This is a paid job posting.

WhatCounts is looking to hire an Email Delivery Manager. Do you know someone who might be a good fit? Please help spread the word or contact jobs [at] whatcounts.com for more info.

About the Job

The Email Delivery Manager is responsible for helping our customers achieve and maintain high email deliverability rates to the inbox, detect and analyze delivery issues, as well as educate our customers on email best practices.  This position will also manage the customer experience for those enrolled in the SmartStart Plus and Delivery Plus programs. 

Responsibilities

Day-to-Day Operations:

• Consult with customers and provide guidance with email authentication, reducing abuse complaints, and send strategy
• Provide support to customers and educate them on email best practices
• Investigate and address email delivery issues
• Review inbox audit results and make suggestions on how to improve delivery through changes in infrastructure, server optimization, product interface, practices, and policy
• Help create internal training documents, e.g., FBL enrollment, Whitelisting, and submitting unblock requests

Manage the customer experience for those enrolled in the SmartStart Plus program:

• Assist the customer in building a positive and sustainable sender reputation
• Provide the customer with the knowledge and tools to maintain IP reputation beyond the program
• Provide Best Practices training that pertain to the SmartStart Plus program

Manage the customer experience for those enrolled in the Delivery Plus program and provide the following tasks:

• Campaign Delivery Monitoring
• Delivery Results Audit and Best Practices Consultation
• Reputation Report and Consultation
• Delivery Strategy Consultation and Email Infrastructure Audit

Cross-functional Engagement:

• Work in partnership with internal teams, e.g., Account Managers, Dev, IT and Sales Teams, to help raise the visibility of deliverability within WhatCounts, and be of assistance to these various groups as they interact with prospects and customers.
• Support product development team as they improve deliverability functionality within the platform.

Qualifications / Requirements

A tech-savvy people who can help our customers send better email and achieve high delivery results.

• 3-5+ years experience, preferably in a similar role
• Advanced knowledge of email authentication and other technological factors affecting email delivery
• Strong understanding of ISP/domain-specific delivery policies such as spam scoring heuristics and bounce handling rules
• Proven track record of building and maintaining whitelisting and feedback loops with ISPs
• Experience in large scale email operations (sender and receiver)
• Knowledge of SMTP protocol and DNS
• Ability to communicate recommendations for improving email strategy and operations clearly and professionally
• Self-directed and self-motivated; Must be able to prioritize effectively in a fast-paced environment
• Must have a passion for analysis and troubleshooting
• Expert knowledge of “best practices” for email creation, sending, list building and list management
• Experience using Return Path is a plus

Please help spread the word or contact jobs [at] whatcounts.com for more info.

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This is a paid job posting. 

If you would like to reach tens of thousands of email deliverability professionals with a job posting on this blog and on the @Deliverability Twitter account, please email your inquiry to jobs2010 [at] deliverability.com

As outlined in Part I of Inbox Reserve, “Why Email must Reverse Engineer Social Now,” future engagement metrics and delivery patterns will be based on how subscribers’ social networks interact with a given brand.   Disclaimer: The strategies outlined below are congruent and/or complementary with advanced “opt-in” best practices.  It is safe to say that behavioral targeted messaging may not achieve the same level of granular social activity that a contemporary preference center would.

Inbox Reserve II: Socialized Subject Lines

Using fresh social data points gathered from an advanced preference center, future marketing based messaging will place your friends’ names or actions in the subject lines of emails associated with a given brand.  These personalized subject lines are a key tool for increasing your brand’s ability to engage subscribers, dramatically increase open rates and manufacture a better delivery reputation.  When you have targeted promotions that build value around this concept, connoisseurs of your brand will flock to this preference center.  Once there, they can opt-in to receive real-time notifications (or weekly digests, if they prefer) that tell them when members of their social ecosystem have taken “definitive” action involving a given brand.  Moreover, once permission is granted, subscribers will also see their friends’ images dynamically inserted into a well-designed email creative. They’ll be able to click on the images and ask their friends’ opinions of a product before making a purchase.  Here are two “plain” examples of future subject lines based on social activity within your network:

·         Real-Time-Notification:   Mark from your network just purchased     Sees Candies at 30% off…

·         Weekly Digest:              14 members of your network purchased                                      Sees Candies? Find out who!

Inbound, highly transparent subject lines of this nature are inherently credible. Their success further supports the theory that curious subscribers are also the most engaged.  Informed subscribers who choose to receive these types of messages are far more likely to engage because these notification are about your network first and the brand second.  Therefore, these subject lines seem more valuable and relevant to the subscribers.

Ever get a notification from Facebook that a certain friend of yours commented on your status?  You are much more likely to react positively to that message as opposed to a “brand first” subject line offering you a product at 30% off.   Moreover, you are less likely to click the “report spam” button because you are more loyal to the people in your network.

Reduced Spam Complaints

The most compelling reasons for brands to earn network permission from subscribers is that it dramatically reduces spam complaints.  Socialized email notifications are important because they prioritize a subscriber’s network first and the brand second. First, it’s far more palatable for a subscriber to open an email message with a friend’s name in the subject line and a friends’ picture in the creative because it creates a perception of relevance and allows for a far more customized experience. For example, if I were a subscriber and received such a message, I would probably refrain from clicking the “report spam” button because my main focus is on my network.  Secondly, personalized subject lines will cause your open rates and engagement index to skyrocket, enhancing your brand’s deliverability reputation.  ISPs will take notice of reduced spam complaints and brands will begin to see a higher inbox placement rate, resulting from more positive actions taken with this type of email. 

Notifications and creatives of this nature are packed with relevancy.  Testimonials from members of a social network will influence subscribers’ purchasing decisions, which will drastically diminish the chances of a user clicking the “report spam” button.  The benefit is increased engagement, as network buddies chat about potential purchases. This leads to more delivered mail to the inbox.  Second Disclaimer:  It’s important that we try not to associate this concept with Facebook page suggestions, simply because there is a monetary investment element in place here.  Members of your social network invested quality time in making a determination about a product or service and gave explicit permission to opt-in and receive exclusive messaging of this type.  So, it’s unfair to be skeptical because of earlier social media spam-related growing pains. 

In Part III of Inbox Reserve, we'll discuss the challenges brands will have in leveraging an advanced preference center and share some of the immediate benefits to any given brand; which include added credibility, reduced costs and subscriber validation. 

Fred Tabsharani

Port25 Solutions, Inc.    

@tabsharani

 

   

Good news for those who are on the Return Path’s Certification program. RPost and Return Path announced a partnership today where Return Path’s Certification clients will now be able to access an integrated offering where your outbound messages can incorporate RPost’s proof of delivery technology with the Return Path’s Certification service.

For those who don't know them, RPost provides the sender legally valid and court admissible evidence of email correspondence occurring directly from the sender’s desktop email client or from other applications which will provide a sender with evidence of delivery, content, and timing of any document or notice sent by email, without requiring recipients to download any software, click links, or visit special websites to open and read messages.

--MORE--

-Dennis
Eloqua

Don't Just Sender, Deliver

Spamhaus is announcing this week that they are launching their Domain Block List (DBL). The Spamhaus DBL is a realtime database of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), typically web site domains found in spam messages. Mail server software capable of scanning email message contents can use the DBL to identify, classify or reject spam containing DBL-listed domains and other URIs.

What's this mean for you? Not only are your IP's a thing to watch over when it comes to reputation, but now your domains in your email are also.

Does this count as reputation for domains? In my eyes, YES!

They plan on launching this March 1, 2010.

For those who don't know, The Spamhaus Project is an international nonprofit organization whose mission is to track the Internet's spam operations, to provide dependable realtime anti-spam protection for Internet networks, to work with Law Enforcement Agencies to identify and pursue spammers worldwide, and to lobby governments for effective anti-spam legislation.

Spamhaus maintains a number of realtime spam-blocking databases ('DNSBLs') responsible for keeping back the vast majority of spam sent out on the Internet. These include the Spamhaus Block List (SBL), the Exploits Block List (XBL), the Policy Block List (PBL) and the Domain Block List (DBL). Spamhaus DNSBLs are today used by the majority of the Internet's Email Service Providers, Corporations, Universities, Governments and Military networks.

-Dennis
Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver!

As some of you know, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been hosting a series of roundtable discussions to explore some of our most recent privacy challenges.  These challenges are being exposed more and more each day by the ever evolving technology base and combination business practices that help us to collect and use consumer data.

The FTC hopes to hold these roundtables and then use the information gleaned from them to determine how to best protect consumer privacy moving forward while still supporting the uses of new technologies within marketing.

Without realizing it, many of you may be in the midst of these issues identified by the FTC, as you use social networking, cloud computing, online behavioral advertising, mobile marketing, and the collection and use of information by retailers, data brokers, third-party applications, and other diverse businesses.

To date, the FTC has already held two (2) roundtables.

• December 7, 2009 in Washington, D.C.: They focused on data collection and use online and offline. They also discussed consumer expectations and the state of self-regulation. 
• January 28, 2010 in Berkeley, California: They focused on how technology can affect consumer privacy positively and negatively.  

A third event will be held on March 17, 2010 in Washington, D.C.   It is expected to focus on several things including how to safeguard health data and other sensitive consumer information

Unfortunately, the findings from the roundtable thus far have been alarming.  It appears that most consumers are grossly unaware of what happens to the data they submit to marketers.  The majority of the time it seems as if they are providing their information to virtual strangers without any regard for their own protection.  The public’s understanding of the need for privacy and security of personal information is sorely lacking, and when overlooked, can have startling consequences.  

Ultimately, the FTC is investigating the possibility of creating a U.S. Privacy framework to give powers to consumers.  This would involve regulations for businesses regarding the collection, processing, transfer, and protection of consumers’ information. 

This could result in a process that would require marketers to become hyper-transparent.  In this case, as the amount of data the consumer provides increases, so does the number of choices the marketer must allow for the said consumer.  The consumer would be provided with more information about what will be done with the personal details they are disclosing as the sensitivity of the information rises.  This means the more data that you need to perform your job of catering your marketing plan to them, the more you will have to tell them about how you are going to safeguard and effectively use their information. (read: Your Privacy policy isn't enough anymore.)

In addition, if an FTC Privacy process were to be instituted, marketers would have to be increasingly diligent in protecting their consumers’ information because these consumers’ should be much more aware of how their information should be used.  The consumers’ expectations would be more prevalent in deciding who was wronged if a negative event  such as a theft, occurred.

Whatever framework the FTC creates in 2010, we can certainly be assured that it will be much broader than today’s form of self-regulating "notice, access, and choice."  The FTC has said that the current forms and processes have been helpful in giving customers knowledge about what will happen to their data if given, but as you have heard me say in the past, it has also resulted in privacy policies that only a lawyer may understand.  In many cases, the knowledge provided was lost on the average consumer because of its overwhelming scope and language.  Given that, you need to be sure that your company’s privacy policy is well-written and geared towards consumers.  This policy stands to be a strong marketing opportunity, provided it is treated as such.

Tips for writing a good policy:

1. Write it for consumers. (Bearing in mind, most do not have a law degree.)
2. Keep it short.
3. Index it, or give it headers so readers can find what they want quickly.
4. Audit the policy at least once a year (and have non-lawyers read it for clarity).
5. Add “contact us” features in relevant sections of your policy so people with questions can get answers quickly and easily.
6. Inform customers about policy changes, but be sure to do so before the changes go into effect.  Give them a chance to change preferences prior to launch. 
7. Highlight the policy throughout your website and on forms.
8. Make the information (notice, access, and choice) available as more than just a “read the fine print” option.  Use the opportunity to build their confidence.
9. Do not try to think for the customer. Do not assume that subscribers or visitors will want new information or want you to share their information.

Keep in mind that the customers’ trust and loyalty will grow when you give them some control over their own information.

In the course of the next week, take the time to look into your data collection practices and programs.  It is important to understand what sort of U.S based framework would best suit your legitimate business needs, while protecting your consumers’ data. Consider attending the next FTC roundtable to make your voice on this subject heard.

-Dennis, CIPP
Eloqua

Don't Just Send, Deliver! 

I suspect that some email broadcast vendors (ESPs and MTA providers) struggle with how much inbox placement data to make transparent to their clients (marketers).  On one hand, the data is extremely valuable, and it can help marketers and senders understand subscriber satisfaction and optimize inbox placement. After all, if you don't reach the inbox, you don't earn a response. 

On the other hand, perhaps sometimes having more data just raises more questions - and questions are a cost center for vendors.

One ESP that serves the small to mid-market is making inbox deliverability data available - with very good results.  I spoke with Natalie Nagele at Newsberry about how using this data gives her more ammunition to help marketers follow best practices.

"For one of our clients, we saw a wide variance in open rates across message types. When we exposed the inbox placement data, we realized that some of the marketing messages were simply not reaching the inbox at all," she says.

On the same day a targeted email tips newsletter would achieve 100% inbox rates to domestic ISPs, while a generic even promotion would deliver only 60-80%, she says.  The IP reputation was the same based on Sender Score, but clearly there is a difference.  "After a month of data review, we concluded that the event promotions were less welcome due to content and low user engagement - as measured by higher complaints," she says.

Nagele worked with the client to improve targeting and relevancy. They asked subscribers to update their email preferences and reconfirmed those in the marketing segment. "The list size for that segment shrank dramatically," she reports, "But open rates went up, as did inbox placement rates. Today, they are delivering between 96-100% across all of their campaigns for domestic ISPs. Those event marketing emails directly represent revenues based on attendance, which went up when people started receiving emails."

Newsberry makes this data available to all clients with a dedicated IP address.  "We've found that senders who use and appreciate this data are also willing and interested in taking responsibility for their email delivery," she says.  The inbox deliverability tools are included in our monthly plan price, available to small and medium businesses. "They don't need to spend enterprise-level funds to view important delivery data," Nagele says.

Newsberry doesn't offer the inbox delivery monitoring tools (or a dedicated IP address) for those with files smaller than 10,000 subscribers. "Based on conversations with Return Path and our own experience, we've identified 10,000 as a good point where you start building a reputation significant to ISPs," she says.

Of course, if the file is 10K strong, but the mailing frequency is low, that also can harm a sender's ability to build a reputation.  "The ideal candidates for a dedicated IP are those with 10,000 or more subscribers who send multiple times a month. We even recommend they split their list and send multiple times per week instead of one campaign (when possible)," she says.

"Those with smaller lists can still depend on Newberry’s overall reputation to maintain high inbox rates," she adds.  Most marketers understand that they don't have the volume (or budget) for a dedicated IP, but it still makes them nervous to be on a shared IP. There is a loss of control over their destiny.  Certainly, some ESPs have a better reputation with the ISPs, and some vet their clients better than others (and fire them when they exhibit poor sending practices).  Until we have widespread domain reputation and authentication, senders must be vigilant to understand who is in their Shared IP neighborhood and thus affecting their reputation and inbox placement.

Many senders (large and small) consider the bounce rate "good enough" for tracking delivery.  Of course, bounce rate is not the same as inbox placement, and the two numbers are not necessarily indicative of each other, although they tend to track together.  "The way we see it, it's all about your return on investment and time for email marketing," Nagele says.

"If you have inbox rates of 60%, consider yourself throwing 40% of your money and time out the window. Bounces will only show you if you are blocked, at which point your list is already in bad shape. Inbox placement helps you identify much deeper issues where marketers can take direct action," she advises.

For example, she says, a customer learned through tracking inbox results that their single-image emails were getting blocked by Yahoo! and Hotmail (among others). When they changed the text to image ratio, the inbox rates went up, which in turn increased open rates and subscriber response.  "How would they have known that if they were only tracking bounces?" she asks.

All senders must take responsibility for their own sender reputation. A good ESP will provide technical support, solid infrastructure and guidance on best practices. But no ESP can make up for poor list hygiene, weak sourcing, high frequency or low relevancy.  Sender reputation is a partnership between the email broadcast vendor and the marketer. 

"While we think overall IP reputation is really important too," Nagele says, "A good reputation does not guarantee delivery. Getting as much information as possible is the best way to ensure your money is well spent."

We are always looking for new technologies and industry partners that support our commitment to delivering a high quality experience to Hotmail customers. To this end, before committing to a certain technology or provider we conduct rigorous testing and pilot programs to ensure that our internal standards are met. Until that bar is met, we have no partnership announcements to make.

Current and future partners who represent senders of high quality can expect improved and or preferred delivery including enabled links and graphics as well as bypassing content filters. However, Hotmail will always reserve the right to deny mail based on user feedback of perceived quality issues. Hotmail might introduce UI elements or badges intended to imply sender quality – these will be applied very selectively based on the quality and security of the mail. Any such badge will be generic and not specific to any single industry partner.

John Scarrow
Microsoft General Manager - Safety Services

Today I received a spam message from a saleperson. It was like many others that I receive, except that I immediately noticed how respectful the tone was. Then at the end of it, he tells me that I should reply to his email so that he can show his boss that his respectful spam is more effective than the other spam I get. 

I know for a fact that this guy purchased my name off a list. I never contacted him or asked to receive anything about his services.

I thought to myself, "This is clever. I'm not going to fall for it, but I bet a lot of people feel guilty and write back to this guy."

From: ***** ******
To: Joshua Baer
Subject: Please answer a quick question for me.

Dear Josh,

As promised it's been a while since I contacted you and a lot has happened here at Layered Technologies. But my own respectful approach has not changed. I certainly do not want to waste your time, or annoy you with lots of cold calls.

[more about their services]

Out of respect and a desire not to spam, you will be the only recipient at your company. Help me prove to my own management that this respectful approach is what people want by shooting me a quickie email letting me know if you do or do  not have projects in these areas.

Thank you in advance and have a great year,

*****

***** ******
Enterprise Sales Executive
Layered Tech

I wrote back to him with a simple reply:

Take my name, phone, and email off your list.

He wrote back to me offended, and in not so few words called me an asshole:

Josh I looked up my records to be sure I haven't over contacted you. It looks like the last time was 7/09. Since it's a very respectful note and it's been 7 months since I last made a contact attempt I wonder are you always so friendly or do I just bring out the best in you?

You have been removed from my list.

This is the first time I've ever felt like I was being reprimanded for not being polite in how I unsubscribed!

This morning a tweet came across the wire announcing that Goodmail will begin offering Certified Email services to all Microsoft Mailboxes starting on or around February 17th. This should be good news in light of the service changes for Certified Email at Yahoo! announced on January 29th.

Goodmail announced the start date of the Certified Email program at Hotmail/MSN to all of their clients today; what was previously rumor has manifested into a fact with a start date. According to Wikipedia Hotmail users number 270 Million as of 2008 which will represent a significant increase in the number of people receiving and using certified email on a day to day basis.

The adoption of Certified Email at Hotmail/MSN will guarantee inbox placement and enable links and images for marketers using the service. The inclusion and rendering of the Certified Email icon will most likely take place later this summer but in the mean time marketers utilizing Goodmail’s CE will begin to see immediate privileges when sending to Microsoft domains.

Cheers!
-Len Shneyder
Director of Partner Relations
& Industry Communications
www.pivotalveracity.com

Sharing a good bottle of wine with friends is simply a much richer experience than consuming one alone. Additionally, a mutual appreciation for the same types of wines you and your friends consume creates a far more substantial sharing experience. In this two part series, I’ll explore why mutual associations with brands will dramatically increase open rates and drastically reduce spam complaints, paving the way for better deliverability metrics, engagement and brand reputation.

As marketers, we put too much pressure on our subscribers.  First, we insist they recognize the label on our wine bottle, (The From: Name) then we expect them to read our subject line, and subsequently we hope subscribers actually “taste” (open) the email and glance at what we’re peddling.  If we haven’t lost their attention by now, we continue to plague them by asking them to share the given email using a functionality called SWYN (share with your network).  If that isn’t enough, we still yearn for a conversion…..and it all gets to be too much, ultimately, perhaps, pushing the subscriber away. 

Messaging of this nature is still outbound.   

What lies ahead is a significant evolution in email marketing which will work in concert with social networks to “reverse engineer” the social characteristics of email and bring social directly to your inbox.

Email offers will drastically change in the near future.  Next-generation emails will benefit from a deeper level of peer transparency. This new level of transparency will be earmarked by advanced or universal preference centers and highly intuitive sign up processes. By selectively capturing social media credentials of your subscribers, several layers of data points will become immediately available to harvest.  These socially focused data points will change ordinary subject lines to engaging peer notifications from a given brand.

Consider this:  you are far more inclined to “friend” someone on Facebook if you have mutual friends, correct?  And, you are more inclined to become a fan of a Facebook page if other members and colleagues of your social network are fans of that same page.  So, why not apply this same concept to email?

Industry statistics from Bazaarvoice illustrate that 74% of online shoppers who receive advice from their friends on social networks allow that advice to influence their purchasing decisions. Also this article by Shiv Singh supports that statistic with its discussion of when and why we trust our peers when determining types of online purchases. Furthermore, in a recent Purchaser Influence Survey by EXPO, featured today in emarketer.com, over 90% US Moms trust peer reviews more than manufacturer information. (Special Thanks to Anthony Schneider of Mass Transmit and Jeffrey Rohrs of ExactTarget for that snippet.)  With that said, we must reverse-engineer the current dynamic of outbound marketing based emails and bring our social networks to the coveted inbox.  At its core, should be a socially focused “über-email” program which acts as your brand’s private reserve.

Shoppers of a given brand instinctively want to know what “a subset of their trusted friends” bought online.  Similarly, shoppers also want to know what their friends think about those same products before they decide to purchase them.  Our marketing based email messaging should produce unbiased, first-hand knowledge of how our social networks “feel” about a product, not a subjective marketing message from your brand with ordinary subject lines.  Moreover, user-generated content is comprised of written and/or video testimonials of a product or service.  But, these testimonials which are often placed in an email, or on a brands landing page come from random people we don’t necessarily know. These testimonials although sincere in nature, don’t reverberate.

Reverse engineering social email

Would you like to know if any of your friends subscribe to the same brands as you do?  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see which of your friends reviewed that new trendy restaurant on Yelp? Would receiving immediate notifications from peer actions with the brand build trust, directly after that review?

Currently, dynamic content in email allows us to customize a message to a particular segment or to an individual on your list, based on attributes in their profile.  We’ve learned that FedEx has as many as 144 attributes for a given record, which allows for granular customization of each email communication for each given email stream.  With increased Social Media data points culled together through an evolved master preference center adds an increasingly richer dimension for email marketers.  With these richer dimensions comes pinpoint information about your friends’ recent actions associated with a given brand. 

Savvy marketers will ameliorate the quality of such social media data points by dynamically inserting social attributes into a given email program. This concept completely reverses the current outbound system which is somewhat dysfunctional, because marketers still rely on subscribers outbound actions. The evolution of such a program will bring these messages to the inbox and will have far superior return on your email marketing investments, because this messaging adds increased value for the subscribers.  More value equals a more relevant email. With more relevant messaging comes drastically reduce spam complaints and dramatically increased open rates.

Let’s say you received an email from Barnes and Noble.  And, Barnes and Noble has been granted permission by you and many members of your social network, to publish information about actions your social network is undertaking with Barnes and Noble. Images of your friends may be dynamically and creatively populated in the creative, so when you open up your email, not only will you see friends’ images with links to their social media pages, you’ll also know which of them are subscribers, and which ones purchased that new Stephan King book Barnes and Noble is featuring.  What’s more is that the subject line will be highly engaging because it’s about your network “first” and not about the item being featured.

Part II of this series will discuss the challenges associated with this concept and why future marketing based subject lines will no longer matter. Subject lines will become highly relevant notifications, and how these “relevant notifications” will increase open rates and dramatically reduce spam complaints.

Fred Tabsharani 
Port25 Solutions
@tabsharani

 

Yahoo! posted a notice this morning that the MTA connectivity problems have returned. Here's the latest missive from Yahoo!

_____

At around 6am PST, we again started experiencing low connectivity on our MXes, and we have since been working incessantly to improve the situation. As before, the SMTP error message being generated by the issue will generally be the following:

"420 Resources unavailable temporarily. Please try later <insert Y! MTA
hostname"

However, some senders may see our other "421" SMTP error messages as well, as listed here:

http://postmaster.yahoo.com/errors/

Ensuring that email is delivered in a timely manner is of the utmost importance and priority for us, so we appreciate your patience while we work on the issue.

_____

-Len Shneyder
Director of Partner Relations
& Industry Communications
www.pivotalveracity.com