Why We Put Your Email Deliverability Above Our Own Visibility

We were recently interviewed for and featured in Email Marketing Reports. The interviewer, Mark Brownlow, asked a very interesting question – one with which we have struggled ourselves. The question was, essentially, “Why, when you offer so much of a better value than the other accreditation and reputation services out there, do you have such a low profile? Why don’t more people know about SuretyMail email accreditation?”

It’s an excellent question and one, as I said, with which we have struggled. Oh, not with the answer – we know the answer – it’s owing to conscious choices that we have made. But when in business – and let’s face it, it would do nobody – least of all our customers – any good if we went out of business – one has to make choices and tradeoffs that affect ones’ effectiveness versus ones’ visability. The bottom line is that everything affects the bottom line.

And, let’s face it, the one who dies with the most customers is still dead.

So back to the question – why aren’t we more “visible”?

The reason that we are so good at getting our customers’ email delivered is because we are so very fortunate to have a very good reputation with the email receivers – and excellent relationships with those receivers.

That is because the receivers trust us. Because our own background is in anti-spam, they know that we uniquely understand not only what they expect of email senders, but why they expect it. And they know that we expect – and demand – the same things of our senders, and that we won’t stand for any nonsense or settle for anything less. Which means that the ISPs and spam filters can trust that when we accredit someone’s email, it is truly legitimate, requested, permitted email. And so they trust our customers’ email, and it gets delivered. And both the ISPs and spam filters, and our customers, know that if there is a problem, we’ll get it fixed.

In order to maintain our high standards – the standards which get our email sending customers’ email delivered to the inbox – we have taken no outside funding. This means that there are no non-industry “suits” or VCs looking over our shoulder, telling us how to do things – telling us to take this or that new customer whose email practices may not be up to snuff, but who can pay us a lot of money and earn investors a return on investment. (It also means that we can charge some of the lowest rates in the industry for our superior service, but that’s another article for another day.)

The combination of running leaner than a funded company, and our commitment to ideals – the ideals that the ISPs and spam filters appreciate and respect – means that we have also chosen to not play the networking circuit. We rarely go to trade shows, or to big industry meetings in exotic faraway places – where issues are endlessly hashed and rehashed, and very little gets definitively decided, and even less gets implemented across the board – but gosh isn’t it great to meet in the hallways and go out for beers and to be seen. We could play like that, but it would mean a very different business model, and raising our fees to our customers, and distracting our focus from our true mission, which is getting your email delivered.

So while the beautiful step-sisters are out partying at the email delivery balls, we are toiling away at the hearth, in our rags, getting your email delivered for you.

Have these choices been to our detriment? We really don’t think so. And we know that these choices have only benefitted – immensely – our customers.

Our footprint may be smaller, but the shoe fits perfectly.

By the way, you can read that article and interview in Email Marketing Reports here.