Spam Filters, Black Boxes, and the Illusion of Control
On the surface, email is magic. It just works. Messages go out, inboxes fill up, marketing and newsletters hum along. Underneath that smooth glide is a lot of frantic paddling, and Nick Gallagher's new article for IBM Think does an excellent job showing what is really happening below the waterline.
Gallagher frames the nightmare scenario well: You've sent an email, but it hasn't arrived. If the email doesn't deliver, revenue isn't delivered. What's going on? He walks through how we got here, from the early days of inbox chaos to today's opaque, engagement-driven filtering systems. He digs into blocklists, mailbox provider policy shifts, sender confusion, and the growing gap between what senders think they are doing right and how filters actually see them. There is real history here, not just hot takes.
What makes this piece stand out is the human side. Submitting tickets in a web form and hoping for a response. Guessing at root causes. Wrong guidance from so called "experts" putting out their shingle only to sell bad advice. And plenty of well-intentioned email senders, primarily email marketers, getting caught in the crossfire while spam (and spam filtering) keeps evolving.
If you work with email and have ever asked why everything looked fine yesterday and fell apart today, this might help you understand why. The duck may look calm on the surface, but the paddling underneath continues (and remains necessary).
Thanks to the author for interviewing me (and so many others in the email space) to help present such comprehensive insight how email deliverability actually works.
On the surface, email is magic. It just works. Messages go out, inboxes fill up, marketing and newsletters hum along. Underneath that smooth glide is a lot of frantic paddling, and Nick Gallagher's new article for IBM Think does an excellent job showing what is really happening below the waterline.
Gallagher frames the nightmare scenario well: You've sent an email, but it hasn't arrived. If the email doesn't deliver, revenue isn't delivered. What's going on? He walks through how we got here, from the early days of inbox chaos to today's opaque, engagement-driven filtering systems. He digs into blocklists, mailbox provider policy shifts, sender confusion, and the growing gap between what senders think they are doing right and how filters actually see them. There is real history here, not just hot takes.
What makes this piece stand out is the human side. Submitting tickets in a web form and hoping for a response. Guessing at root causes. Wrong guidance from so called "experts" putting out their shingle only to sell bad advice. And plenty of well-intentioned email senders, primarily email marketers, getting caught in the crossfire while spam (and spam filtering) keeps evolving.
If you work with email and have ever asked why everything looked fine yesterday and fell apart today, this might help you understand why. The duck may look calm on the surface, but the paddling underneath continues (and remains necessary).
Read the full article at IBM Think: The hidden email crisis that costs companies billions
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