Email: What’s New on the Deliverability Front

October 2004 (updated May 2006)

BY REGINA BRADY


Do your feel your email campaigns are drowning in a sea of spam?  If you do you’re not alone.  But there are several things happening behind the scenes that should begin to stem the tide.  This is good news for marketers.

First, let’s look at the obstacles e-marketers face today.  In an effort to identify and reduce spam ISPs and corporations take extraordinary measures.  This can result in mail being blocked or poor placement in the recipient’s inbox.  They employ blacklists and content filters.  They may block large volumes that are sent too quickly or mailings that contain too many bounces.  And even when email makes it past these hurdles a campaign may be delivered to a bulk folder if the sender is not in the recipient’s address book and all images may be suppressed.  

Customers are also reacting to spam. The average customer has three email addresses and about thirty-percent of all email accounts churn on an annual basis.  AOL customers are more likely to click the “report as spam” button than to use opt-out links in emails.

You might be wondering where is the good news.  The solution to our spam problem lies in combining solutions on three fronts - legislative, technical and self-regulatory   


CAN-SPAM Is Beginning To Have An Effect

Marketers have quickly moved to be in compliance for all commercial email.  One impact of the federal law is that permission is defined at a line of business level.  The law gives States Attorneys General and ISPs the ability to take action and there is a lot of recent case activity.


Technology Embraces Authentication Systems

Authentication identifies the sender of email and verifies that they are who they say they are.  This may be the industry’s best chance to defeat spam and fraudulent email.  Authentication technology uses coding, encryption and other IT-based methods to eliminate the ease with which spammers can forge their identity under current email protocols.   

The two systems that have the widest use today are Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Sender ID Framework (SIDF).

SPF is embraced by AOL and other ISPs.  SIDF combines SPF and Microsoft technology.  Both systems authenticate email senders and blocks email forgeries and faked addresses.  Many ISPs use the DNS (Domain Name System) listing of servers or IP addresses to verify that e-mail they receive has been sent from the domain it claims to come from.   They compare the sending IP address with a listing of IP addresses authorized to send from that domain.  If the numbers don't match, the mail doesn't get through.

AOL will soon require a published SPF record if a marketer wishes to be white-listed.  Hotmail is currently including a warning notice if the sender cannot be authenticated at the top of any emails not registered with SIDF.  

Marketers should register each IP address used to send their email.  The process is relatively easy.  For more information click here.   It’s important to think about all the email a company sends out including promotions, newsletters and service announcements.  Those marketers who use an outside service bureau should consult with their vendor.

Another authentication solution has been developed by Yahoo! and Cisco called DomainKeys.  This is a more complex solution using a combination of public and private "keys" to authenticate the sender's domain and reduce the chance that a spammer or hacker will fake the domain sending address.   Each message will contain a digital signature in the header that contains a private key representing the sending domain.  ISPs will match up the private key with a public key registered with the Internet's DNS listing of servers to determine whether an incoming message is valid.  For more information click here.  Many of the email delivery providers are already Domain Keys compliant.

The Email Service Provider Coalition has created an online testing server for all three authentication systems.  This is a useful tool to make sure you're properly set up.


Self-Regulatory Systems Based On Sender’s Reputation

Accountability systems tie sender identity to sender reputation.  These systems are similar to having the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" and may improve a mailer's chances of getting their mail accepted by ISPs and delivered to the primary in-box. 

There has been a lot of attention paid to AOL's announcement that they are implementing Goodmail's CertifiedEmail program.  Marketers who apply and are accepted by Goodmail will pay a fee to have their email delivered which is expected to be in the $ .02 to $ .03 range per message.  This will also ensure that HTML images will not be blocked. 

This has been met with consternation by many.  Is this the beginning of paying "postage" to deliver email?  Many are taking a "wait and see" attitude.  It is certainly not mandatory to participate.

There are other reputation services also in use.  Return Path offers Sender Score Certified mail (an update of their Bonded Sender program).  The mailer is initially certified after a privacy audit by TRUSTe.  Under the new system, clients pay an up-front certification fee to TRUSTe and an annual licensing fee to Return Path, which varies according to mail volume -- from $1,000 a year for 500,000 e-mails a month, to $20,000 a year for unlimited usage. a marketer goes through an initial screening of permission practices.  Habeas also offers reputation systems.  


Confluence Of Approaches Will Result In Better Deliverability

A combination of legislation, technology and self-regulation holds the promise of finally defeating spam.  It should mean less in-box clutter and less reliance on imperfect filters.  It should mean better deliverability and with that will come higher response rates.

So, that’s the good news.  But it will take time for all of this to happen.  Most industry observers believe it will take a year or more before the technology and systems to be fully adopted.  


What You Can Do Today

Deliverability is one of the biggest challenges facing the email marketing industry.  There are several deliverability “auditing” services available that provide marketers with very specific reports on whether their mail is getting through and which email folder the mail is delivered to.  

These services use a seeding system and provide marketers with decoy email addresses to add to campaigns.  They have opened email accounts with all the major ISPs and also use various iterations of ISP software to determine how well the email is rendered.  While these services works best for consumer marketers there is much work also being done on the business-to-business front.  

Marketers can contact Return Path, Pivotal Veracity or their current email deployment vendor for more information on these services and sample reports.
Good deliverability results from good permission practices.  Embrace best practices, increase the relevancy of your campaigns, and use segmentation.  You’ll reap the benefits.


Regina Brady is president of Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions, a direct and e-mail marketing consultancy. She can be reached at (203) 838-8138 or reginabrady@att.net.

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