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The email deliverability issues we have had as a legitimate business are insane. Moving to an ESP years ago has helped, but it's far from perfect. I've wondered

The email deliverability issues we have had as a legitimate business are insane. Moving to an ESP years ago has helped, but it's far from perfect. I've wondered how a small business without the tech resources could manage this. For instance, several months back some of our account holders suddenly stopped receiving important account info as well as newsletters from us. Tracked it down to a third party filtering service used by various email providers. Contacted them and they indicated that we were sending to honeypot addresses and/or doing other things that landed us on their list. We refuted all of their assertions (all of our recipients are double out-in, etc.) But , they insisted, as if their processes were infallible and refused to remove us. Here they were, a third party with whom we had no agreement, yet they were interfering with our ability to do business (and profiting from it). We also had paid advertising in the newsletters per agreements with advertisers. Consulted counsel and the next step was to send a cease and desist, followed by an injunction on the grounds of tortious interference. Then, just as suddenly, our emails started going through again. So, all of this, just to send email. Yet, I still have to deal with a ton of spam personally when wading through my quarantine folder for routine false positives. Current processes are harder on the good guys than the spammers.

JoshTriplett 11y ago
> Consulted counsel and the next step was to send a cease and desist, followed by an injunction on the grounds of tortious interference. Then, just as suddenly, our emails started going through again. Dangerous path to go down; because so many spammers throw around legal threats too, doing so can get you on a different set of blacklists.
- unclebucknasty 11y ago
  At that point, you're boxed in. You're already on a list. Begging and hoping when your revenue and relationships are under attack is not an option. Filing for injunctive relief isn't a threat. It's legal action. Unlike spammers, we could easily demonstrate our legitimacy and best practices, etc. They would be compelled to remove us and not retaliate if they are a legit business and care about the integrity of their service for their own reputation and customers. If, however, that does not describe them, then the outcome would seem to be bleak in any case.
dredmorbius 11y ago
In fairness, I've worked with a number of generally legitimate shops who've had exceptionally poor email hygiene. Sending messages in the millions to domains which have been inactive and unregistered for over a decade, for example, suggests a certain lack of diligence in bounce-tracking or list-cleaning. The emails had been initially legitimately added, but clients and/or email providers had long since gone out of business. Re-validating email every so often isn't a bad idea. Especially if you're relying on it for other purposes (e.g., account recovery).
- unclebucknasty 11y ago
  We're clean. For instance, our ESP detects hard bounces and auto removes them from our lists. We also use Webhooks to update internally on unsubscribes, etc. For transactional emails, our ESP auto-adds bounces to an outbound block list, so any future attempts to send fail. We only send those to accounts with recent activity anyway, but either way, one bounce stops future sends.
lsc 11y ago
so... your customers were paying a third party to block you, so rather than working with your customers to figure out what the problem was, you threaten to sue the third party.
- unclebucknasty 11y ago
  No. Our customers have email accounts with providers like Comcast. Comcast uses a third-party filtering service to handle spam. So, our customers had no knowledge of the third-party, and some contacted our support staff to question why they weren't receiving our emails. And, of course we attempted to identify the problem with the third party. If you read more carefully, you'll find that in my comment. Only after they insisted their classification was correct and refused to remove us from the list did we explore our legal options.
  - lsc 11y ago
    >And, of course we attempted to identify the problem with the third party. If you read more carefully, you'll find that in my comment. Only after they insisted their classification was correct and refused to remove us from the list did we explore our legal options. My point here is that the recipients of the email and the senders of the email have very different ideas as to what constitutes a "correct evaluation." - and in this case, it's the recipient who matters, so complaints from senders of email should be simply ignored by spam-filtering companies. Now, if the recipients can't complain, that's a problem, but it's not like people don't have a choice of email providers.
    - unclebucknasty 11y ago
      You are really missing the point here and you have some key assumptions wrong. >recipients of the email and the senders of the email have very different ideas What does that mean? They sign up for our service and expect to get e-mails from us, which they don't receive. We have the same "idea", but the third-party is interfering with that "idea". >if the recipients can't complain, that's a problem I will repeat that by definition of the business model, the recipients don't complain to the third-party because they have no knowledge that the third-party even exists. >but it's not like people don't have a choice of email providers Even if recipients did know about the third party, do you know the switching costs of e-mail? And, you're suggesting that we should wait until all of our affected members get fed up and change providers (hoping that provider doesn't use the same service, etc.)? All of this, when the problem is obviously being caused by the third-party's error, yet they have no responsibility? Sorry, but of course the third-party is absolutely compelled to provide some recourse for legitimate senders that are mis-classified. Too hard with all the spammers out there, you say? Sorry. Pick another business.
david-given 11y ago
> Here they were, a third party with whom we had no agreement, yet they were interfering with our ability to do business (and profiting from it). Well... that's an oversimplification. You don't have an agreement, sure, but your recipient has an agreement with them --- your recipient has decided that it's with paying the spam filtering supplier to filter their mail for them. I realise that this doesn't help you, and frankly they don't sound like they're doing their job very well, but it's important to remember that the recipient chose to use their service.
- unclebucknasty 11y ago
  No. Our recipients had no knowledge of the third party. Instead, their email providers contracted with the third party for filtering services. EDIT: Not sure why it would preclude their liability in any case though. Their customers would be paying to have spam blocked, not emails from legitimate companies with whom they've agreed to do business. If they were blocking these demonstrably legit businesses in error and refused to do anything about it, then their "service" is helping no one, but is damaging those businesses. It is simply a risk inherent to their business model and it is absolutely their responsibility to address it.
  - david-given 11y ago
    Right... their email providers, which they are paying to provide email from them. The money chain is still at your recipient's end. Note that I'm not suggesting you did the wrong thing here --- I don't see anything else you could have done. I'm just saying that pinning the entirety of the blame on the third party provider is wrong. ... Having read the rest of the thread: I'm sorry to say but the reason why you're having so much difficulty, and the reason why you're getting hostile replies here, is that as an email advertiser people are going to automatically assume you're in the wrong. You are on the edge of an astonishingly dirty industry, and anyone who works in email has been so burnt by the Neptune-sized tidal wave of diarrhoea that is spam is likely to spit in your face before you have the chance to explain that you are not, in fact, a spammer. And chances are that they won't actually care. To a most people, email + advertising = spam. I really don't have anything to suggest. I have written antispam software, and I've read some of the forums of both sides, and frankly I don't know who's scarier.

JoshTriplett 11y ago

> Consulted counsel and the next step was to send a cease and desist, followed by an injunction on the grounds of tortious interference. Then, just as suddenly, our emails started going through again. Dangerous path to go down; because so many spammers throw around legal threats too, doing so can get you on a different set of blacklists.

unclebucknasty 11y ago
At that point, you're boxed in. You're already on a list. Begging and hoping when your revenue and relationships are under attack is not an option. Filing for injunctive relief isn't a threat. It's legal action. Unlike spammers, we could easily demonstrate our legitimacy and best practices, etc. They would be compelled to remove us and not retaliate if they are a legit business and care about the integrity of their service for their own reputation and customers. If, however, that does not describe them, then the outcome would seem to be bleak in any case.

dredmorbius 11y ago

In fairness, I've worked with a number of generally legitimate shops who've had exceptionally poor email hygiene. Sending messages in the millions to domains which have been inactive and unregistered for over a decade, for example, suggests a certain lack of diligence in bounce-tracking or list-cleaning. The emails had been initially legitimately added, but clients and/or email providers had long since gone out of business. Re-validating email every so often isn't a bad idea. Especially if you're relying on it for other purposes (e.g., account recovery).

unclebucknasty 11y ago
We're clean. For instance, our ESP detects hard bounces and auto removes them from our lists. We also use Webhooks to update internally on unsubscribes, etc. For transactional emails, our ESP auto-adds bounces to an outbound block list, so any future attempts to send fail. We only send those to accounts with recent activity anyway, but either way, one bounce stops future sends.

lsc 11y ago

so... your customers were paying a third party to block you, so rather than working with your customers to figure out what the problem was, you threaten to sue the third party.

unclebucknasty 11y ago
No. Our customers have email accounts with providers like Comcast. Comcast uses a third-party filtering service to handle spam. So, our customers had no knowledge of the third-party, and some contacted our support staff to question why they weren't receiving our emails. And, of course we attempted to identify the problem with the third party. If you read more carefully, you'll find that in my comment. Only after they insisted their classification was correct and refused to remove us from the list did we explore our legal options.
- lsc 11y ago
  >And, of course we attempted to identify the problem with the third party. If you read more carefully, you'll find that in my comment. Only after they insisted their classification was correct and refused to remove us from the list did we explore our legal options. My point here is that the recipients of the email and the senders of the email have very different ideas as to what constitutes a "correct evaluation." - and in this case, it's the recipient who matters, so complaints from senders of email should be simply ignored by spam-filtering companies. Now, if the recipients can't complain, that's a problem, but it's not like people don't have a choice of email providers.
  - unclebucknasty 11y ago
    You are really missing the point here and you have some key assumptions wrong. >recipients of the email and the senders of the email have very different ideas What does that mean? They sign up for our service and expect to get e-mails from us, which they don't receive. We have the same "idea", but the third-party is interfering with that "idea". >if the recipients can't complain, that's a problem I will repeat that by definition of the business model, the recipients don't complain to the third-party because they have no knowledge that the third-party even exists. >but it's not like people don't have a choice of email providers Even if recipients did know about the third party, do you know the switching costs of e-mail? And, you're suggesting that we should wait until all of our affected members get fed up and change providers (hoping that provider doesn't use the same service, etc.)? All of this, when the problem is obviously being caused by the third-party's error, yet they have no responsibility? Sorry, but of course the third-party is absolutely compelled to provide some recourse for legitimate senders that are mis-classified. Too hard with all the spammers out there, you say? Sorry. Pick another business.

david-given 11y ago

> Here they were, a third party with whom we had no agreement, yet they were interfering with our ability to do business (and profiting from it). Well... that's an oversimplification. You don't have an agreement, sure, but your recipient has an agreement with them --- your recipient has decided that it's with paying the spam filtering supplier to filter their mail for them. I realise that this doesn't help you, and frankly they don't sound like they're doing their job very well, but it's important to remember that the recipient chose to use their service.

unclebucknasty 11y ago
No. Our recipients had no knowledge of the third party. Instead, their email providers contracted with the third party for filtering services. EDIT: Not sure why it would preclude their liability in any case though. Their customers would be paying to have spam blocked, not emails from legitimate companies with whom they've agreed to do business. If they were blocking these demonstrably legit businesses in error and refused to do anything about it, then their "service" is helping no one, but is damaging those businesses. It is simply a risk inherent to their business model and it is absolutely their responsibility to address it.
- david-given 11y ago
  Right... their email providers, which they are paying to provide email from them. The money chain is still at your recipient's end. Note that I'm not suggesting you did the wrong thing here --- I don't see anything else you could have done. I'm just saying that pinning the entirety of the blame on the third party provider is wrong. ... Having read the rest of the thread: I'm sorry to say but the reason why you're having so much difficulty, and the reason why you're getting hostile replies here, is that as an email advertiser people are going to automatically assume you're in the wrong. You are on the edge of an astonishingly dirty industry, and anyone who works in email has been so burnt by the Neptune-sized tidal wave of diarrhoea that is spam is likely to spit in your face before you have the chance to explain that you are not, in fact, a spammer. And chances are that they won't actually care. To a most people, email + advertising = spam. I really don't have anything to suggest. I have written antispam software, and I've read some of the forums of both sides, and frankly I don't know who's scarier.