MAAWG Morphs Into Love Fest, But Where’s Google?

Anyone up for a few verses of Kumbaya?

A previously unheard-of spirit of cooperation between bulk e-mailers and the world’s biggest inbox providers marked the latest meeting of the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group, according to marketers who attended.

MAAWG is the largest global trade association aimed at fighting spam and other e-mail “messaging abuse.”

MAAWG’s board includes AOL, Bell Canada, Comcast, EarthLink, Verizon, Microsoft and Yahoo!, among others. The group’s ISP’s reportedly represent 500 million inboxes. As a result, the MAAWG’s policies significantly impact e-mailers’ deliverability.

Where previous gatherings of bulk e-mailers and inbox providers have often been marked by an atmosphere of mutual antagonism, the meeting in San Francisco from Feb. 28 to March 2 took a decidedly different tone, according to attendees.

Part of the reason for the collegial atmosphere may be that MAAWG bans press.

However, some mutual understanding has apparently evolved, as well.

“There seemed to be a general feeling that commercial marketers are actually real human beings who they [ISPs] can work with,” said George Bilbrey, general manager of delivery assurance solutions for Return Path. “Two years ago, I was one of the few commercial e-mail people there and that wasn’t the feeling. They were wary of commercial marketers.”

Bilbrey said he believes that Internet service providers have recognized in the interim that if they work with commercial e-mailers “their behavior gets better and things improve.”

On the other hand, ISPs have noticed a similar change in attitude from e-mail marketers, said Charles Stiles, AOL’s postmaster and the co-chair of MAAWG’s collaboration committee.

“Mailers at one time said: ‘Look, I just have to get my mail delivered. How do I do it?’ At the same time, ISPs were just concerned with ‘How do I stop the spam from coming through’ with spam being very broadly defined,” said Stiles. “Now, mailers are asking ‘How do I serve our mutual customers in the best possible way. How can I make things more efficient for you as an ISP to process the mail I’m sending to you?’ ISPs are saying, ‘How can we provide more resources and provide more feedback so that you understand the issues that we’re facing?’”

For example, as a part of their participation in MAAWG, inbox providers are increasingly making spam feedback reports available to e-mailers and many of the reports are in a standard format.

As a result, e-mail senders will be able to take feedback from all the participating inbox providers and parse it to see, for example, if certain subject lines, or addresses from a specific co-registration partner are drawing an unusually high number of spam complaints, said Return Path’s Bilbrey.

“That abuse data is gold,” said Bilbrey. “The No. 1 factor ISPs use to determine which IPs and domains to block are complaint rates, and here you have a copy of every complaint someone has about mail coming from your IP address or domain.”

Meanwhile, notably absent from MAAWG’s activities was Google.

Google’s Gmail addresses reportedly account for single-digit percentages of most e-mail lists. But as the service gets increasingly popular, e-mail marketers are hoping Google will begin to participate in events such as MAAWG’s conferences.

A Google representative chalked the company’s absence from MAAWG’s last meeting up to scheduling conflicts.

“We understand this organization holds several meetings a year, and unfortunately due to scheduling, we were unable to participate in this particular session,” wrote Google spokeswoman Eileen Rodriguez in an e-mail. “Their next meeting is in the coming weeks, and we're checking our availability now to participate.”