Summary
Email receivers are pressured to allow more mail due to a confluence of internal and external factors. Internally, pressure stems from 'asshole bosses', marketing teams pushing for targets, sales teams demanding leads, and upper management's focus on higher sending volumes. Externally, pressure arises from the fear of blocking legitimate senders and causing user complaints, the need to adapt to evolving email standards and mass mailings, the influence of paid reputation services, and customer demands for allow listing. Senders are incentivized by revenue goals and the fear of falling behind competitors. The overall system requires a delicate balance between blocking spam and ensuring legitimate mail delivery, which is constantly shifting.
Key findings
- Internal Team Pressure: Marketing, sales, and upper management within organizations exert pressure to increase email sending.
- User Complaint Avoidance: Receivers are wary of blocking legitimate emails, as this generates user complaints.
- Reputation Service Influence: Paid reputation services can sway receivers to accept more mail from their clients.
- Revenue and Competition: Pressure to meet revenue targets and compete with others incentivizes higher sending volumes.
- Technical Standards: Adapting to changing email standards and mass mailing techniques complicates blocking strategies.
- Customer Demands: Customer requests for allow listing directly pressure receivers to allow specific senders.
- Sender reputation scores: Sender reputation scores puts pressure to ensure mail from reputable companies is able to be delivered.
- Acceptable unsubscribe rates: Maintaining acceptable unsubscribe rates also makes receiver systems accept mails with lower scoring
Key considerations
- Cross-Department Alignment: Organizations should ensure marketing, sales, and management are aligned on reasonable email practices.
- Clear User Communication: Clear communication with users can manage expectations and reduce complaints about blocked mail.
- Service Transparency: Increased transparency and accountability from reputation services are necessary.
- Realistic Revenue Goals: Businesses should set realistic revenue targets that don't rely solely on increased email volume.
- Adaptable Strategies: Receivers need adaptable strategies for evaluating reputation and engagement in a changing landscape.
- Dynamic Allow Listing: Offer dynamic allow listing options that adjust based on engagement and sender behavior.
- Sender Perspective: It would be good for senders to go to sessions that are not about sending, for perspective on how receivers work.
What email marketers say
8 marketer opinions
Email receivers face pressure to allow more mail due to various factors originating from senders. Internal marketing teams, driven by targets, revenue goals, and fear of competition, push for higher sending volumes. Sales teams demand more emails for lead generation. Upper management, lacking email marketing expertise, also contributes to this pressure. Maintaining acceptable unsubscribe rates also makes receiver systems accept mails with lower scoring, and they have to strike a balance between blocking spam and keeping end users on-side.
Key opinions
- Internal Pressure: Marketing, sales, and management teams internally pressure organizations to increase email volume.
- Revenue Focus: The drive to meet revenue targets leads to more aggressive email campaigns.
- Competitive Fear: Companies fear being left behind by competitors sending more emails.
- Balancing Act: Email receivers must balance blocking spam with maintaining user satisfaction and not upsetting users.
- Acceptable unsubscribe rates: Maintaining acceptable unsubscribe rates also makes receiver systems accept mails with lower scoring
Key considerations
- Internal Alignment: Organizations should align marketing, sales, and management strategies to avoid excessive email sending.
- Realistic Targets: Set realistic revenue targets that don't rely solely on increased email volume.
- Quality over Quantity: Focus on email quality and engagement rather than simply sending more emails.
- Receiver Perspective: Consider the impact of sending practices on email receivers and user experience.
- Email Infrastructure: Email providers have to balance spam blocking with valid emails from users. There needs to be an infrastructure to deal with this.
Marketer view
Email marketer from MarketingForum.com explains that upper management, with little understanding of email marketing, often pushes for higher sending volumes, leading to pressure on receivers.
21 Nov 2023 - MarketingForum.com
Marketer view
Email marketer from Reddit shares that sales teams often demand more emails be sent to generate leads, overriding deliverability concerns.
12 Feb 2025 - Reddit
What the experts say
5 expert opinions
Email receivers face pressure from multiple angles to allow more mail. Internal pressures include demands from superiors and marketing teams within the receiving organization. External pressures include user complaints when legitimate email is blocked and the influence of reputation services, which senders often pay for. The need to meet business targets and revenue goals also drives senders to increase email volume, ultimately pressuring receivers.
Key opinions
- Internal Demands: Receivers are pressured by internal stakeholders like bosses and marketing teams to allow more mail.
- User Complaints: Blocking legitimate email leads to user complaints, forcing receivers to be more lenient.
- Reputation Services: Senders paying for reputation services can influence receivers to accept more of their mail.
- Business Targets: The pressure to meet revenue and business targets drives increased email sending, pressuring receivers.
Key considerations
- Internal Communication: Organizations should foster better communication between senders and receivers to reduce internal pressures.
- User Feedback: Receivers should actively solicit and respond to user feedback to minimize false positives.
- Reputation Service Transparency: The email community should encourage transparency and accountability from reputation services.
- Sustainable Sending Practices: Businesses should adopt sustainable sending practices that prioritize quality and relevance over sheer volume.
- Sender Perspective: It would be good for senders to go to sessions that are not about sending, for perspective on how receivers work.
Expert view
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that blocking too much email from legitimate senders results in user complaints to the receiver, applying pressure to allow more email through.
6 May 2023 - Word to the Wise
Expert view
Expert from Word to the Wise shares that businesses push for more email sending to meet internal targets and revenue goals, leading to pressure on receivers to accept that volume.
19 Mar 2022 - Word to the Wise
What the documentation says
6 technical articles
Email receivers face pressure to allow more mail due to several factors related to sender reputation, user expectations, and evolving standards. Senders with improving or borderline reputations are difficult to block due to potential user complaints. The fear of false positives leads systems to err on the side of caution. User engagement, like opens and clicks, signals legitimacy, while allow-listing requests from customers directly pressure systems. Adapting to changing standards and mass mailings also makes blanket blocking difficult, requiring more nuanced policies. Sender reputation scoring puts pressure to ensure mail from reputable companies is able to be delivered.
Key findings
- Reputation Sensitivity: Receivers are pressured to accept mail from senders with borderline or improving reputations to avoid blocking legitimate communications.
- False Positive Risk: The fear of blocking legitimate mail (false positives) leads receivers to be more lenient.
- User Engagement: User interactions (opens, clicks, marking as important) signal legitimacy and influence receivers to allow more mail from those senders.
- Evolving Standards: Adapting to changing email standards and mass mailing practices complicates blocking strategies.
- Customer Allow Listing: Customer requests for allow listing directly pressure receivers to accept more mail from specific senders.
- Sender Reputation scores: Sender reputation scores puts pressure to ensure mail from reputable companies is able to be delivered.
Key considerations
- Granular Filtering: Implement more granular filtering techniques to differentiate between legitimate and unwanted mail.
- Feedback Loops: Improve feedback loops with users to reduce false positives and refine filtering accuracy.
- Dynamic Reputation: Utilize dynamic reputation systems that adapt to changing sending behavior and user engagement.
- Sender Authentication: Encourage senders to implement robust authentication protocols to establish trust and improve deliverability.
- User Education: Educate users about identifying and reporting spam to improve the overall filtering process.
Technical article
Documentation from Signal Spam explains that, due to sender reputation scores, systems are pressured to not block everything, but allow mail from legitimate senders. These reputable sender emails need to get through the system, and thus the system cannot block all spam as it may harm the end user.
13 Mar 2025 - SignalSpam.fr
Technical article
Documentation from Microsoft answers explains that email systems are pressured not to block mail in case of false positives which leads to customer complaints, so they err on the side of caution.
5 Sep 2023 - Microsoft.com
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