Over the last couple of weeks I have been helping some clients with email issues. They weren't getting certain emails from clients that were sending very important emails with contracts attached to them. After doing some research I discovered that the sender's domain had been entered on a SPAM list despite not ever being used to spam or even send automated emails.
This spam protection as it turns out was being applied at the server level of the hosting company. In otherwords the customer never even received the email - even in their personal spam filter - or had any opportunity to accept or reject this message. For all intensive purposes they did not even know the message had been sent.
I realize that ISP companies are involved in a never-ending battle to stop a tsunami of spam, but killing off email before the customer even has a chance to see it or somehow ok it is going a bit too far.
For email marketing providers this presents an even bigger problem. If your clients or customers have opted in or even double opted into your email marketing list then they should receive those messages. It shouldn't matter if the provider sends them with an automated system or if they have HTML in them or any of the other long list of things that ISPs will reject an email for.
My suggestion is that once an ISPs is contracted to provide services for a domain that the client should be allowed to upload some type of "white list" to the ISP. This list should be able to be updated quickly and easily by the client to adjust for continuing email needs. If the ISP chooses to run server level spam protection is should be secondary to the white list of the customer. If a domain is on the list they get through, period. If they are not on the list then the ISP has a right to do some spam filtering.
I know such a suggestion is more work for ISPs, but it is wrong to simply eliminate all emails based on some set of criteria that the ISP sets. Not allowing the client to have some say in what comes through at the server level is denying them control over their own email management and what they choose to get.
I have found spam protection companies that ISPs can hire that allow clients to log on and list people they want to get email from or domains. If an email comes from that domain the ISP using the service lets it go through even if it would have been stopped for some reason before, such as having HTML in the message or coming from an automated server.
If you are a client that is not getting your email because the provider, i.e. GoDaddy has decided to kill your email prior to you ever seeing it then you need to find a new provider. There are solutions out there and not using them is an injustice to the client and the marketers that worked so hard to gain their trust and permission to send them messages.
Michael Temple
