For a few months now, I've heard growing frustration with deliverability at Yahoo! They have had capacity issues that affected senders with good reputations and bad reputation alike. Many senders with other deliverability challenges are not finding the Yahoo! staff to be very responsive.

Not accepting new applications for the feedback loop or whitelist exasperates the situation. It's hard for a new sender to develop a good reputation without being able to remove subscribers who complain and monitor their performance.

But with everything going on, what do you expect? They have had big layoffs and are understaffed. They have lost some great people like J.D. Falk (now at ReturnPath). And to put the cherry on top, the company's fate is uncertain - will they merge with Microsoft? partner with Google? Take an investment from Newscorp / MySpace?

When things are this volatile, productivity drops. People who are worried about their jobs have trouble focusing and spend lots of time thinking about their future. It's easy to get discouraged when you are under-resourced and feel under-appreciated and don't see any light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm not in Yahoo's offices and can't say for sure that is the cause, but having sold a company or two I would be surprised if this wasn't having a major cause of the challenges many senders are facing with deliverability to Yahoo!

What is the take away?

Don't get mad at Yahoo
Don't get mad at people who work at Yahoo
Don't hold your breath waiting for Yahoo to fix your problems

Comments

I manage an email service provider (ESP) service at www.listrocket.com. I've done everything I can to make sure our email is authenticated at the server level, including setup of SPF records, DomainKeys and reverse DNS on our email servers. We are clear of blacklisting and RBL listings. We're on AOL's feedback loop and have relationships with large ISPs like Comcast and Time Warner. Messages are always can-spam compliant. Our overall delivery rate is high, with the exception of Yahoo.

So, WHY OH WHY doesn't Yahoo deliver our messages when we're using an authentication standard THEY, Yahoo, advise for email sender authentication? This is ridiculous and maddening for scores of email administrators all around the globe! Just Google "yahoo deferred error" to see what I mean.

A certain percentage of our messages DO get through, but many are bounced with the popular "451 Message Deferred" error. It really hurts business when I have to explain to our customers why Yahoo deliverability is low, and that it's not the fault of ListRocket! Yahoo needs to wake up and realize that they are hurting themselves by not following their own

Arie, I think you've misunderstood the purpose of DomainKeys. The most common analogy is that sender authentication is like a drivers' license: it allows someone to confirm that you are who you say you are, but doesn't convey whether it's safe to be your passenger.

In other words, DomainKeys is not a free pass to the inbox -- and nobody at Yahoo! ever said it would be. You still have to make sure your mailing practices are among the best in the industry. This blog (among others) has good info on how to do that.

Also -- thanks for the mention, Josh, but when I was at Yahoo! I didn't work in what we might call "sender relations." The people I forwarded those requests to are, as far as I know, still working there -- and they've done some great work on the postmaster site since I left.

Arle - you might take another look at the neighborhood your IP is in .. singles dating, debt consolidation etc spam, very high volumes.

One golden rule for senders would be that you should be careful about who else is sending from IPs near you.

63.165.0.235 mx235.cantmissoffernetwork.com
63.165.0.236 mx236.cantmissoffernetwork.com
63.165.0.237 mail237.dvdspecialstime.com
63.165.0.238 mail238.dvdspecialstime.com
63.165.0.239 doubledash.homesandagents.com
63.165.0.240 mx240.cantmissoffernetwork.com
63.165.0.242 employmentresolutionservices.com
63.165.0.253 mx253.cantmissoffernetwork.com
63.165.0.254 mx254.cantmissoffernetwork.com

Grammar flame warning!

exasperates - wrong word.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/exasperates

Exacerbates - the word you probably intended to use.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/exacerbates

Good point Suresh. But this is something you cannot control and should not be penalized for. We've been trying to get Yahoo feedback loop for years and we get only promises. I'm not sure why since it benefits both sides. Anybody had any success with Yahoo feedback loop ?

We've been following this problem since back in October of 2006. We've heard from hundreds of webmasters that have faced the same problem with Yahoo. You can read the dialog about the yahoo delivery issues at http://www.ahfx.net/weblog/107