As I sit here thinking about what to write, I get the feeling that I have already written about most everything in the world of deliverability. So for this article, I will pose a question to all the readers: Are deliverability experts just saying the same thing over and over again in different ways? And if they are, do you want to see them discussed in a different way, or are there new topics that you want to see addressed?

If I look back over the years that I have been doing email deliverability, I have noticed a change in the overall philosophy of many email delivery experts. When I first started years ago, deliverability seemed like something more along the lines of black magic, something only a few people knew (or understood). So, if you weren't one of those few people, then you were out of luck. This was the mentality of not only the folks on the email service provider side, but also the ISP side. Many of the systems that the ISPs were using were not automated; rather, there were a number of ways to manually get around the systems if you knew the right people or the right combination of items. Back in the beginning, you might be able to find that "bat phone" and call in a favor with an ISP simply because you got to know the people there, and they could make the changes.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Things today are not that different; it is just that the ISPs have more automated systems to help fight the spam and less ability to change things manually for specific senders. What have not changed are the things that the ISPs look at to help them determine what they consider spam (or unwanted mail) and what they consider to be legitimate, desired email.

ISPs have continued to use the same basic items as the foundation of their filtering systems. Sure, various new spamming methods have come and gone in the last 10 years, but the ISPs still focus on the same items. These items are:

List hygiene: This is the single more important piece of any email campaign strategy. If you have list email addresses that are either undeliverable or have not recently signed up or interacted with your company, you will likely have delivery issues. ISPs have always believed that legitimate senders keep clean lists. This is why many of them send bounce codes back, offer feedback loops, and share best practices with the sending community.

• Unknown users and inactive accounts: These are the end users who no longer have an account with the ISP you are trying to send to. This could happen for a number of reasons, such as the consumer changing broadband providers or leaving an email account dormant for so long that the ISP decided to shut it down.
  
  
• Spam traps: Many ISPs will take older accounts that have been closed for at least a year and turn them into traps to see if senders are processing bounces correctly. For the year after these accounts are closed, the ISPs will send back a bounce code indicating that the account no longer exists or is invalid. If after some period of time marketing organizations are still sending to those addresses, the ISP will lower the company's sender reputation.

Complaint rates: When AOL first put its "this is spam" button in its interface, the company used it as a way to help folks unsubscribe from mailings. This was a time when many people avoided clicking on unsubscribe links out of fear that they might be validating their email address to a spammer. Since then, the spam button has evolved into a way for ISPs to get a better understanding of whether the emails sent from different senders are valued by the recipient. Every complaint a sender receives affects its sender reputation, which the ISPs uses to judge whether to block a message or send it to the junk folder.

While things have certainly changed over the last several years, many things are still the same. Resolving issues now might not be simply a deliverability person making a phone call, but rather that person digging into the ISPs bounce codes, understanding what is wrong, and finding a solution to fix it. This will probably not result in the quick deliverability fix that many marketers are looking for, but, trust me, in the long run it is worth it.

We all want the same thing -- to have customers continue to use the email channel, find value in the offers we are sending, and purchase our products. So make sure you are still following the same best practices that we deliverability folks have been talking about for years and you will reach your customers. And if there is something we are not talking about enough or at all, please let me know in the comments.

Good luck and good sending.

Spencer Kollas is director of delivery services for StrongMail Systems.

On Twitter? Follow iMedia Connection at @iMediaTweet.