I’d go a step further, and suggest that someone on the infrastructure of a sender organization probably knows what most of the error messages mean, and can diagnose to puzzle out the rest, and most of these questions should probably be addressed to that person first, as a policy.

Then, after the local in-company propellerhead gets sick of the same questions that Barry is already sick of, he’ll create his OWN set of help webpages (that probably look just like Barry’s help webpages) so the end result is that instead of the stupid question being addressed to Barry and responded to with “…well, what does the help webpage on that error say?”, the same exchange can take place, except with the guy down the hall in the same company.

-Yet Another Barry

I suspend a client for 550s. Get an email back ‘who are these unknown users, and why are they complaining about my email?’

Care to raise me on that one?

I wouldn’t expect anyone other than a postmaster or an email delivery wonk to be able to diagnose that sort of problem in their sleep – but in this case we’re talking about an email delivery wonk who is paid to do exactly that, yet who is not capable of doing so.

Combine that with an expectation that they don’t need to learn this stuff, as they can always rely on someone else to do their job for them, and you end up with someone who will alienate people with the “trivial” stuff to the extent they won’t get willing assistance when they really do need it. (I’m assuming that they’re bothering Barry in this case because either they’ve already alienated their internal IT folks, or don’t want to demonstrate to their colleagues that they’re not actually doing the job they’re paid for).

One thing, on the other side of the coin are techies who think that anyone who doesn’t understand this stuff is intrinsically stupid. Barry, keep in mind they might not know what you do, but it is a logical leap to think that a blindspot in a knowledge-base or even an incapacity to grok stuff means your interlocutor is stupid. Their brain just works differently and they may well be very very smart in other areas that you are not.

Here’s the thing. Most senders task a marketer to do their email marketing, logically enough. Problem is that is a two-parter. Like “music business” coming as a shock to most musicians who are befuddled by the number of lawyers and accountants involved in the business part of making nice noises on a stage, marketers often times forget the other part or EMAIL marketing.

Email, especially these days is a fairly technical subject, involving all sorts of weird acronyms like FQ rDNS, DKIM, 5.1.1 SURBL, PBL, etcetera, etcetera. You get the picture.

A happy emailing is one that involves the techies down the hall from the marketing department. Just as the propeller heads of the world couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss about segmentation, and branding, marketers aren’t usually attuned to the myriad facets of a solid and clean mailing infrastructure.

Yes, they should get a little more informed, but mostly, they need to make friends with the in-house sys admins at their sites, and make sure they are copied in on all reports, alerts, and so on, so that they might save their company an embarrassing hit to their online reputation when Marketerperson pings Barry, inappropriately.

Email marketing is a team effort. Involve your whole team before bothering Barry. that way, when you do have to darken his door, you are a welcome, or at least tolerated presence, not one that is greeted with a grimace, and less than stellar cooperation.

And, as always, remember, there’s no such thing as an email marketing emergency, no matter what your boss might say. At least there sure isn’t from Barry’s perspective, when he has to deal with a raft of hacked user accounts, spam hammering his inbounds, and someone on an anti-spam list complaining about how HE is the worst spammer in the world due to all those compromised accounts.