Email Deliverability Experts Reveal Top Concerns, Challenges for ESPs & Brands

Every year we interview top email deliverability experts so that we might publish our findings for the benefit of the email marketing community and, perhaps selfishly, to improve our existing email compliance product, or new email verification product as well as email deliverability consulting services. 

The Participants

This year, we talked with 25 deliverability experts, listed here in alphabetical order, from a wide variety of companies who graciously shared their time and expertise with us. 

• Francis Baker – Senior Deliverability & Compliance Specialist, Klaviyo
• Kate Barrett – Owner/Director, E-Focus Marketing
• LoriBeth “LB” Blair – Solutions Architect, Validity
• Benjamin Billon – ACID (Abuse, Compliance, ISP Relationship & Deliverability) Director, SPILO
• Chaitanya Chinta – Global Head of Email Business, Netcore / Cofounder & Deliverability Guy, Pepipost
• Alice Cornell – Director of Email Deliverability, Change.org
• Mohsin Farooqui – Customer Success Manager, Blueshift
• David Fowler – Senior Privacy and Compliance Professional
• Brian Godiksen – Email Deliverability Manager, SocketLabs
• Brad Gurley – Director of Deliverability, MessageGears
• Hans Jul – Founder, SMTP.dk
• Richelo Killian – Chief Deliverability Officer, InboxJam
• Chris Kolbenschlag – Director of Deliverability, Bronto Software
• Arun Kumar – Email Deliverability Engineer, Zoho Corporation
• Vytis Marčiulionis – Email Deliverability Manager, Emarsys
• Kent McGovern – Sr. Deliverability Consultant, Oracle
• Lauren Meyer – VP of Industry Relations and Compliance, Kickbox
• Ken O’Driscoll: Founder, We Monitor Email
• Jakub Olexa – Founder & CEO, Mailkit
• Sergey Serkin – Head of Email Deliverability/Anti-Abuse, MailerQ
• Julie Turner – Senior Email Deliverability Engineer, ClickDimensions
• Matthew Vernhout – Founder, EmailKarma

How is email deliverability perceived at your organization?

The professionals we interviewed work in the following self-identified roles throughout the community:

• 36% – Managers or Leaders 
• 28% – Senior Devs
• 20% – Founders
• 12% – Consultants
• 4% – Junior Devs

For those working at an ESP or CRM, we asked how they were perceived by their company’s corporate team historically and currently. 

“Deliverability isn’t a thing until you need it—then it’s everything.”

– Matthew Vernhout, EmailKarma

Exactly 30% said that they felt deliverability was seen as a cost center and 50% said they felt that the cost-center image had shifted to being seen as a valuable tool once revenue-impacting examples and positive data sets were provided. The last 20% said that they feel like deliverability services are consistently undervalued within their company. 

Overall, deliverability perception sounds like it’s getting better, but from what we heard in our interviews teams are still largely under sourced and underfunded. We felt like one respondent, Matthew Vernhout, summed up the responses we heard by saying “Deliverability isn’t a thing until you need it—then it’s everything.’

What are your biggest deliverability challenges right now?…

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