Anne Mitchell on email accreditation and SuretyMail
Anne P. Mitchell is a long-time stalwart of the anti-spam movement and deliverability industry. Or as she puts it herself, "I've been in this industry since before it was an industry."
The current CEO and President of ISIPP (the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy), she's the former Director of Legal and Public Affairs at MAPS (Mail Abuse Prevention System - one of the earliest blacklist providers), a cofounder of Habeas, and a coauthor of the McCain amendment to the USA's Federal CAN-SPAM Act.
This vast experience makes her ideally placed to talk about email deliverability and the Institute's own email accreditation service: SuretyMail.
Anne's first concern is that organizations still aren't fully aware of the role of their email reputation in getting emails delivered. And, paradoxically, this might be due to a growing emphasis on broader online reputations.
The importance of your online or Internet reputation "...is at the fore of a lot of different initiatives. Last year it was all about Web 2.0, this year it's about Internet identity and reputation."
The problem is organizations assuming (falsely) that a strong Internet identity and reputation transfers over to their email reputation. But the two are separate.
"A company can have an absolutely superlative general or identity reputation in the Internet space, and still have an abysmal email reputation."
...with the result that their email just isn't getting delivered by ISPs.
A challenge for the industry, then, is to make sure "...people really do understand that one is not eclipsing the other: email reputation (and email accreditation of this reputation) are still really very critical."
Nevertheless, the message is spreading. In the early days of accreditation, it was only the classic bulk email marketers and survey companies who sought certification. That's changing.
As organizations conduct more and more business online, "...it's ever more important that your email actually gets delivered to your customers or whoever it is you're trying to reach. So, for example, we're seeing more companies come with transactional email they want accredited."
But it's not just about senders. Trustworthy accreditation simplifies life for everyone in the email system...
"That is a critical piece that so few people actually recognize...it makes it easier for the ISP. I come from the anti-spam side. I come from the receiving side of the equation. We're very fortunate that we have an incredible relationship with ISPs and spam filters...first and foremost our organization was founded on their behalf."
ISIPP's SuretyMail accreditation program does not use a whitelisting model, like most of the accreditation industry. Instead they publish information on approved senders to allow ISPs and spam filters to make a better judgement on how to handle that sender's email.
Anne explains: "The first thing we tell people when they come to us for accreditation is that we're not going to ram your email down the throats of the ISPs. We're going to tell them why they should take your email. But at the end of the day, it's their decision."
"We've never done whitelisting. What we've done is true accreditation...where we say to the ISP, 'you should accept Mark's mail because it's all double opt-in, and he publishes SPF, his RDNS is set, etc.' And we actually tell them with each real-time lookup why they should accept your email."
This adds another layer of trust to the relationship between the ISPs and the SuretyMail program, because "...what we're giving them is not our subjective opinion but factual data."
"We are giving them the information that they need to make an informed decision. We know that they're looking for those particular indications of legitimacy for the email coming out of your IP address and so that's what we're giving them...we can create custom feeds for the ISPs so what's most important to them is what they're getting."
So is anyone using SuretyMail?
A look at the customer list reveals a lot of big senders and ESPs. But what about on the ISP side? (Which is where it counts.)
Anne won't disclose numbers or names for privacy reasons, but..."I can tell you that we work with all the top ISPs and most of the major spam filters like SpamAssassin. For example, when we first rolled out these discrete datapoints about what you do - you publish SPF etc. - one of the chief architects of SpamAssassin helped us design this. So we knew right off the bat that SpamAssassin would be able to take full advantage."
Which begs the question, why doesn't SuretyMail get more coverage?
Anne attributes it to ISIPP's unwillingness to play the PR or "big money" game.
"We don't go to the trade shows. We've stopped going to the industry functions because they're always the same. That's not where we play. We're not courting the public eye. Maybe we should, but it's not our model. We don't need to go out and grow even more to satisfy investors."
"If I was going to start sending someone to every trade show out there just to hob nob in the hall then we'd have to raise our rates. And then maybe we would be looking for funding. We've chosen to take a different path and this is part of the price we pay for that. But we're very comfortable with it and we sleep at night."
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