As many e-mail marketers can attest, it's becoming more and more difficult to send e-mail. ISPs are cracking down on unwanted mailers, aggressively filtering messages and applying a something called a
reputation score for each sender. A company's reputation score is calculated based on complaint rates, volume of mail sent, and response to unsubscribe requests. If their score falls below a certain
threshold, e-mail service providers have been known to unceremoniously ban senders with no appeals process. Another problem is that hundreds of places compute e-mail reputations in their own way,
making it a costly challenge to keep up. E-mail delivery isn't free anymore; in fact, it's a lot like search engine optimization: a necessary expenditure the results of which aren't always easily
discernible. Large mailers like Wal-mart, Staples, Geico and Evite, have had to hire reputation filtering services like Habeas and ReturnPath to help get their mail delivered to those inboxes.
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