E-marketeers must take note of ISPs approach to spam filtering

The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) warned that if companies fail to take account of new spam blocking filters put in place by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), they stand the risk of losing business.

Guy Hanson, who works on the DMA’s email marketing group, said that ISPs and a set of new spam filters will change the way commercial email is processed and could end up meaning email marketing campaigns come to nothing. “Failing to reach the inbox ultimately means losing sales,” he said.

The DMA created a white paper that points out that the ISPs will reward “good” email in the future, rather than penalising bad mails. The ISPs are using engagement metrics that measure whether subscribers are putting their thumbs up or down with marketing emails they receive.

The strategy has been put in place, said the DMA, because the ISPs are trying to cope with spam volumes, but at the same time they do not want to stop commercial emails that are legit.

How do the ISPs do this? Apparently, by measuring whether subscribers don’t delete without reading mails, or who mark emails as not being spam, as well as recovering emails from spam folders.

These all demonstrate positive interactions with their marketing emails, and “senders are being rewarded with preferential placement in the inbox”.

The study says that sender reputation is the basis of email deliverability. You can find the complete study here.