Improve Email Deliverability Like Batman

Who do you call?

People think improving their deliverability is like fighting crime in Gotham City. Where they pick up the “Bat Phone” and Batman swoops in to fight the injustices of the world. Or there is a single Internet Service Provider (ISP) hotline, where we call and say, “our client is one of the Good Guys – let their email through!” BAM! POW!

Alas, it doesn’t really work that way.

However, who you do call does matter! This month we had an example of where a personal relationship helped us solve a problem for our client and help improve the anti-spam infrastructure of the Internet. That’s right, the entire Internet.

Like any industry, there are formal and informal networks of experts. Real people who share knowledge, collaborate together, and admire each other’s work. The same is true in email deliverability; we have experts and anti-spam staff who share information. We learn from one another about trends, about internal technical problems an ISP might be experiencing, or odd problems we run into where our solution could help someone else. Anything we can learn to improve deliverability for our clients.

For example, a new deliverability consulting client was listed on a well-known URL blacklist. Upon investigation, we discovered this was the result of a bug in the software running the blacklist. We reached out to the operator of the blacklist, with whom a deliverability team member of ours has a long-standing, personal, and professional relationship. With one call, we were able to help the blacklist operator discover and fix the bug in their software. Not only was our client’s problem solved, his deliverability improved – but the Internet was made a slightly better place!

There are also times when anti-spam staff at ISPs can provide general advice to improve deliverability. With these relationships, they let us know: “here’s what’s most important to our systems” and “here’s what you should be looking at for your clients” or “pay particular attention to improving this metric.” And it’s those exchanges, those relationships that help us to serve our clients better, improve deliverability and create our own “Bat Phone” moments. BAM! POW!