On the first day of Listmas, my data showed to me: something’s causing slow delivery…
Slow delivery rates are a real factor year-round, but they become especially acute and painful between Thanksgiving and Christmas. They happen for all kinds of reasons. So, each weekday until the Friday before Christmas, we’re going to look at things that could be causing mail not to get delivered. Of course, the list of things that can cause delivery rates to slow down or sending to fail altogether is longer than 12, but in honor of the season, we’re going to call this the “12 Days of Listmas.”
Allow this first post to serve as a reminder that slow delivery rates are a real thing and that email is not an instant messaging format. Email is, by design, a store-and-forward protocol. That means the message is stored until the next point in the chain accepts it. If that next link isn’t ready or willing to accept the message, the message will stay where it is until either it can be passed along or it times out. That’s why some messages take 5 seconds to arrive, while others can take hours or days to reach their recipient.
What does this mean for marketers? It means that your plans should include delays as a reality. Planning to send messages that must be “delivered within 5 minutes and used in the next hour” will almost inevitably lead to heartache as messages arrive late.
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.
