You are right about vetting the customers and all ESPs should be responsible to at least do some checking. At sendcube, we go through all the lists uploaded by our customers on top of checking all new paying customers. Customers who upload a list will not be able to use them until our delivery team approve them, wheather they batch import 1 or 1 million subscribers. During this process, we have seen quite an amount of lists which is obviously being purchased and of course most of the time, never get any respond from the “customer” when we enquire about it. Some are honest enough to tell you that they purchase them, get a telemarketers to get the emails and etc.

The most classic case we had was checking on a customer who batch import over 30K email addresses and looking at them, it was an obviously purchased list. So my team email the customer to request for more information on how they got the list and they bluntly inform us that we are NOT a US based ESP thus we are not covered by the US spam law. So there is no reason why we cannot approve their list! Simply no words to describe this customer and yes, the customer is being block.

Our stand has always been this, we rather help a customer who pay us $10 per month if they are willing to learn from their mistake than a customer who are paying us hundreds per month but are not willing to learn.

I’m really glad you published this piece. At Bronto, we have a very similar vetting process as the one you outline above. It’s amazing what you uncover by asking some simple questions. We find that we typically have the most success (good deliverability, solid partnership/working relationship, etc) with new clients who are willing to explain their list growth processes as well as those who are willing to adapt.

99% of clients we encounter *want* to do the “right thing,” but many have either been utilizing poor practices for so long or are coming from an in-house solution that was unable to remove hard bounces, unsubs, etc. Those clients who are willing to work with us, take our advice, load and send to their lists slowly, ultimately are better off in the long run.

Love to hear what others are doing. Anyone else out there?

dj

I prefer to call it ‘discontinuing our current relationship’…Ah hell, what am I thinking, you’re right, have boots, will stomp.