I Can't Give You What You Want

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:

1. Recalling my reputation for honesty with them.
2. 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.