What We Do

Occasionally when we meet longtime readers of the blog at conferences and industry events, they are surprised to learn that we are not just bloggers. We actually spend most of our time consulting with companies and service providers to optimize their email delivery. Though we try to avoid using the blog as a WttW sales pitch, we thought it might be useful to devote a short post to explaining a bit more about what we do.

Most of the companies we work with have strong email marketing and technical expertise, but face challenges beyond normal “best practice” recommendations. To get started, companies often engage with Word to the Wise in one of two ways:

  • Technical Audit: a short-term engagement designed to identify and resolve any underlying issues that may be causing delivery problems. We will look at message and header structures, content issues, and sender reputation or authentication problems.

  • Strategic Consulting: Some of our clients have dubbed this “email therapy”, and these engagements are structured a lot like that – we speak once or twice each week for several months about our client’s specific challenges and collaborate closely to work on larger programmatic and technical issues around optimizing email programs. We really enjoy this type of deep forensic work and helping clients create more sustainable programs.

That said, we very much believe that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to this sort of work. We are also happy to work with companies that don’t have established expertise in-house, or who are in the process of developing email programs. We have a wide range of additional services we provide, from data analysis to ISP/ESP relations to blocklist resolution.

In general, we want to provide support for email program managers and systems administrators to create and manage meaningful and valuable customer communication. Our experience working with a broad range of senders over many years, as well as our close relationships with ISPs, ESPs, spam fighters and blocklists, policy and governance bodies, and other email consultancies gives us both broad and deep insight into the current landscape of email. If you think your company could benefit from this type of support, please get in touch!

Related Posts

How to send better emails: engagement

Today Direct Marketing News hosted a webinar: ISP Mythbusters: How to Send Better Emails. The speakers were Matt Moleski, the Executive Director of Compliance Operations from Comcast and Autumn Tyr-Salvia, the Director Of Standards And Best Practices from Message Systems.
The webinar went through a series of myths. After Autumn introduced the myth, Matt commented on it and explained why the statement was, or was not, a myth. Throughout the webinar, Matt clearly explained what does, and does not, get mail delivered. Don’t let the Comcast after Matt’s name fool you. He is very active in different fora and discusses filtering strategies with experts across the ISP industry. His insight and knowledge is broadly applicable. In fact, many of the things Matt said today were things I’ve heard other ISPs say over and over again.
One of the very first things he said was that ISPs want to deliver mail their customers want. They want to give customers the best inbox experience possible and that means delivering mails customers want and keeping out mails customers don’t. He also pointed out that recipients complain to the ISPs when they lose wanted mail, perhaps even more than they complain about spam.
He also touched on the topic of engagement. His message was that absolutely engagement does matter for inbox delivery and that engagement is going to matter more and more as filtering continues to evolve. There has been some discussion recently about whether or not engagement is an issue, with some people claiming that some ISP representatives said engagement doesn’t matter. The reality is, that engagement does matter and Matt’s words today only reinforce and clarify that message.
Matt did say is that ISPs and senders have a bit of a disconnect when they are speaking about engagement. ISPs look at engagement on the “macro” level. They’re looking to see if users delete a mail without reading it, file it into a folder, mark it spam or mark it not spam. Senders and marketers look at engagement on a much more finite level and look at interactions with the specific emails and links in the email.
When discussing the relationship between senders and ISPs, he pointed out that both senders and ISPs have the same goal: to personalize the customer experience and to give customers a great experience. As part of this, ISPs are mostly aligned when it comes to blocking principles, but each ISP responds slightly differently. ISPs do adhere to best practices for handling incoming email, but those practices are implemented based on the individual company  and handles incoming mail in ways that better supports their company specifically.
Matt talked about Comcast’s Postmaster pages and says they try to give feedback to senders before putting a block in place. He mentions that invalid recipients and poor list hygiene as the fastest way to be blocked or throttled when sending to Comcast. He also said that the core filtering rules at Comcast are static. Changes are mostly “tweaks around the edges.”
During the Q&A portion, Matt took a number of questions from the audience.

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Engagement, ISPs and the EEC

There’s been some controversy over some of the things said by the ISPs at the recent EEC meeting. Different people interpret what was said by the ISPs in different ways. The EEC has set up a webinar for March 17 to clarify and explain what was meant by the ISPs.

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Talking about deliverability

Next Tuesday, September 23, I’ll be speaking about deliverability at a webinar sponsored by Message Systems and presented by the American Marketing Association.
Registration is open to all, so if you’re interested in hearing some of my opinions about deliverability past, present and future, sign up.

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