Deliverability and compliance are popular topics at email marketing conferences. While on the surface it may seem like these are simple topics, the reality is very different. Under the surface there are many different and nuanced discussions to be had to explore the depth and breadth of deliverability and the challenges of reaching the inbox.
Since her first experience on stage at the 2003 FTC Spam Conference, Laura Atkins has spoken dozens of times to a wide range of audiences. As one of the very first independent deliverability consultants, she has a firm grasp on all things email and reaching the inbox. She can speak on a wide range of topics, from ISP filters to technical setup to best practices.
In addition to a deep understanding of all things deliverability, she can address a wide range of audiences. She’s spoken to marketers on diverse topics focused on what they need to know about delivery, email authentication, and best practices. One of her favorite topics is teaching marketers how to speak tech to their engineers. Outside of the marketer audience she has also given talks designed to help engineers, deliverability experts and operations staff manage the challenges of sending millions or billions of emails a day.
For every event, Laura works with the organizers to understand their goals, their themes and their audience. She then produces a talk tailored for that audience with key takeaways they can apply to their everyday challenges.
We are available to speak at a wide range of events, both virtual and in person. If you’re interested in discussing how we can deliver a talk to your audience at your event reach out and tell us about your vision.
Email UsUpcoming Events
Deliverability Summit 2025
hybridApril 24 2025 ∙ Amsterdam, NL
Scientific approach to diagnosing deliverability problems
An interactive workshop where participants will learn how to apply the scientific method to solve deliverability problems. After a brief refresher on the scientific method, attendees will participate in an interactive troubleshooting session.
Key takeaways
- Asking the right questions
- Creating effective tests
- Prioritizing troubleshooting steps
- Interpreting results
Deliverability is a never ending series of challenges. Come join us to learn how to more effectively troubleshoot problems using science.
Marketing Profs Webinar
onlineJune 4 2025
Rising to the challenge of B2B deliverability
This webinar will explore the major differences between business and consumer filters and explain how marketers can adapt standard deliverability advice to their own mail. Together, we’ll dive into what metrics we should be monitoring and what they do, and don’t, tell us about our deliverability. Finally, I’ll offer options and solutions for B2B marketers to improve their overall ability to reach the inbox.
Key Takeaways:
- Understand how B2B mailboxes are fundamentally different from consumer mailboxes
- Understand how business filters work and how their actions affect key deliverability metrics
- Actionable suggestions to improve delivery reports for B2B mail
- Strategies for improving deliverability to B2B mailboxes.
Previous Events
Stripo.email 2025
online2025
Adapting to Gmail and Yahoo’s Sender requirements: What you need to know
Key Takeaways
- How to meet the new requirements
- The impact of the requirements on deliverability and performance
- What’s coming next in changes at the ISPs
Email Camp Message Mania 2024
online2024
The Future of Email Deliverability
The 2023 announcement of new authentication requirements by Yahoo and Google requirements caused a tectonic shift for email marketers and deliverability experts. In this talk, we’ll look at the history of the deliverability industry and how that history tells us what our path forward is. Our current deliverability “rules” aren’t necessarily right in the current environment, and deliverability experts need to be creative and flexible as we navigate the current chaos.
Key Takeaways
- Filters and filtering are ever changing
- Deliverability is getting harder
- The current chaos provides opportunity for innovation
- Chaos isn’t permanent even if it feels like it
Masters of Email Marketing 2024
online2024
Deliverability: how the past tells us what to expect in the future
In the past 20, years deliverability has grown and changed. One common pattern, slow creeping change punctuated with sudden paradigm shifts. With the new technical requirements announced by Google and Yahoo at the end of 2023, we appear to be in the middle of one such paradigm shift. The new requirements have some email companies rushing to adapt. Other companies anticipated these changes and implemented them over the past few years. This talk will look at the overall pattern of changes in email over the years, investigate what patterns prepared companies saw, and talk about how to anticipate upcoming shifts in the future.
Deliverability Summit 2024
in-person2024 ∙ Amsterdam, NL
Tech Debt in the Email Industry
Looking at the changes over the last 20 years of deliverability and how the choices we made, as individuals, companies and a community has incurred tech debt. The new requirements for reaching the inbox announced by Google and Yahoo at the end of 2023 was a lot of that tech debt coming due. How we manage the technical debt is going to define the future of email deliverability.
Key Takeaways
- How we got to a place where an announcement of enforcing best practices caused a tectonic shift for many ESPs
- How ESPs and the email sending industry stepped up to meet the challenge
- What to expect for the future
Pathfire Presents Nightmare at Email Camp
online2021
Deliverability Horror Stories that Will Give You Chills
Gather ‘round the campfire to listen to spooky stories of email gone wrong, and how some of these mistakes changed the course of deliverability and compliance.
Highlights
- How one typo blocked six million IP addresses
- The perils of hosting free websites
- The lengths security researchers have to go through to share data
- How one phone call led me to deliverability
CSA Digital Email Summit 2021
online2021
Rethinking Compliance and Enforcement for Modern ESPs
Compliance originated as a vital role at ESPs: to protect the network and legitimate customers from blocking due to bad actions of a minority of customers. But compliance processes failed to keep up with the email ecosystem. We’ll discuss some of the underlying assumptions behind standard compliance metrics, how they fail for a modern ESP, and how we need to adapt to the modern ecosystem.
Key takeaways
- Why do ESPs have compliance desks and what role do they play for ESPs?
- What do we measure and what does it tell us?
- Modernizing compliance measurements to better detect AUP violations.
Mailcon 2020
online2020
Lessons from 2020 and Fresh Predictions of the Future of Email
In the only event featuring all four founders of Women of Email, we talked about email, deliverability and the challenges we faced in early 2020 and how it was changing email as we know it.
Selligent Reconnects 2018
in-person2018 ∙ Netherlands and London, UK
Deliverability Q & A
Deliverability Panel at two events for select, invited customers of Selligent. Taking audience and moderator questions related to deliverability challenges.
Salesforce Connections 2016
in-person2016 ∙ Atlanta, GA, USA
Deliverability Unplugged
In this panel hosted by Forrester Research, Laura joins Mickey Chandler from Salesforce and Melinda Plemel from Return Path to discuss why deliverability is important and how to improve your deliverability. The panelists then take questions from the audience.
Email Innovations Summit 2016
in-person2016 ∙ Las Vegas, NV, USA and London, UK
Understanding Your IT Department: What Non-Technical Brand Managers Need to Know about Email Security, DMARC, ISPs and Delivery
Marketing teams need to understand how to talk to their IT and technical teams to be able to send mail successfully. This talk covers the technical basics of authentication. Participants will leave with a clear understanding of the tech behind email sending.
Email Evolution Conference 2016
in-person2016 ∙ New Orleans, LA, USA
Deliverability Q & A with Matt Vernhout, Chris Arrendale and Alyssa Nahtais
Answering audience questions about deliverability challenges including working with blocklists, handling delivery problems and reaching out to ISPs and filtering companies.
Closing Panel Interview
Participating in the closing panel moderated by Dennis Dayman with representatives of filtering companies and ISPs.
2015 MessageSystems User Conference
in-person2015 ∙ Monterey Bay, CA, USA
Email Filtering
Key Takeaways
- Why filters work the way they do
- Leveraging filters to reach the inbox
- Solutions for common deliverability problems
Podcasts
Email's Not Dead
podcast2024 ∙ Jonathan Torres and Eric Trinidad at Sinch Mailgun
When Email Goes Wrong
Deliverability challenges and how to address them.
Collateral Dialogue
podcast2024 ∙ Ken Simpson of MailChannls
Improve Email Deliverability and Prevent Email Abuse
What can senders do to better reach the inbox and how can ESPs prevent abuse from occurring on their networks?
The Content Fix
podcast2020 ∙ Jillian Bowen
Busting the Myths about Email Deliverability
There are a lot of myths about email deliverability. In this episode, Laura talks about the myths with a marketing podcaster and explains how to address email deliverability the right way.