"Invite a friend" emails

Are they ending up in the junk folder?


Technology trends and news by Fred Wilson
July 16, 2008 | last edited July 16, 2008 8:37 AM | Comments (1)

5726
I suspect that the answer is yes and you are not alone. More and more social services that encourage their users to invite friends via email are facing email deliverability problems. It's one thing when I send an email to my friends from my personal mailbox, but it's quite another when I do it via a new and relatively unknown social networking service. Spam filters were built to filter out that kind of thing and they are doing a good job at it. Except I really do want to invite my friend to this new photo sharing service I like.

Fortunately, there's a solution to this problem and it's called Return Path. I've been an investor and board member of Return Path since 2000 and I have watched them slowly but surely grow into a large and important company which is all about making email work better for everyone. Return Path helps email senders get their mail practices right so they can get their mail through filters, Return Path helps email receivers make their filters better so the right mail gets blocked and the right mail gets through. And in the end, Return Path helps email users get a better experience with email.

About three months ago, I was at a Twitter board meeting and Jason Goldman was explaining that most of Twitter's users' "invite a friend" emails were ending up in junk folders. I told him about Return Path. I said, "they help you get mail through spam filters" and he said "that sounds sketchy." I then explained that they do it by measuring your mail sending reputation and helping you fix/improve your reputation so that you can get your mail through legitimately. Jason wasn't totally sold, but he agreed to try it out. I think he's glad he did.

Two month's ago Twitter had a Sender Score reputation of 30/100. That's bad. Today they have a Sender Score of 70/100. That's good. As a result, they have increased their deliverability by about 100%.

How did they do it? Well it was a lot of little things, not one big thing. The whole case was written up by Return Path and is available via pdf here.

If you have this issue, I suggest you contact Return Path. You can try to solve it yourself and you may get good results that way. But this is what Return Path does for its clients and they are the best at it. I am sure they can help.

For more on Fred, visit his blog.

1 comment

Submit yours
Matthias Schwarz
Matthias Schwarz, 174 days ago
Is this actual news or a blatant piece of self-promotion? Beside that point, more power to junk mail filters! It's a difficult balance to strike between convenience (invitation to one or more random folks directly from a commercial web site) and safety from junk (if you really want to invite that one friend so badly to that new photo sharing service, why not send him/her a private e-mail?) - sometimes you just have to make that judgement call and accept the evil (the occasional false positive) with the heavenly (spam filters that work). If ReturnPath claimed to have a (near-)perfect solution, now *that* would be news!

Login to reply Matthias


Vator.tv top stories

Facebook sues Power.com

2010-01-02-facebook-sues-powercom

Technology trends and news

by Bambi Francisco
January 2, 2009
Apparently, Power wasn't in compliance with other social networks

VatorNews interview highlights in 2008

2008-12-29-vatornews-interview-highlights-in-2008

Entrepreneur interview

by Bambi Francisco
December 29, 2008
Founders of Slide, FriendFeed, Twitter, hi5, RockYou and more sit down with VatorNews

Outlook plugin lands funding from Cisco

3259_xobni

Technology trends and news

by Chris Caceres
January 6, 2009
Xobni lands $7 million in Series B financing

2008 was an ugly year for venture capitalists

2009-01-02-2008-was-an-ugly-year-for-venture-capitalists

Financial trends and news

by Bambi Francisco
January 2, 2009
Exits hit $24.1 billion down 58% from 2007

Tips on cost reduction

2008-11-03-tips-on-cost-reduction

From investor

by Jeremy Liew
November 3, 2008
Don't be a wimp; do the best for your company

Assessing wisdom of crowds

2009-01-06-assessing-wisdom-of-crowds

Financial trends and news

by Eric Ries
January 6, 2009
Why fit is a quality that requires special treatment

Take the pain early, and just do it

5172_tonyfish

From investor

by Meliza Solan
December 11, 2008
AMF Ventures Tony Smith on pain, marketing and telepathy

How to make money using the Internet

2009-11-25-how-to-make-money-using-the-internet

From entrepreneur

by Seth Godin
November 26, 2008
Connect the disconnected to each other and you create value
© 2008 Vator, Inc.