Did the algorithm change?

When faced with unexplained deliverability changes one of the first questions many folks ask is “Did the algorithm change.” In many ways this is an meaningless question. Why? Because there are two obvious answers to the question.
A1: Of course it didn’t.
A2: Of course it did.
Both answers are correct, but they’re answering different underlying questions. When we understand how two diametrically opposed answers are both correct, we understand much more about filtering.

What is an algorithm?

When we’re talking about spam filtering the algorithm is the process or rules to follow.

Basically, an algorithm is a computer program that is set up to filter spam to the bulk folder and filter wanted mail into the inbox.  This algorithm doesn’t change. It can’t.
In the case of many (most?) spam filters, the filters incorporate features of machine learning. 
This means the algorithm is constantly changing, learning more and more about what is spam and what is wanted mail based on user interactions.

Algorithms don’t change

Overall, the algorithms don’t change that frequently. They are fed data (lots of data) on a continual basis. They take feedback from recipients (spam / not spam buttons) and developers (new data sets of known bad and known good mail) to learn what good mail looks like and what bad mail looks like. But the underlying code doesn’t change very frequently.

Results change

Machine learning algorithms are only as good as the data they’re fed. In the case of spam filters, the input data is constantly changing. So the output results change. Sometimes an email that was not-spam one day is spam the next because the algorithm caught up with a new threat or new behavior. 

Delivery is still in your control

This machine learning and reliance on end users to help tune filters may make it seem like spam filtering is completely out of the senders’ control. That there is nothing a sender can do to get into or out of the bulk folder. The good news is, the underlying algorithms are pretty simple: wanted mail goes to the inbox, unwanted mail goes to the bulk folder. As with everything, details matter. Senders who are focused on recipients usually don’t have a difficult time reaching the inbox. Companies that focus on themselves and try gimmicks find it much harder to consistently reach the inbox.
 

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Data Cleansing part 2

In an effort to get a blog post out yesterday before yet another doctor’s appointment I did not do nearly enough research on the company I mentioned selling list cleansing data. As Al correctly pointed out in the comments they are currently listed on the SBL. And when I actually did the research I should have done it was clear this company has a long term history of sending unsolicited email.
Poor research and a quickly written blog post led to me endorsing a company that I absolutely shouldn’t have. And I do apologize for that.
With all that being said, Justin had a great question in the comments of yesterday’s post about data cleansing.

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Use all the channels

One of the hardest deliverability situations to address is when all mail from a certain sender is going to the bulk folder. I’ve had numerous clients come to me to address this situation over the years. Ideally, clients come to me before all their mail is going to bulk. Then we can make some tweaks and changes to their mail program, repair the reputation and then recover other addresses. We have knobs we can twist to fix things if some people are still getting messages in their inbox. We have data to measure.
When all mail is going to bulk, though, we lose access to the knobs and the data. There are zero complaints if mail is going to bulk. There are no opens or clicks, because many ISPs disable images and links in the bulk folder. Our normal “fixing reputation” tools are taken away from us.
Senders with all their mail going to bulk are faced with a profound challenge. How can they engage customers who are unengaged and who are not seeing mail at all? How can we fix deliverability when our normal tools and metrics are unavailable?
If we can get even a small percentage of recipients to go pull mail out of bulk or spam and move it to their inbox, then we’re well on our way to repairing reputation. But how can we get them to go look for the mail in the bulk folder. Recent Litmus research suggests that a significant percentage of folks regularly check their spam folder, but this isn’t always enough to repair reputation,
The question becomes how can the senders encourage recipients to go digging through their spam folder. 
This is the point where I start quizzing clients on what other channels they use to communicate with their customers. I’ll run through the whole list: social media, snail mail, push notices through apps, SMS, website popups, Facebook ads. I work with them to identify users who are engaged with their brand and brainstorm ways to get those users to look for mail.
I’m always pleased to see large brands using these strategies. Just recently Blizzard used twitter to communicate with their users about email problems. They tweeted.
BlizzardTweet
The link takes you to the Blizzard support site. Where they give specific instructions on how to whitelist mail and what mail to whitelist.

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Spam is not a moral judgement

Mention an email is spam to some senders and watch them dance around trying to explain all the ways they aren’t spammers. At some point, calling an email spam seems to have gone from a statement of fact into some sort of moral judgement on the sender. But calling an email spam is not a moral judgement. It’s just a statement of what a particular recipient thinks of an email.
There are lots of reasons mail can be blocked and not all those reasons are spam related. Sometimes it’s a policy based rejection. Mailbox providers publishing a DMARC record with a reject policy caused a lot of mail to bounce, but none of that was because that user (or that mailing list) was sending spam. Most cable companies prohibit customers from running mail servers on their cable connection and mail from those companies is widely rejected, but that doesn’t mean the mail is spam.
Sometimes a block is because some of the mail is being sent to people who didn’t ask for it or are complaining about it. This doesn’t make the sender a bad person. It doesn’t make the sending company bad. It just means that there is some issue with a part of the marketing program that need to be addressed.
The biggest problem I see is some senders get so invested in convincing receivers, delivery experts and filtering companies that they’re not spammers, that they miss actually fixing the problem. They are so worried that someone might think they’re spammers, they don’t actually listen to what’s being said by the blocking organization, or by their ISP or by their ESP.
Calling email spam isn’t a moral judgement. But, if too many people call a particular email spam, it’s going to be challenging to get that mail to the inbox. Instead of arguing with those people, and the filters that listen to them, a better use of time and energy is fixing the reasons people aren’t liking your email.

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