Gerhard du Plessis, Head of Service Delivery at Striata, a global leader in paperless communication, answers some tough questions about the future value of whitelisting as a tool to maximise e-mail deliverability.
Q: Is whitelisting still a crucial part of sender reputation management, and should it be a top priority?
GdP: In the past, whitelisting was very much the holy grail of getting e-mails delivered to big corporate and Webmail domains. This has changed, however, and 'comply or die' is the e-mail administrator's new motto.
The larger Webmail organisations (Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail) are not interested in being phoned by every e-mail administrator to whitelist their sending domain. Instead, they set the rules and e-mail senders must stick to them. If you break the rules, you pay... by getting blocked, throttled or blacklisted.
Q: How easy is it to comply with these rules?
GdP: Complying isn't as easy as it sounds in a sentence. For example, Yahoo's rules can be tricky when you are sending to a large base, even if it has been used regularly, because it measures traffic to non-existent mailboxes. In reality, people close down mailboxes and change e-mail providers all the time, so there is a good chance you will have a 'Does Not Exist' e-mail address in your base, no matter how clean or recent it is. This will cost you in delayed delivery times, as your e-mails are throttled.
Q: Who does a company turn to when its e-mail deliverability is bad?
GdP: If you're sending e-mail yourself through an in-house solution or purchased software and find it hard to maintain an acceptable sender reputation, you probably need help from a specialist.
Companies like Return Path specialise in improving deliverability through a range of services that includes whitelisting with hundreds of thousands of domains. Bear in mind that a service like Return Path will impose strict rules requiring that you have your own house in order - all the time.
Alternatively, if your e-mail service provider (ESP) is worth its salt, it will be doing all these tasks already to manage sender reputation, which in turn will improve your ability to get e-mail delivered.
Q: Does this mean whitelisting is no longer valuable?
GdP: Whitelisting may need to be used in extreme cases where the recipient server is configured to block as much e-mail as possible. The sender may need to approach the domain holder to amend their rules, and if that is not possible, to consider a specific whitelist request. This should only be done if the sender complies with all reasonable rules and if the issue is a recurring one, not a once-off problem relating to something like strain under load, for example.
Q: What is a feedback loop and when would I use one?
GdP: A feedback loop (FBL) is a mechanism provided by ISPs that notifies the sender when an e-mail is reported as spam or junk. You can usually subscribe to an ISP's feedback loop in the same way you'd request to be whitelisted. Each time a recipient of your e-mail reports it as spam or junk, you will receive a report, which enables you to remove the recipient from the e-mail base. This shows your intention to keep your base clean and avoids negative action by the ISP. Unfortunately, not all Webmail providers support FBLs.
Please click here to view the feedback loop infographic.
Q: What else should I be doing to manage my sender reputation?
GdP: This is a large topic and one that is frequently written about. In short, your e-mail administrator or ESP must ensure that their sending process, at least, is set up correctly with reverse DNS records, SPF records for smaller ISPs and companies using their own mail infrastructure and DKIM (which is preferred by Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail).
Review the delivery results of your base regularly and remove 'undeliverable' recipients after each send. All your hard work in setting up and managing your reputation means nothing if you don't clean your base.
Please click here to view the The ABCs of Deliverability infographic.
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