Aug 18 2009
Yahoo! Adds Behavioral Attributes to Anti-Spam Reputation Mix
The idea of behavioral data affecting email sender reputation first surfaced three years ago, when AOL announced that dormant addresses would factor into sender reputation. AOL explained at the time that spammers create significant numbers of fake email addresses for the sole purpose of driving down complaint percentage rates. Even so, they said that this metric should never affect legitimate emailers who have genuine (human) email recipients.
The next phase of this concept was presented by Microsoft at the Authentication and Online Trust Alliance Conference in 2008 (PDF). Microsoft’s Anti-Spam General Manager indicated that in the future they would prefer to use recipient behavioral metrics like open-rates in addition to their other spam-related metrics to determine sender reputation. While the idea was still hypothetical at the time, the mere fact that they made these statements to a room full of email senders was worth noting.
Now, we have confirmation from Yahoo! that some of these same metrics that AOL and Microsoft have considered are now implemented into Yahoo!’s anti-spam reputation processes. Of course, we’ll never know exactly what percentage of non-openers or other behavioral factors will impact deliverability, but we can say with certainty that dormant addresses and inactive users are now playing a role in determining your Yahoo! inbox success.
When I first heard Microsoft’s comments and Yahoo!’s confirmation, my initial reaction from a privacy perspective was that this arrangement would interfere with civil liberties. We first went through this privacy debate when Gmail (and later AOL) noted they would scan email content to deliver ads, yet neither ever indicated they would be reading or profiling user behavior in connection with the sender. This new effort to tie behavior to sender reputation is not much different than scanning content, but it does add another concern that it will also be used for advertising purposes. Clearly this is a privacy issue if there ever was one, similar to the one the EFF is raising today against Google Books.
While it is too early to give any concrete strategic program advice, I would advise that email marketers who are not making it to the Yahoo! inbox should factor inactive recipients into their reputation analysis mix. It should go without saying that Yahoo! (and every other email provider) will continue to weigh complaints and bad data more than inactive or unresponsive users. Even so, now appears to be a very good time to consider re-activation strategies for dormant users and I would advise all marketers to further prioritize that ongoing effort.
