Yesterday, I was talking with a potential client about engaging my services. The prospect asked for a guarantee of results regarding a smallish blocking list and left the call unhappy because I would not do that.
The reason that I, and indeed ANY email delivery consultant, cannot guarantee results seems obvious to me. If I were running the list your mail server is on, I could guarantee something, because I am responsible for it. But I cannot promise you that someone else will act in accordance with my wishes.
I know many of the people involved in running some of the larger lists, and consider many of them my friends. But when I am working with them on a professional matter, we set that friendship aside and try to work together to achieve a result that satisfies the list’s delisting criteria.
When it comes to working with a blocking list or an ISP, I cannot lean on those friendships to get me anything more than these two things:
- Recalling my reputation for honesty with them.
- Understanding that I won’t work with someone who is trying to game the system.
That will get me the benefit of the doubt in many instances, but it does nothing to give me a free pass to delisting. I can open a dialog; I can talk to them, but no one can promise you something contingent upon someone else’s actions.
About the Author
Mickey Chandler is a Consultant & Attorney with over 28 years of experience in Email Deliverability & Privacy Law. He has a strong background in email authentication infrastructure (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), ISP and mailbox provider relations, anti-spam policy and compliance, CAN-SPAM and state anti-spam law gained through overseeing the Abuse & Compliance team at Salesforce Marketing Cloud, originating the ISP relations role at Informz (now part of Higher Logic), and working in the fight against spam since 1997. He holds a B.A. in Government, a B.S. in Computer Information Systems, and a J.D. from the University of Houston Law Center. He is a certified CIPP/US professional and a certified CIPM professional.
