What's in store at the ISPs 2009-2010

How are the ISPs changing their spam filters and how does this impact legitimate mailers?  Pivotal Veracity was the 1st in the industry to officially confirm and report on the move to domain-based reputation by top ISPs such as AOL and Yahoo and the use of clicks and opens to identify spam.  This information was provided first to our clients and then to Ken Magill who wrote a story on these changes based on our findings and discussions with top ISPs.  In this report, we share a high level overview of these critical insights.

Download Pivotal Veracity's Exclusive Report here   Pivotal Veracity ISP Insights 2009-2010

Key Take-Aways

Reputation is and will remain of your own doing & not that purchased from a 3rd party! Reputation is still within your control and will remain so. You do not need to pay someone to have a good reputation (nor will it do any good) and paying someone won’t save you from a bad one. Almost universally, your reputation is driven by Spam Complaints, Unknown User Rates, and Spam Trap/ Honey Pot Rates (mailing to old expired addresses).  

Domain-based Reputation is here! A number of top ISPs including Yahoo & AOL are moving to augment IP-based reputation systems with portable Domain-based reputation systems for those mailers using DK/DKIM authentication.  This is a hugely important development and one that will be welcomed by legitimate mailers.  This means, ISPs will “attach” (compute) your Spam Complaint Rate, Unknown User Rate, and Spam Trap Rates to your Domain (this will be the domain you are authenticating which for most mailers will be the friendly from domain)  in addition to your IP.   Switching IP addresses? With domain-based reputation ..you get to keep (for good or bad) your reputation.

Authenticate with DK/DKIM! With the exception of Hotmail which is still sticking to its proprietary “Sender ID” authentication model, the authentication method of choice by all the other leading ISPs is DK/DKIM.  If you are not already ..authenticate !  You need to authenticate in order to take advantage of domain-based reputation and other ISP services such as Yahoo’s feedback loop.  You’ll find extensive resources on authentication within the Pivotal Veracity knowledge base.