The email industry's latest buyout happened a few days ago and we witnessed a highly reputable email monitoring and deliverability reputation company Pivotal Veracity agree to buyout terms from Unica, an Email Service Provider with  gunpowder. Unica is attempting to be a "one-stop shop" for marketers that utilize their suite of services and with the acquisition of Pivotal Veracity, Unica may have completed it’s mission of also providing email reputation and deliverability services to its core clients.

What amazes me about this transaction is that Pivotal Veracity was really making strides in becoming a thought-leader in this small field,  and was competing closely with archrival ReturnPath.  I believe the buyout could potentially alienate a number ESP's from eventually partnering with Pivotal Veracity.  As a result of the buyout, ESPs will be very cautious in their approach to working with Pivotal Veracity. However, this by no means diminishes Pivotal Veracity's tremendous accomplishment and a huge congratulations is in order to everyone associated with Pivotal Veracity including but not limited to Deirdre Baird, Michelle Eichner, Jordan Cohen and Len Schnyder.  It certainly looks like Pivotal Veracity accomplished their goal and executed on their exit strategy perfectly.  For many successful companies, "stage five" constitutes an exit strategy of some kind. This process usually happens after key executives and members of the board vote on such an initiative.  I just think that stage five might have come a bit early for Pivotal Veracity.

All evidence seems to show that the real winner in this transaction is ReturnPath.  ReturnPath no doubt also has an exit strategy, but they appear unwilling to divulge a strategy or partner with an ESP at this point, given their unique leadership position and respected voice in the industry.  Although Pivotal Veracity has many well spoken and thought provoking leaders on their staff, I think ReturnPath and their consummate staff are the real superheroes here.  From  Stephanie Miller, the passionate and relentless email advocate to the outspoken J.D. Falk, whose innate knowledge of email technology and deliverability illuminates us all.  Then, of course, there is the self-proclaimed spamfighter himself, Neil Schwartzman. Without a doubt, ReturnPath’s luminaries saturate the industry with reliable and balanced messaging every time.

Furthermore, with leading services in place that are more robust than ever (such as the latest from Sender Score outlined here by Spencer Kollas), and definitive plans in place for maximizing and monitoring domain reputation for senders, the future looks promising.  When you take emails bright future into account, it appears that  ReturnPath is poised for many quarters of strong growth.  I don’t want to sound like an analyst here, but I really think ReturnPath has what it takes to raise the bar for the entire email community and further develop its existing reputation services.

With these developments, ESPs will now will look to ReturnPath as the consummate leader in the email reputation monitoring space and see one fewer rival, one fewer choice to make.  Senders and ESPs will find that ReturnPath is the only high level and sovereign conduit for stellar email deliverability monitoring and reputation.  The allure of ReturnPath is its stout independent position in our space (a positon that only those in our space truly appreciate.) Certainly Matt Blumberg, George Bilbrey and their hardworking crew can now navigate the email reputation landscape exclusively.

At some point in the future, I’m sure ReturnPath also has an exit strategy in mind and that strategy is not for us to surmise. I would venture to guess that as the industry continues to mature and consolidate, ReturnPath may consider filing for an IPO, especially as we see continued consolidation in this space.   I think what matters most is to enjoy the exciting journey that ReturnPath is paving for our industry.  We now have two choices: we can either watch or we can help them build a company of which we can all be proud of. 

Fred Tabsharani

Port25 Solutions, Inc.

@tabsharani

I offer the link to the legal action noted above with no comment.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10074002-93.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

Neil didn't think that a license plate was enough, so he actually got an email tatoo! I give up Neil, you win. I'm not shaving an @ sign into my head.

Anne Mitchell of ISIPP posts "How the Email Deliverability Accreditation and Reputation Industry is Eating Itself Alive" a screed about how some in the space are dissing the competition to make sales.

While some negatives are inevitable in comparison shopping materials provided by sales types, this type of thing reminds me of something a boss of mine once said: Referring at the time to the small amount of money we had to divvy up among the various departments under his control, he quipped 'when the water runs out, the animals around the watering hole look at one another differently'.

Quite so. I have to wonder if such desperate tactics are brought about by a monetary compression at a given firm, or if they speak to portended industry health. Actually, I tend towards the former explanation rather than the latter; I don't think email has anything to fear, indeed, it is probably a growth area in a receding market. While all indicators for the over-all economy may be downwards trending, as the cost of travel increases, and face-to-face becomes ever more dear, surely the ability to communicate from afar will become ever more valuable.

Return Path opened up a RFC of a fashion, as to whether or not Open Rates should be retired as a metric:

Is it Time to Retire the Open Rate?

Here's what I think:

It has long been a suggestion from us security types that preview panes (and any other form of automatic graphic rendering) be disabled to avoid downloading pernicious payloads. How much of an adoption incursion into the userbase that notion has garnered is undetermined, but some email clients do come with such facility disabled by default; that surely does have to have an impact on the measurement of open rates.

In this day and age, with people’s time being limited, and their use of the Internet being pulled hither and neigh, why would someone settle for such a crude attempt at measuring success? It is like saying the competitors in the 100-yard dash in the Olympics are successful merely because they got out of the blocks. The special olympics as it were.

ROI, and actual measurable actions taken on the part of the recipient seems, to my mind, to be much more intelligent.

At the very least, you have to cross the finish line to be considered among the winners, after all.

Derek Harding gives a historical run-down on Whitelisting, with the money-quote being:

In short, whitelisting is a useful and important tool, it may even be a necessity in some cases. However, it's not a substitute for good list hygiene and adherence to best practices and standards. It's not a panacea. Being whitelisted will not make your old and tired list suddenly perform well.