The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) has issued the MAAWG Sender Best Communications Practices (BCP) with collaborative input from both volume senders and Internet Service Providers. The new best practices recommend sender email technologies and subscription methods to improve deliverability rates for newsletters and permission-based email marketing. The BCP development could move the industry towards a possible agreement on how senders can distinguish their legitimate volume email from unsolicited spam.

"Both senders and ISPs are allies fighting the same battle, but in the past there has been a language gap between them," said Dennis Dayman, MAAWG senders subcommittee co-chair and StrongMail Systems, Inc. director of deliverability. "The senders were asking, 'what should we do to work more closely with the network operators?' so MAAWG tackled the issue on a global basis. In these best practices, we have outlined very specific steps that senders can take to reduce the accidental tagging of legitimate email as spam while still protecting consumers from the eighty percent of email traffic that is abusive."

The complete BCP addresses five topics of concern to both marketers and operations professionals: Obtaining email consent, Recommended unsubscribe options, Sender accountability and reputation, List maintenance, Resolving messaging disruption issues. The MAAWG Sender Best Communications Practices also includes a supplemental Executive Summary for marketers who often manage volume email projects which explains some of the technical recommendations to improve email deliverability and provides a questionnaire marketers can use to determine if their Email Sender Providers are operating within industry best practices.

 The complete Sender Best Communications Practices document is available at the organization's Web site, www.MAAWG.org.