Deliverability: What to remember from #CSAsummit2016?

This Thursday, I was in Cologne to attend the #CSAsummit2016. This event (as its name indicates, but CSA means something else in France, it is not necessarily clear) is organized every year by Certified Senders Alliance (if you don't know what it is, don't hesitate to read theinterview with Julia Janssen-Holldiek) around the theme of deliverability. What's really interesting about this event, unlike others, is that it's aimed directly at ISPs, routers and the anti-spam industry. The audience, like the content of the conferences, is therefore more technical than usual, which means that some information is less often expressed in public. My regret (yes, I'm starting here) is the total absence of French ISPs and Signal Spam. And yet, CSA and Signal Spam are in no way competitors, and would benefit greatly from working together. The certification model proposed by CSA seems to me to be a great opportunity for the French market to gain even greater clarity, and it would be a shame to reinvent the wheel. We'll skip this little parenthesis (and I love parentheses), and move on to the lessons to be learned!

Highlights and lessons learned

The very first lesson is that Certified Senders Alliance has received more than a hundred applications for certification in the last 12 months... and rejected 90%! Hats off to them! This clearly demonstrates the association's commitment to its charter. Even stronger (but this is off the record even if it is publicly visible), certifications can be suspended in real time. If too many complaints come to the CSA, they can suspend in real time a certification if the situation exceeds certain thresholds. From my point of view, this is admirable!

Email consumption is changing its face

After this introduction by the CSA team members, we had a presentation by Marcel Becker, product manager of AOL mail. He told us about trends that Badsender readers know well, but that are worth remembering: email is evolving. It evolves, because 90% of emails are blocked from the first contact with ISPs and webmails (at least at AOL). Because the purpose of a webmail has changed, they now aim to help the consumer to find the email he needs. This change is expressed for example by tools like Alto (edited by AOL) or Google's Inbox, which allow to value some emails in a particular context and to extract the most relevant pieces of information. Marcel Becker also highlighted the fact that we are moving towards legitimate email traffic consisting of 90% transactional emails. Whether it is purchase confirmations, but also and especially notifications from various social networks, chat applications, .... This email traffic is also more and more diversified since it includes photos, events, documents, itineraries, videos, ... operators must therefore categorize this content in order to serve it to the recipient in the best way possible.

48% increase in complaints registered by Certified Senders Alliance

New interlude on the results of the CSA and eco (CSA is an initiative of eco which is the association representing the sector of the companies active on the internet in Germany) to explain us that there was an increase of 48% of the complaints received these last 12 months compared to the previous period (more than 140.000 complaints) and that a huge majority of these are worries about consent. Nothing new under the sun, but it's always good to have confirmation of what we say every day.

How do advertisers choose their router?

On stage next, Jordie Van Rijn, well known for his site "Email Vendors Selection", came to explain the criteria for choosing an email platform for an advertiser, and also the mechanics involved in this choice. The classic email router selection process: In the selection criteria, Jordie tells us that very often, deliverability doesn't count... unless there have already been problems. Moreover, we can't say that the choice of advertisers is always made on objective criteria. It is often a question of taking the solution with the most features at the best price... at the expense of customer service, deliverability and many other points. Note: On his Email Vendor Selection site, Jordie Van Rijn now references CSA certified solutions.

Routers don't want spammers using their platforms

After the lunch break, we were treated to a very interesting round-table discussion involving two German router bosses and two deliverability managers working for other routers. The subject of the round table was the onboarding and vetting of new platform customers. The debate revolved around the very different objectives of sales and deliverability teams at routers. Quite often, deliverability teams find themselves rejecting a new customer after he has signed his contract, when he should perhaps have been detected as "at risk" at the very start of the process. In any case, it's very difficult for the untrained eye to detect a serious sender from a spammer passing from router to router. The latter will always answer the vetting questions with the aim of producing the expected responses. This is why deliverability managers are obliged to carry out research on the advertisers who present themselves to them, in order to validate their seriousness. During the discussion, the possibility was also raised of increasing collaboration between the various German router deliverability cells, in order to avoid spammers passing from router to router.

Spam filters are getting more powerful

We then attended a ping-pong match between a Cisco and 1-und-1 representative on the chat/spammer mouse/spam filter mode. We learn that Cisco blocks almost 20 billion threats a day and that most attacks are extremely well managed, even if the techniques used are increasingly complex. The two speakers also talk about list cleaning services. An advertiser who cleans its lists to remove spamtraps, but is unable to block new arrivals of spamtraps, will very quickly be detected. So it's clearly on the quality of acquisition sources that we need to work. The rest of the conference was more technical. My main takeaway from the rest of the day was that France is clearly lagging behind in terms of DMARC, and that it's vital to get moving on this issue. The number of phishing attacks continues to explode, affecting structures that would never have thought of falling victim. Something to think about (don't hesitate to contact us if you need to set up DMARC). The CSA Summit is clearly a rewarding event. If some of what was said has already been heard elsewhere, the audience composed mainly of routers and ISPs is very interesting. There is a good chance that Badsender will be represented again next year!