How do ESPs manage internal vs client deliverability responsibilities?

Marketer from Email Geeks shares their bias is that a department/person should own deliverability across the board, taking responsibility for all mail streams. This doesn't mean they have to fix everything, but they own the responsibility.

Marketer from Email Geeks agrees with Matt V and voices their opinion, especially during launches, and provides direction for internal teams to succeed. They emphasize the importance of carefully managing the domains used to avoid impacting the production ecosystem.

Marketer from Email Geeks shares that it depends on how the organization measures the deliverability group's success. If primarily revenue-generating, there is little room to support internal teams. Ideally, the organization acknowledges the resources invested in internal support and staffs accordingly.

Email marketer from StackOverflow explains that ESPs must implement strong authentication methods like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for both their internal emails and to encourage their clients to do the same. Proper authentication helps prevent spoofing and phishing, improving deliverability and protecting sender reputation.

Marketer from Email Geeks details that their deliverability team is responsible for monitoring the health of IP pools and domains, providing tech support/training, and handling abuse. They are also involved with internal campaigns, as they believe internal practices should align with what they advise customers.

Marketer from Email Geeks shares that they have made themselves available for consultation to their MarCom/MarTech and Enterprise messaging teams, preferring to help them do things properly rather than cleaning up afterward.

Email marketer from MailerQ Blog shares that ESPs set up feedback loops (FBLs) with mailbox providers. These FBLs provide valuable data on spam complaints. Both the ESP's internal team and their clients can use this data to identify and address issues causing complaints, helping to improve deliverability.

Email marketer from SparkPost Blog shares that ESPs often provide deliverability consultation services to their clients. This includes advice on email authentication, list hygiene, content optimization, and sending frequency. Internally, similar strategies are followed to ensure their own mail streams are performing well.

Email marketer from Reddit explains that larger ESPs typically have separate teams handling internal and client deliverability. The internal team manages the ESP's infrastructure and reputation, while client-facing teams assist users with their specific deliverability challenges. Smaller ESPs may have a single team responsible for both.

Email marketer from GMass Blog shares that ESPs use email testing tools to evaluate the deliverability of their templates. They can use these for their internal templates, and provide similar services to clients. These tools help to identify potential spam triggers and ensure emails are properly formatted for different email clients.

Email marketer from Litmus shares that both internal and client deliverability efforts should focus on following email best practices. This includes using double opt-in, segmenting lists, personalizing content, and regularly cleaning out inactive subscribers. For clients, ESPs provide guidance and tools to implement these practices.

Marketer from Email Geeks explains that at their ESP, they've helped corporate teams with deliverability and reputation projects by upskilling them and helping them build processes and systems to manage it themselves. They monitor corporate domains for RBLs, and MarTech ensures internal teams send good emails, and they are always available for consulting.

Email marketer from ReturnPath (now Validity) shares that ESPs need to manage their sending reputation. For their own mail, ESPs control the sending practices to create a good reputation. For clients, the job is to educate and help them succeed so that they, too, create good reputations.

Email marketer from Email on Acid explains that ESPs need to proactively monitor their IP address and domain reputation. This is crucial for internal deliverability and also affects the deliverability of all their clients. They also recommend using tools to check if their domains or IPs are on any blocklists.

Email marketer from Mailjet Blog explains that ESPs often have dedicated teams or individuals responsible for both internal and client deliverability. Internal deliverability focuses on ensuring the ESP's own emails (transactional, marketing) reach their intended recipients. Client deliverability involves providing tools, resources, and support to help clients achieve optimal deliverability for their campaigns.

Marketer from Email Geeks explains that at their ESP, deliverability people are heavily relied upon for guidance and sanity checks for internal teams, but aren't as hands-on as they are with the product. They can spot issues and pass them on with a solution, but can't fix them directly like they do with the product.

Email marketer from Email Marketing Forum explains that it is essential to segment email lists in order to target audiences better. This helps to improve key deliverability rates for internal lists, as well as ensuring clients have the correct toolset to segment.

Expert from Word to the Wise explains that domain reputation is everything and it needs to be a key focus. By testing and monitoring domain health for their internal and external campaigns you can start to see the impact on the deliverability.

Expert from SpamResource explains that ESPs must have a well-functioning abuse desk. This desk handles complaints, investigates reports of spam, and takes action against spammers. A responsive abuse desk is critical for maintaining the ESP's reputation and protecting its clients.

Expert from Word to the Wise explains that to test email deliverability internally and to clients, a seed list strategy is essential. This enables the review of inbox placement to identify any deliverability rates.

Expert from Email Geeks shares their team helps identify and monitor reputation issues and works alongside the corporate IT team to make changes and set policies. If the issue is sent from their production networks, the IT team is in charge of fixing those issues.

Expert from SpamResource explains that ESPs must carefully manage shared IP reputation. Their internal mail streams can directly impact the reputation of IPs used by their clients. If the ESP's mail is poorly managed, it can negatively affect the deliverability of all clients using the same IPs.

Documentation from RFC details that SMTP standards dictate how email should be transmitted and handled. ESPs must adhere to these standards for both their internal and client email sending to ensure compatibility and avoid being flagged as spam. This includes proper formatting, authentication, and error handling.

Documentation from SendGrid Documentation details that it provides tools for monitoring deliverability metrics, such as bounce rates, complaint rates, and blocklist status. These tools are used both internally to manage the platform's overall deliverability and are offered to clients to monitor the performance of their individual email programs.

Documentation from Google Postmaster Tools allows senders (ESPs and their clients) to monitor their deliverability performance to Gmail users. By analyzing metrics like spam rate, IP reputation, and authentication status, ESPs can identify and address deliverability issues affecting both their internal and client email.

Documentation from Microsoft details that they offer sender support resources and guidance to help ESPs and other senders improve their deliverability to Outlook.com and Hotmail users. ESPs can leverage this to enhance their own deliverability practices and provide better service to their clients.