On the seventh day of Listmas, my client said to me: “That’s our business model!”
Everyone thinks that they have the next disruptive business model. “What we’ve come up with will change how you ________________.” If only, you know, if only everyone knew about the business and how disruptive it is.
Some people in my line of work generally set aside the first few minutes of a call for the “Explanation of the Business Model.” It’s like starting a church service with a greeting. You know it’s coming, and about all that you can do is prepare yourself for your role in it. It’s going to happen whether you want it to or not.
Over the years, I have heard many business models. And, well, they’re never quite as unique as the person describing them thinks that they are. But here’s the secret to all of this when it comes to sending email: None of it matters. Email works the same whether your business model is old and musty or new and fresh. The people who run the mail servers that are receiving your messages don’t care about your business model. They only care about what their users (your recipients) tell them about your messages, or what they see in their network of spamtraps.
It’s pretty rare to find a business model that’s disruptive to email, and that’s ultimately the only topic worth discussing when it comes to how messages get delivered.
“We’ve gotta make our numbers,”
5 SBLs,
4 authentication failures,
sending 3 times daily,
2 purchased lists,
and that’s why they’re having slow delivery.
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.
