What does good IP Reputation get you?

Today I was discussing some mailing list posts with an ESP colleague. He was telling me some interesting numbers he’d collected from different IP pools they maintain. He was testing routing mail through IPs based on subscription process and routing based on engagement metrics. The data showed that inboxing rates were similar across the test groups. As he put it, “IP reputation didn’t have much impact on inbox delivery.”

I’m not surprised. I’ve been talking for a while about how IP reputation is less important in reaching the inbox. In fact, it was almost 5 years ago now that I wrote The Death of IP Based Reputation. I updated it in 2015 with Deliverability and IP Reputation. Overall, IP reputation is a much smaller piece of reaching the inbox now than it has been in the past. I’ve talked about the reasons for this in the above posts. The short version is:

  • IP reputation is a crude hammer;
  • IPv4 addresses are in very limited supply, in network terms more customers / IP is a good thing;
  • Spammers use botnets, sending large amounts of email across many IPs;
  • IPv6 is huge and IP based blocking will be challenging and of limited effectiveness; and
  • Better computing power makes content scanning more feasible.

IP Reputation Still Matters, a little

This doesn’t mean senders can, or should ignore IP reputation. Even Gmail looks at IP reputation a little bit.  The place IP reputation is primarily used during the SMTP transaction. Good IP reputation does lead to less rate limiting. Senders with good IP reputation can send more mail faster than senders with poor reputation. But once the SMTP transaction is over, IP reputation is just a small factor in a large pool of variables.

IP Reputation Still Matters, a little more.

There are some places that heavily rely on IP filters. And some places that rely on certain types of IP filters. Most of the major providers will block mail from home users, dynamic IPs, and infected machines. Additionally, there is and will probably always be a long tail of domains that are still relying on IP based filters. It’s a crude hammer, but it’s an effective one. Typically, though, IP reputation in those cases is in the eye of the root user. The good news is, these are often private networks, and users have the option to use less restrictive free providers if they’re not getting the email they want.
 

And… we're back
Happy International Women's Day

Related Posts

Delivery and marketing part 2

A while ago I wrote some thoughts about the conflicting requirements of delivery and marketing. I posted something similar over on the Only Influencers list, too. My thoughts generated a very interesting discussion, one that helped me clarify some of my somewhat random thoughts from earlier.
Marketing is about finding mindshare. One way you get mindshare is repetition. But people tune out repetition pretty quickly. Sending the same offers, the same copy over and over again means recipients start to tune things out.  When recipients start tuning out mail, they may not bother opening it, they just read the subject line.  If too many recipients start relying on the subject line then delivery can suffer.
Effective marketing relies on getting mail in front of the target audience. That’s the delivery component. Without inbox delivery, even the best marketing will not work.
No one will see marketing if it is in the spamfolder.
I don’t think you can cleanly separate delivery strategy from marketing strategy, but it’s important to realize they have different constraints and different pressures. When I talk about delivery with a client, I’m talking about getting mail into the inbox. And, most of the time, they’ve come to me because they’re not getting into the inbox and they have to make changes. The genius of their marketing is irrelevant, because no customers see it.
But once mail is in the inbox you can’t just ignore delivery, either. Sure, it becomes less of a pressure on the copy and the marketing strategy, until such time as the mail isn’t getting into the inbox any longer. Then it’s back to working on delivery and maybe having to implement some aggressive data hygiene. Back in the inbox and you can be aggressive on the marketing again.
Successful email marketing requires balancing the constraints of good delivery against the constraints of good marketing.

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