By Neil Schwartzman, Return Path

I was at Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) conference this week and, as always, it was very interesting. Most enlightening was a conversation that George Bilbrey and I had with the head anti-spammer at a large receiving site. His sighed at one point and said, "Senders need to quit whining. We are busy fighting spam here!" While I thought it might not be a particularly politically correct or even polite thing to say, perhaps it is a message that needs to be relayed to senders.

The botnet situation is at a crisis point. If the receiving sites don’t put all their resources into shoring up the defenses, there may well not be receiving sites to deliver to.

Perhaps marketers could take a look at the volumes they send, and scroll back. We know that targeted email works better anyway. As Seth Godin says, "Small is the new big." Sending targeted messages to a small, but more responsive, list is going to yield better ROI for marketers and help alleviate ISP overload. Talk about a win-win.

Also, the people who make the decisions around sending of email
should understand how often their deliverability specialists need to
intervene at receiving sites on their behalf. Are you being fair? Are
you making the changes the ISPs have asked for in order to distinguish
your email from all the crap that is coming in to them?

I know of a Sender Score Certified client who has a spam trap
problem. They have been suspended for some time. To deal with spamtraps
invariably involves some pain in terms of list size – you sometimes
have to drop good addresses to ensure you have removed all the bad
addresses. And, the work to even figure out where the bad stuff is can
be a slow, painstaking process. Nevertheless, the client assured me
they were doing everything possible to deal with the spamtrap hits.
"Absolutely everything," they said.

Well, I recently learned that every time they got off the phone with
me the tune changed, and the key players refused to drop any addresses,
or even segment their list. And so, they remain uncertified.

Legitimate senders need to work together with ISPs to fight against
dynamic spammers by doing everything in their power to distinguish
their email from the bad actors. This means cleaning up their lists, moderating frequency, keeping messages relevant and maintaining low complaint rates.
The largest senders should also stay on top of fluctuations in the
ability of receiving sites to actually accept email (meaning, if an ISP
is under attack, your system would back off sending for an hour or two,
or even a day or two). And quit whining.

Keep in mind that the abuse teams at receiving sites are a cost
center – and every minute they needlessly spend dealing with the
deliverability problems of legitimate email is a minute they aren’t
fighting the spam that threatens to overwhelm us all. Lend them a hand
by fixing your own problems before you send, and they will definitely
be grateful. This MAAWG was all about collaboration – let’s try to
collaborate by taking these steps. You will make friends and positive
relationships in the receiving community should you do so. I can 100%
guarantee that the message of collaboration will be delivered to the
receiving sites. And nobody likes a whiner, after all.

Source: Return Path