Lesson 10, Future of Email

Lesson 10, Future of Email

The Future of email has already arrived – in part because i was meant to post this 2 years ago 🙂
Last year we heard several discussions regarding trusting senders, security and their performance. Several ISPs started implementing TLS encryption, see here to read more about this technology. As discussed in previous articles its now far from safe to send emails as plain text, extra measures are needed in order to protect the flow of data.

Over the last couple of years there has been a gradual shift away from IP reputation to domain reputation, one of the big advocates of this were Gmail. Last year they released gmail postmaster tools which helped domain owners and senders to monitor their own sender reputation plus more.

As ISPs shift towards domain reputation, this could also ignite a spark for the transition from IPv4 to IPv6. Although there are only a handful of ISPs with IPV6 capabilities (Hotmail, Gmail, Mail.de, Yandex.ru..), this will increase on the market place as the email filters and blacklists adapt their technology to take into consideration the trend of domain reputation. Read more here.

With the likes of DMARC, authentication shall be another topic where technology advances, and more ISPs look to use this to judge the senders and protect their mail accounts. See here for a complete up to date list of which ISPs support which Security features. In general we can see an increase in ISPs with security enabled features, having said that there is still a big difference in what each one of these support.

Inboxplacement based seed list monitoring tools will no longer be as accurate to measure the probability of making inbox. Tools will develop to give senders newer metrics. The huge trend in email list bombing seen at the end of 2016 will inevitable lead to an increase in security features such as reCAPTCHA on subscription forms and Double Opt In Processes.

What should you expect next?

Never mind that too much, concentrate on what you’re doing now. Talk to your ESPs about the developments in technology, work out what is necessary for you and look to adopt these changes. If your configuration is sound and you’re technically ready to send then you should take the feedback from each ISP as it comes. All these changes don’t happen overnight, although there is no reason to worry – ensure to do your bit and stay up to date with the new technologies. Join the conversation where possible and send emails like its the year 2020. Yes, that’s right, let’s all meet up in the Year 2020 when Email is fully grown.

This concludes the 10 lessons to the beginners guide to Deliverability. Thanks for tuning in. Watch this space for new material