Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Esp Review - Deliverability Errors

Posted byannjon1/6/2009 at 5:42 AM ET 250 Points
My organisation has been using an ESP for 12 months. We moved to a more comprehensive (expensive) service from cheap 'n' cheerful believing that the reason for our deliverability being hit was because cheap services are often blacklisted since used by spammers. It would now appear that 12 months in, 1/4 of our 12k database is not getting delivered. A number of these give us a reason, the most popular being reason "504" which implies that the email was blocked by the recipient server - I am assuming that's the ESP's fault not ours. There appears to be a separate error "500" for incorrect emails which of course is our fault.
Anyone know about these errors?
What should we ask them to do to remedy it?
I believe we are on a shared IP address but will check.
I seem to remember a big vendor claiming to have agents call ISPs to add them back on white list when they were blocked but can't see this lot doing that.
我准备再esp如果它帮助我们布鲁里溃疡t fear this could be endlessly repeated.
Any thoughts / experience welcome - and please do answer the questions, don't just come back trying to promote your alternative services!

As a comparison, I was thinking of resending to the "504" blocked people from a different (pay as you go) tool to see what gets through - is that a valid exercise?
Thanks.
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RESPONSES

  • Posted byJay Hamilton-Rothon1/6/2009 at 8:06 AM Accepted
    Here is a list of the common email error codes:https://email.about.com/cs/standards/a/smtp_error_code_2.htm

    Both of these errors seem to point to a problem on your ESP's side. If their customer service can't help you, move to a new vendor. And yes, choose one that doesn't use shared IP addresses.
  • Posted byannjon1/6/2009 at 8:46 AM Author
    - more precise info - It's actually the "554" code that most fail on - with this message "Your access to this mail system has been rejected due to the sending MTA's poor reputation. If you believe that this failure is in error, please contact the intended recipient via alternate means." which really does imply it's the ESP?
  • Posted byInbox_Interactiveon1/6/2009 at 10:50 AM Accepted
    I don't think there's much implication about it. The comments you're getting back state specifically that it's a reputation isssue, and the sending IP address has almost everything (if not everything) to do with this.

    Questions: Do you send email from your own domain or do you use your ESP's domain? Are you able to set up SPF records and all of the other deliverability-related tools that you should implement to enhance deliverability?

    Even if you use an ESP, there are sometimes steps that you can take on your own, especially if you are sending email from your own domain.

    The best thing to do here, at least in my opinion, is to work with a service that provides you with your own, brand-new IP address.

    Also, lots of people talk about deliverability and then don't deliver the goods, and deliverability issues are always going to pop up if your list has a lot of consumer-type email addresses such as @aol, @hotmail, @yahoo, because these services make it so easy to report you as spam.

    For example, we had a customer list that, all of a sudden, was 28% undelivered because Hotmail and Yahoo rejected us fully. There are ways to cure that, but it's a manual process that takes time, and even then you always have to stay on top of it.

    After a few days, we were able to clear the matter up, and now that list is enjoying 99% deliverability. So, it takes some effort, but it's worth it. After all, with 72% deliverability, our customers are not going to stay long, so it's worth a few hours of our time to fix this and keep people happy.

    Now, if you're dealing with a large number of blocks from smaller ISPs and recipients, that can be a lot more time consuming to deal with and it may not be cost effective.

    Is your list primarily consumer-based with a high percentage of these Web-based email accounts?

    I am happy to assist further outside this forum if you wish.

    Good luck.

    Paul
  • Posted byannjon1/7/2009 at 3:22 AM Author
    Thanks, there is more I need to investigate here and your comments are useful. We are a B2B organisation and exclude anyone trying to register a hotmail type address. Some of the exclusions seem to be grouped where we have multiple contacts at major corporate domains while others are 'one-offs'.
    Thanks again.
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