FeedBlitz’s Position on SPAM

I recently announced to my Tip of the Day mailing list that I was going to be converting the list over to FeedBlitz. I had one of my subscribers email me saying I was violating my privacy policy and that FeedBlitz is a “known spammer”. I have found nothing indicating FeedBlitz was a known spammer, and all indications have been to the contrary. In fact, a few days prior, here is part of a message sent to me from the CEO of FeedBlitz in response to a question on the topic of email deliverablity:

OK, to deliverability.  We’re in the feedback loops for major ISPs like AOL, excite and United.  Our hotmail / MSN / Live application is in process.  So we track directly with major ISPs for any issues and immediately respond to unsubscribes / spam notifications from these channels.  We also maintain the correct DNS entries for our servers and maintain the appropriate information at places like abuse.net.  We have also placed our servers on various ISP white lists, including Yahoo and Verizon.

In addition, more formally, we use Return Path to monitor deliverability to major US and international ISPs.  As part of the services we buy from them, we track our standing with the major anti-spam services to ensure our emails go to the inbox and not the bulk folders.  Finally, we use Return Path to monitor several hundred major and minor SPAM RBLs (Real-time Black Lists) daily, to make sure our servers are not listed, and if they are to remove them.  Since inception we’ve been only one RBL (twice), and the block was taken down in a day.

Ultimately, the only way to ultimately guarantee good delivery is to be a well-behaved sender that follows industry best practices.  That’s why we require 2 phase opt in, we use image verification, we have properly formatted SMTP and HTML messages, we always provide text alternatives of the messages, we always have our sender in the header, we always and immediately honor unsubscribes .. you get the idea.  Our reputation is ultimately at the core of how we work, and by combining best practice with 3rd party monitoring and ISP feedback loops our deliverability is excellent.

Which is not to say we aren’t working to get to the next level, however. We have issues with some Chinese ISPs that need work, and we’re working with Return Path on getting FeedBlitz into their “Sender Score / Bonded Sender” program, which will further improve deliverability.  It’s an ongoing (and relatively expensive) process, but it’s worth it for us and for our publishers.

I have some issues with FeedBlitz, but all having to do with the design and user interface. But, I see nothing indicating they are spamming anybody. My suspicion is that what we have here is a case of a few stupid web users reporting FeedBlitz as a spammer when, in reality, they signed up for somebody’s feed and forgot they did so. Folks, there is a thing called an UNSUBSCRIBE button. For any legit emailer, those things work.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.