has a good post about his response (and his support staff’s more professional and helpful response) to inquires asking if Mailchimp can guarantee an improvement in delivery.
I sympathize with Ben, and commend his staff. I often get potential clients asking me if I can guarantee I can get their mail to the inbox or get them off a public or private blocklist. And, the answer really is no, I can’t guarantee anything. Much of delivery is solely in the hands of the actual sender. Sure, ESPs can enforce a certain standard of behaviour and they can do all the technical things right. And consultants like me can tell you how ISP spam filters work and explain how some of your choices and processes affect delivery. But none of us can guarantee inbox delivery.
Only one company has tried to guarantee inbox delivery, and they shut down earlier this year because they were non-viable and couldn’t get enough of a recipient userbase to attract customers.
For the rest of us, though, the best we can do is give senders the tools and information they need to succeed in getting mail delivered to the inbox.

Read More

Looking towards the future

I had the opportunity to go to a seminar and networking event hosted by Return Path yesterday evening. The topic was “Email trends in 2012” and it was presented by Tom Sather.
If any of you get the opportunity to go to a talk presented by any of the Return Path folks I encourage you to do so. They know their stuff and their presentations are full of good information.
One of the trends mentioned is the increase in reliance on domain reputation. It’s something I’ve been thinking about more and more recently. I wrote a little bit about it recently, but have focused more on the whole realm of content filtering rather than just domain reputation.
Domain reputation is where delivery is going. And I think a lot of senders are going to struggle with delivery as they find that IP reputation is not enough to get into the inbox.
 

Read More