(The Deliverability Forum is a series of interviews I hosted with industry leaders and luminaries over the past few months.  It came to closure last week and I have shared the final post with takeaways and highlights from the Bronto blog.)

It is with a bit of ennui that I must close this series.  Many thanks to everyone who contributed to the blog posts over the last few months and gave their uncensored opinions around what they find valuable, in need of change or what interesting developments are in the pipeline.  As we began, so we will end - you may not have direct access to these industry leaders but I hope the conversations I've shared have given you insight into the minds of those who have direct influence over the email industry from a sender's and receiver's perspective.  And thank you for the comments and readership thus far.

If you missed any of the blog posts, they are laid out below in chronological order with a high level summary of the post and my takeaways for you as a reader to glean from the interview.  Also, I've included a "definition" section at the bottom of this post if there are any acronyms that you might be uncertain about.  Please scroll down to access it.

The Players:

The FTC (post) describes in the US government's own voice how spam is regulated and counteracted.  Ethan Arenson, the FTC Spam Coordinator, spells out the very serious consequences of not being CAN-SPAM compliant and where to go for their exacting interpretation of what exactly is required of all commercial mailers.  It also shows the government's willingness to help curb the problem of unwanted email by enforcing industry standards such as authentication in a non-legal but best standard way.

My take: While most commercial emailers are compliant with the law (especially if using an ESP such as Bronto), it remains in your best interest to stay cognizant of the law and have someone you trust and can defer to when you're not sure if what you're doing is legal.  Also, the FTC regularly updates the Act's provisions so make sure to stay abreast of the latest rules that are voted in by the FTC commissioners.  We are talking about law here with real civil and criminal consequences if broken.  You don't want to find yourself being accused of a federal crime wherein ignorance of the law won't hold much water!

Pivotal Veracity's (post) President and CEO, Deidre Baird, explains the importance of both authentication and user engagement.  Pivotal Veracity is neither an ISP nor an ESP, but rather a deliverability intermediary services company with deep expertise around content and email disposition.  Also, Pivotal Veracity is a partner of Bronto.  As the interview mentions, without a conscious eye towards the emerging shift in ISP deliverability patterns, specifically around user engagement and authentication, you'll find your program in trouble.

My take: As AOL puts it, "send relevant email to people that want to receive it!"  Are you doing everything you can from an infrastructure standpoint to ensure your email doesn't attract negative hits when being scanned and determined for acceptance by the ISPs?  And, once delivered, is the email being received well by your recipients?  If you can't categorically answer in the affirmative to both of those questions, you have some major homework to do or else risk your mail being deemed irrelevant and sent off to the bulk folder or bounced back.  Both cost money.

Razorfish (post) chimed in from a email content and strategy perspective.  Whitney Hutchinson, Group Director, Strategy and Account Services, sums it up nicely by hitting on these key points: engage your recipients with appropriate creatives, have a holistic marketing approach for the relationship management and take into account the "stacking effect" which is a result of the newly emergent communication technologies available to market to recipients through.  Email is now one of many.

My take: While email is now just one piece in a wide breadth of technologies (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Wave, SMS, etc.), it is still the most important and most trusted conduit of content that recipients most engage with consistently over time.  It has proven itself as a reliable protocol, even older than the internet itself (history)!  But, recipients have become increasingly savvy with its adoption so making your content stand out amongst the sea of email users get is at the vanguard of a successful marketing program.

ReturnPath's (post) President, George Bilbrey, still believes email is the "killer" app.  ReturnPath, while not an email sender or receiver, hosts a suite of services ranging from ESP to ISP products and plays a significant role with its liaison relationship between both senders and receivers.  He poignantly breaks down the exacting metrics ISPs use to measure user engagement (i.e., open rates, click rates, spam complaints, panel votes, etc.) along with the idea of domain reputation.  ReturnPath is a partner of Bronto.

My take: Authenticate, watch your complaints and make sure your domain reputation is healthy.  Yahoo! and AOL have already moved over to using domain reputation as a determining factor for deliverability - so to even ignore those two at this point with their combined estimated 142.4 million unique inboxes is perilous.  ISPs are fighting off spam and user interpreted unwanted email; don't let your mail take on these smarmy characteristics.

Cloudmark (post) occupies a very distinct space in the email industry as being a provider of anti-phishing, spamming, virus and other threat vector services to ISPs only.  Jamie Tomasello, Abuse Operations Manager, posits that authentication doesn't actually imply good mail but rather mail that is verified as coming from the declared source.  Interestingly, she adds that user engagement is not a net positive measurement - you can have negative user engagement as well depending on what the user does with your mail that is perceived by the ISPs and companies such as hers when it's not wanted.  Permission is tantamount.

My take: Bronto and many other responsible ESPs require permission based marketing as the only source of email addresses senders can email to.  Why?  Because it shows the true intent of the recipient to actually want your email; they've taken an action that is clear and deliberate to let the sender know they want the email.  By assuming recipient desire and emailing recipients who haven't given permission is casting a large net that will cause deliverability issues.  Think about it.  When was the last time you marked an email as spam or deleted it when you didn't knowingly sign up for it?  That's what I thought.

LashBack (post) rounded up the series as the final contributor with James O’Brien, Director of Marketing.  LashBack is dedicated to monitoring unsubscribe requests, suppression list abuse and whether an unsubscribe mechanism exists.  This directly ties into CAN-SPAM compliancy as well as being inline with email marketing best practices - when a recipient communicates to you they don't want your email anymore, you should honor this request without question or judgment.  Also, LashBack is putting together the first Email Compliance Summit which should be highly anticipated by senders and ESPs who want to stay on the cutting edge of unsubscribe policy.

My take: With the unsubscribe mechanism being one of several ways a recipient can directly and easily communicate intent with the email sender (others being complaints lodged with the respective ISP or direct email to the sender's role accounts), it is a very useful metric to measure the impact your mail is having on recipients.  Are you sending too much?  Too frequently?  Not targeted enough?  It's the job of the marketer to find that sweet spot where relevancy, recency and frequency are met with the recipients to not drive them to unsubscribe from your mail.

Definitions:

• CAN-SPAM: Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003 is the law the federal US government enacted to combat spam and other unwanted and malicious email.

• FTC: Federal Trade Commission is the arm of the federal government in charge of enforcing and maintaining the CAN-SPAM Act.

• ISP: Internet Service Provider of which the largest B2C ISPs are Yahoo!, Hotmail/Live, Gmail and AOL.  Email provider or receiver.

• ESP:  Email Service Provider such as Bronto.  Email senders.

• SPF: Sender Policy Framework is a type of email authentication that is path based and validates the sending entity.

• DKIM: DomainKeys Identified Mail is a type of email authentication that is encryption based, validates the content of a message hasn't been tampered with while in transit and can be tied back to a sending domain.

I hope that the Deliverability Forum and this wrap up have helped you with your deliverability programs.  Still have questions?  Comment below and let's keep the conversation going.

Chris Wheeler
Director of Deliverability at Bronto
@ChrisAWheeler

So, what are the benefits to a solid domain-based reputation?  What are the ramifications of a suspect domain? Will an ESP still send for me if my domain reputation is less than stellar? How will the actions of my subscribers influence my deliverability?  Is my domain portable? 

The dawn of domain-based reputation is upon us and legitimate senders everywhere are celebrating, albeit soberly.   In a recent Pivotal Veracity report, many leading ISPs have begun to employ domain-based reputation as an effective technique of measuring a sender’s reputation by computing assorted spam-related variables and, perhaps more importantly, subscriber engagement actions.

As Chris Wheeler eloquently breaks it down for us here, ISPs currently base a user’s reputation at the IP level and have only recently begun to show that email authentication as an enabler for domain reputation, along with positive subscriber actions, will increase deliverability to the inbox.  Domain based reputation is a boon for the deliverability landscape and is rife with opportunity for ISPs, ESPs, reputation services, and marketers alike.

If and when ISPs choose to compute your sending reputation, this computation will become your domain score.  For now, let’s call it The Domain Reputation Index (DRI).   This index will essentially be a quick reference to show how ESPs and reputation organizations will track your deliverability and subscriber engagement. Simply put, the DRI will become part of your domain DNA.

Domain Portability: A Boon for Marketers and ESPs  

For example, marketers who have a high DRI index (relative to industry benchmarks) will be able to leverage this score, and (assuming their domain name is portable) essentially have ESPs clamoring for their business. When a switch by a marketer occurs, ESPs will naturally gravitate toward DRI, much like a client with a good credit score who intends to find the best interest rate possible on a mortgage.  

In a recent comment on a Clickz article, Jim Fenton comments that  “Portability is but one of the advantages of domain-based reputation, but the extent to which reputation is portable between ESPs depends on how the respective ESPs work.  Some ESPs send as, for example, newsletter.brandname.com, which would be portable if brandname decided to switch. But others send as brandname.espname.com, which would not be portable. The extent to which the brand wants to be portable needs to be considered when choosing ESPs.” 

ESPs, on the other hand, have much to gain from the DRI windfall.  Properly managed, ESPs can manage preconditions to their clients that meet or exceed better than average DRI scores.  ESPs also have the ability to dictate the level of portability for domains.  This decision is ultimately that of the domain owner, but ESPs may help influence new customer adoption of the portable domains by offering “portability” as a standard or premium service.  The rising popularity of domain portability raises an important question: Should all domains be portable?

Furthermore, ESPs that have large domain sets (many clients) will have a “front row seat” to look into their senders’ DRI, and will  prescribe methods for developing a higher reputation score.  Clients of ESPs will adhere to stricter policy controls dictated by ISPs, knowing that their DRI is at risk if they continue to send suspect mail. DRI is also in danger when recipient engagement metrics fall below industry benchmarks.   When suspect senders realize that their DRI is below average and ISPs have shown them little mercy on delivering to the inbox, suspect senders will have no choice but to proactively engage or seize operations with ESPs.  The dilemma for ESPs is whether or not to maintain a relationship with marginal senders who are well paying, conscientious clients. Each ESP will have to decide where to draw the line on this type of client..   ESPs who stay vigilant will have the most to gain.

 It’s 1849 for Reputation Services

The Domain-Reputation Index (DRI) may be governed by independent 3^rd party entities who will aggregate data of millions of domains.  Companies that could represent such an index may include, but are not limited to, Pivotal Veracity, ReturnPath, GoodMail,  Email Data Source, ESPC, and others.  I did not mention DNS because that system is taxed already.  All of these companies may consider entering into the attractive DRI market, and establishing benchmark DRI thresholds that define, good, bad, and marginal sending behavior.  Among the various other reputation tools in their arsenal would be the ability to certify and publish millions of DRI domain records for the email industry.  Such a collection of records would cause these companies to become the most trusted throughout the industry.  

Think of the big three credit reporting agencies, and then compare them to these email reputation-based organizations.  These entities will have rich warehouses of deliverability and engagement data that will span many verticals and benchmarks.  We’re already seeing traces of this with the latest Pivotal Veracity report on your email engagement index, which is based on multiple sources that are aggregated monthly across authenticated domains.  These reputation agencies will develop a hierarchy of domain reputation building blocks and become a trusted resource as leading advocates for legitimate senders.   

As the email technology and deliverability landscape evolves in a direction that prioritizes individual consumer engagement, marketers must create more relevant communications than ever before to ensure they get into the inbox, creating better ROI.  Certainly, a deliverability index is imminent, whether we call it a DRI, or another name.  Organizations such as Pivotal Veracity, ReturnPath, EEC, MAAWG, CAUCE, or ESPC should begin to consider forming governing bodies focused on Domain Reputation.  The development of the domain reputation index is beneficial to the continued development of  legitimate senders. 

It’s truly going to be interesting to see how the ISPs choose to develop a moniker for the concept of Domain Reputation.  Hopefully, this blog has answered some questions about the need for the domain reputation index in the email industry.  In theory, there are lots of advantages; however, the advent of DRI also gives rise to many more challenging questions.  How will domain-squatting or “domain look-alike” have an effect on DRI?  Do you limit the number of domains a corporate entity would require?  One would think that an effective DRI would exist by rolling up these “sets of domains” for larger corporate entities and developing “one” corporate DRI.  What would that entail? What about domain limits or regulation?  

Also, there is disagreement about whether or not we need further regulation by limiting how many domains a corporate entity would have, given the versatility and the importance on branding.  Since a registry (which currently assigns and maintains domains) does not have the necessary systems in place to measure the use of a domain, what body, (government, or non-government) would be the likely prevailing body? 

 

All of these questions will need to be pondered as the use of domain reputation in the email industry continues to unfold.  Undoubtedly, there will be bumps in the road along the way that need to be worked out.  Nevertheless, it is important to support the continuing development of the domain reputation index because, in the end, your reputation is all that you really have.

Fred Tabsharani

Port25 Solutions, Inc.

@tabsharani

A reader forwarded this GoDaddy message to me (I have anonymized it) asking for advice. Apparently GoDaddy is now charging for handling spam complaints and has a $200 "spam tax" for clients that do email marketing. If they receive spam complaints against you, they are claiming that they will hold your domain ransom unless you pay $75 to release it.

Basically, GoDaddy is saying that if you do email marketing or have affiliates that send emails linking to your site, they don't want your business.

See below...

From: GoDaddy Abuse Department [mailto:abuse@godaddy.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2008
Subject: RE: EXAMPLE.COM

Dear XXXXXX,

Thank you for contacting Go Daddy's Abuse Department.

As the registrant of EXAMPLE.COM you are ultimately responsible for your domain name. Any email mail advertisement that is driving traffic to, or generating revenue for, your website or domain name is your responsibility. If your clients violate our anti spam policy they place your domain name in jeopardy.

You can view Go Daddy's Anti-Spam policy by clicking on the "Anti-Spam Policy" link located on Go Daddy's "Legal Agreement" page. Click the following link to access Go Daddy's "Legal Agreements" page: https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/agreements.asp.

Please keep in mind that it is not our intention to cause anyone's business to suffer and we do appreciate your response and cooperation. Because of your willingness to resolve this issue thus far, your services have not been interrupted, however this situation remains unresolved.

While we do consider you ultimately responsible for the use of your domain name, we understand you cannot guarantee that each and every client you provide services to will act responsibly. Because of this Go Daddy offers a solution that may be a better fit for your particular situation. We refer to this solution as our "Abuse Enforcement Program".

If you intend to provide services to your clients that involve the use, or marketing of, your domain name, you must require your clients to abide by Go Daddy's anti spam policy. These services include, but are not limited to, the following:

- Affiliate Advertising Programs (aka "clickthru" programs)
- Website Hosting/Email Services (free or paid)
- Multi-Level Marketing Programs
- Independent Contractor Programs

If you agree to the terms of the "Abuse Enforcement Program" outlined below, Go Daddy will accept, in good faith, your commitment as proof of your desire to correct this problem and enforce our anti-spam policy.

"Abuse Enforcement Program" terms are as follows:

1. Authorize GoDaddy.com to charge a $199 non-refundable administration fee* to the credit card on file for your account. This fee is used to cover the costs of responding to or "cleaning up" the outstanding spam complaints Go Daddy has received against your domain name so far.
2. Terminate the services you are providing to the organization circulating the mailing that has generated the complaints we have received.
3. Reply to this message with a statement that you will terminate the services of any future client that violates Go Daddy's No Spam policy.
4. Provide both a primary contact and secondary contact email address.

In the future, Go Daddy will send a "warning notice" to these contact addresses if we receive additional spam complaints. If you respond to these "warning notices" within 5 days no action will be taken against you. This will allow you handle the problem on your end preventing any interruption of service to your clients that are not at fault. Go Daddy itself has a similar agreement with our upstream provider AT&T.

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If this solution is not agreeable to you, or you are unable to comply with these terms, you can transfer your domain name to another registrar. We require that you pay a $75 administration fee before allowing you to proceed with your transfer. Again this fee used to offset the costs of "cleaning up" the outstanding spam complaints against your domain name.

You will need to provide the following in your reply:

1. A statement that you will initiate the transfer of your domain name to a new registrar within the next 24 hours.
2. Authorization for GoDaddy.com to charge a $75 administration fee* to the credit card on file for your account.
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• You may want to log into your Go Daddy account and confirm that the card on file is valid and has not expired.
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Please let us know what option you choose, thank you for your cooperation.
Sincerely,

Abuse Department
GoDaddy.com
24/7 Abuse Department Hotline: 480-624-2505