Stupid ESP Watch Part II: Great Points

Matt Blumberg, CEO and chairman of e-mail deliverability firm Return Path, was kind enough in a blog post last week to give praise and link to a piece that appeared here criticizing e-mail service providers who claim to have high e-mail delivery rates.

"I think that service providers actually do themselves a disservice when they hang their hat on deliverability," Blumberg wrote.

In my original piece, I had written that “our delivery rates are very high” is a statement has no place in a pitch from an e-mail service provider.

Why? Because the main factors that affect deliverability—spam complaints, hitting too many dead addresses and spam traps—are all within the list owner’s control.

While I still stand by that assessment, some comments from readers of Blumberg’s post and this newsletter have prompted me to modify it a bit.

Yes, the major levers affecting deliverability are in the list owner’s control; however, the ESP has some levers at its disposal, as well.

For example, an ESP can affect deliverability by throttling—or sending the messages at a slower rate—so ISPs are less likely to block it, noted Ben Isaacson, privacy and compliance leader for Experian CheetahMail.

“ESP technology completely varies, and as ISPs increase 'throttling', the ESPs that can optimize throughput will have dramatically better deliverability than others,” Isaacson wrote.

“The level of deliverability support completely varies across ESPs, with some providing regular education and ISP-specific support, and the others who may simply wait for clients to notice,” he added “The fact is senders should make deliverability their #1 priority in choosing an ESP (what's more important?), they just need to know what/how/why this matters to them rather than looking at some magic 'rate' metric that is mostly irrelevant to the decision.”

A Magilla Marketing reader posting as Kirill posted a comment with similar sentiments:

“Some ESPs have better support structure in place than others, whether it’s technology, staff, or approach, to make marketers more successful,” Kirill wrote.

“One analogy that might work is if someone was selling you Hospital A versus Hospital B – sure ultimately your health depends on how much you drink and smoke and whether or not you exercise, but it’s not unreasonable for the sales person to tell you ‘well, more than 90% of our patients end up healthier versus only 80% at the other hospital.’ Especially if the claim is being made in an elevator pitch, it’s a succinct way to demonstrate overall success rather than delving into specific details and nuances.”

Points taken.