What is the primary division of deliverability responsibility between an ESP and its clients?

ESPs provide the infrastructure, managed IP pools, and technical configurations like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC . They also monitor for blocklistings and offer guidance. Clients are responsible for list quality, content relevance, sending frequency, and recipient engagement, as these significantly impact their sender reputation .

Do ESPs intervene in client content or sending practices?

While not directly responsible for client content, an ESP may intervene if a client's sending practices negatively impact the shared IP pool or the ESP's overall reputation. This often involves providing warnings, offering remedial advice, or, in severe cases, suspending sending privileges to protect the platform's integrity.

Do ESPs follow their own deliverability advice for their internal emails?

Yes, many ESPs apply the same deliverability best practices internally as they advise their clients. This includes maintaining strong email authentication , managing internal list hygiene, and monitoring their own corporate domains and IPs for reputation issues. This helps build trust and demonstrates their commitment to deliverability.

How do ESPs separate their internal email deliverability from client deliverability?

ESPs typically manage their own corporate email sending through separate domains and, if necessary, distinct IP ranges from their client-facing production networks. This segmentation helps to isolate the reputation of internal communications from the core service provided to clients, mitigating risks if an internal campaign experiences deliverability issues.

How do ESPs manage internal vs client deliverability responsibilities? - Technical - Email deliverability - Knowledge base

Email Service Providers (ESPs) are the backbone of most businesses' email marketing and transactional sending. While their primary role is to facilitate email delivery for their clients, there's a nuanced interplay between managing client-side deliverability and maintaining the health of their own internal email infrastructure. This dual responsibility requires specialized teams and clear lines of accountability.

The core challenge lies in balancing the support and tools offered to clients with the diligent oversight needed for the ESP's corporate communications, sales, and internal system emails. Both streams rely on strong sender reputation, but the management strategies and immediate impact of issues can differ significantly.

Understanding this division of labor is crucial for both ESPs seeking to optimize their operations and for businesses choosing an ESP, as it highlights where the responsibility for email deliverability truly lies.

The dual role of ESP deliverability teams

An ESP's deliverability team has a unique position. On one hand, they are experts in ensuring that clients' emails reach the inbox, providing a robust sending platform and offering guidance on best practices. On the other, they are also part of a company that sends its own emails, from marketing newsletters to password resets, all of which contribute to the ESP's overall brand reputation.

This creates a dual responsibility, where the same principles of sender reputation, authentication, and engagement apply to both internal and client sending. A decline in an ESP's own corporate email deliverability could indirectly affect client trust and the shared IP infrastructure, even if distinct IP pools are used. It's about upholding the standard they promise to their customers.

The effectiveness of an Email Service Provider often hinges on its internal deliverability team's ability to navigate these two demands, ensuring both their platform and their own communications maintain a high level of performance.

Some ESPs even find that their ability to demonstrate good internal deliverability practices reinforces their credibility when advising clients. It shows that they 'eat their own dog food' and adhere to the same stringent standards they advocate. This can foster greater trust and collaboration between the ESP and its client base.

Internal deliverability: monitoring and guidance

For its own internal email sending, an ESP's deliverability team is typically involved in a consultative and oversight capacity rather than direct campaign management. Their primary focus remains on the production network that serves clients, but they often extend their expertise to corporate communications.

Key responsibilities include monitoring the health of corporate domains and IP addresses not used for client sending. This involves regularly checking for appearances on blacklists (or blocklists), analyzing engagement metrics for internal marketing campaigns, and ensuring proper email authentication is in place.

The team might advise sales and marketing departments on list hygiene, content best practices, and sending frequency to prevent their emails from being flagged as spam. While they guide, the actual implementation and daily management often rest with the respective internal teams or the company's IT department.

Ensuring internal email integrity

The internal deliverability aspect focuses on maintaining the ESP's brand reputation and ensuring critical communications, such as onboarding emails or system alerts, reach their intended recipients. This often involves working closely with internal marketing, sales, and IT teams to ensure their email practices align with deliverability standards, even if sent from separate infrastructure.

Domain monitoring: Keeping a vigilant eye on the ESP's own corporate domain reputation and any associated IPs to prevent blocklisting. Proactive monitoring for blacklists is essential.
Policy guidance: Advising internal teams on email sending policies, list acquisition, and content to ensure compliance and avoid spam filters.
Technical setup: Overseeing authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for all corporate email streams, often collaborating with the IT department.

Client deliverability: enabling success

The primary mission of an ESP's deliverability team is to ensure high inbox placement rates for its clients. This involves managing a complex infrastructure of shared and dedicated IPs, maintaining strong relationships with Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and providing expert advice.

The team handles aspects like IP pool management, automated bounce handling, and feedback loop (FBL) processing. They implement robust technical settings, including ensuring clients properly configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records.

For clients, the ESP serves as an expert resource for troubleshooting, providing insights into campaign performance, and offering strategic advice to improve their email marketing efforts. This includes actively monitoring client sending behavior and intervening when practices might jeopardize shared resources or the client's own reputation. For instance, they use

Google Postmaster Tools for data.

The fundamental role of an ESP in deliverability is to provide a healthy sending platform, manage technical aspects of email delivery, and offer strategic guidance to ensure messages reach the inbox effectively. This involves a delicate balance of automation, proactive monitoring, and expert human intervention.

The evolving partnership

Internal deliverability

Oversight role: Deliverability teams often provide consultation and audits for internal email streams, but rarely execute campaigns themselves.
Reputation monitoring: Monitoring the ESP's own corporate domains and IPs for issues, ensuring internal communications like DMARC compliance.
Policy enforcement: Advising internal marketing and sales on best practices to protect the company's sender reputation.

Client deliverability

Active management: Directly managing IP pools, FBLs, and technical configurations for client sending infrastructure.
Reputation building: Proactively working with clients on IP warming, list segmentation, and engagement strategies.
Direct support: Providing troubleshooting, insights, and hands-on assistance for client-specific deliverability issues, including IP blocks.

The balance between these two areas largely depends on the ESP's organizational structure and the specific remit of its deliverability team. Some teams are highly specialized, focusing almost exclusively on client-facing deliverability, while others adopt a broader role that includes significant internal consultation.

Clear communication and defined roles are essential to avoid overlaps or, worse, gaps in responsibility. Regardless of the exact division, the overarching goal remains the same: ensuring that all emails, whether internal or client-sent, consistently reach the inbox.

The partnership between ESPs and their clients is ultimately a shared journey in deliverability. While ESPs provide the platform and expert guidance, clients are responsible for their sending practices, content quality, and audience engagement. This division of responsibility between ESPs and businesses is critical for success.

Balancing internal and external success

In conclusion, ESP deliverability teams walk a tightrope, balancing the foundational responsibility of maintaining their own email infrastructure and sender reputation with the client-facing role of enabling successful campaigns. This dual focus ensures the integrity of the ESP's platform and provides the necessary expertise for clients to thrive.

The internal management, while less direct, is crucial for preserving the ESP's credibility and avoiding any negative spillover effects onto shared sending environments. Meanwhile, the client support side empowers businesses with the tools, knowledge, and infrastructure needed for optimal email deliverability.

Ultimately, a well-defined structure where internal teams collaborate and leverage the deliverability team's expertise ensures that all email streams contribute positively to the overall sender ecosystem.

Views from the trenches

Best practices

Actively consult with your internal marketing and sales teams on email best practices to prevent issues.

Establish clear guidelines for internal email sends, including domain usage and content standards.

Use separate sending domains for corporate communications to isolate any potential deliverability impacts.

Provide regular training and resources to internal teams on email deliverability principles.

Common pitfalls

Failing to monitor corporate domains can lead to unexpected blacklisting, impacting brand reputation.

Lack of clear internal policies may result in internal teams inadvertently harming sender reputation.

Treating internal sends with less rigor than client sends can undermine the ESP's own credibility.

Overburdening the core deliverability team with too many internal, non-revenue generating tasks.

Expert tips

Proactively offer assistance to internal teams to help them implement proper sending hygiene.

Define the scope of the deliverability team: advisor vs. direct implementer for internal emails.

Ensure internal teams use distinct domains from client-facing production domains to mitigate risk.

Measure the deliverability team's success based on both client performance and internal compliance.

Marketer view

Marketer from Email Geeks says that their deliverability team monitors corporate domain reputation and works with internal IT on policies, but IT handles the actual fixes for non-production network sends.

May 25, 2021 - Email Geeks

Marketer view

Marketer from Email Geeks says they strongly advocate for best practices regarding internal sends, particularly for campaigns launched outside production environments. It is crucial to guide internal teams to use separate domains to protect the core sending ecosystem.

May 25, 2021 - Email Geeks