Tools aren’t a luxury

I was on the phone with a colleague recently. They were talking about collecting a bit of data over the weekend and mentioned how great it was they had the tools to be able to do this. Coincidentally, another colleague mentioned that when the subscription bombing happened they were able to react quickly because they had a decent tool chain. I’ve also been working with some clients who are dealing with compliance issues but don’t have the tools they need.

Internal tools, particularly those for deliverability and compliance, are seen as luxuries. They’re not that necessary and they’ll get done when there is time. This attitude is wrong.

Look at how ESPs responded to the subscription bombing problem. Some of them had good tools in place and were able to address the problem and limit the damage within hours of understanding the problem. Others needed to cobble together tools and access to even get a handle on the issue. It took them much longer to get delisted.

One of the bigger complaints I hear from colleagues is they don’t have tools they need. Now, I’m not saying that every deliverability and compliance team needs their own developer, although some do. But they do need access to internal dev resources so they can build up a suite of tools they can use to address emergent threats.