Managing Spam and Abuse at FeedBlitz

We serve nearly 70,000 publishers at FeedBlitz, and we do that by allowing each and every one of you to manage your accounts yourselves, without waiting for someone here to "bless" your list or deign to give you access to your subscribers. Same for your readers - they can do what they need to, quickly and easily, without our being involved.

Of course, a self service site like ours can be abused, risking a decline in deliverability. If we can't get the mail through for you, which is the whole point after all, then you have a problem - and we have two basic choices.

Choice one is to give up and go home. Even though a smaller competitor took that option recently - go figure - it's not an option we'd ever consider. What, FeedBlitz, give up? NO WAY.

So choice two is to get better. That's the FeedBlitz choice. We've always been strong on anti-spam, and have continually strengthened our technologies and policies in order to reduce the risk of spammers entering FeedBlitz. But it's also true that sometimes what we have had hasn't been good enough. When that happens, we take the only path we can. We get better. Quickly.

Nowhere has this approach been more vividly brought home than our dealing with abuse (i.e. spam). Which begs a fairly reasonable question: How can we manage to improve deliverability while making sure our self-service approach remains viable, available and isn't abused?

Here are some of the methods (but not all - let's not give the game away completely) we've evolved over the last couple of years to prevent and detect abuse.

No-Compromise Prevention

• We require image verification (a.k.a. CAPTCHA tests) to stop bots.
• We require online subscriptions to be proactively confirmed via email (a.k.a. dual opt-in).
• We don't allow generic or otherwise potentially suspect email addresses to be imported.
• We repermission imported lists automatically.
• We zealously apply suppression lists.
• We completely block lists, publishers and hosts that trigger our own spam filters: If we would flag your message as spam coming in, there's no way we will allow ourselves to be used to send it out.
• No scripts permitted in outbound messages.

Rigorous Monitoring, Quick Reaction

• We use third party services to monitor our deliverability and major blacklists.
• We quickly manage any issues that are detected.
• We maintain feedback loops with major ISPs
• We monitor core service metrics internally on all lists for all publishers every day.
• We warn and even suspend lists that deviate from our internal quality guides.
• We send service courtesy notes to subscribers during import to flush out poorly permissioned or abusive lists.

Over Compliance

• Unsubscribe requests made online are honored immediately.
• CAN-SPAM - check.
• Complaints from ISPs received via feedback loops are actioned immediately.
• We automatically handle hard and soft bounces, keeping your lists clean 24x7.
• SPF and DKIM implemented on all subscriber emails.

Bottom line benefit

We take care of business. Your messages get through.

Dare to Compare

If you're comparing us to other services, do they do all of the above? If any service you're considering does not do all of these things then your mailings are at risk, because more spam and unwanted emails will be sent by them, and the ISPs track complaints by email server. If your vendor does not exceed minimum standards (and CAN-SPAM compliance, while a legal requirement, is NOT AT ALL sufficient - flee free to laugh at anyone who says that CAN-SPAM compliance is good enough), then their sender reputation will be poor and your mailings - if they get through at all - are much more likely to be in the bulk folder than in the inbox.

• If they make image verification optional, run away.
• If they make dual opt-in optional, run away.
• If they don't have feedback loops in place, run away.
• If they say CAN-SPAM compliance is good enough and all you have to do, run away.

Don't risk your reputation on a vendor that isn't implementing industry best practice.