abusix
As talked about previously, ISP feedback loops are in flux in 2023. Validity, who manages the backend FBL processes for a large number of mailbox providers via their “Universal Feedback Loop”, has indicated that they’re moving from a free to a paid model. Free access will provide aggregrated metrics via a dashboard, but no full feeds of raw complaints. Meaning, if you want to be able to directly log (or unsubscribe) all complaints, you or your ESP or CRM tool will need to pay Validity for that access. I pondered here, what of Abusix? An anti-spam/security software vendor founded in 2009, they had indicated that they were considering offering their own “FBL processing” service. And indeed, that is now taking shape. I reached out to Tobias Knecht and Steve Freegard from Abusix to ask them about this new service. They told me that they felt they already had appropriate infrastructure
I realize that talking about ISP feedback loops can just lead to a lot of blank stares from folks. Not because they’re stupid, by any means. But because for the most part, FBLs are such a basic, foundational part of an email sending platform, and most of those platforms long ago “just dealt with it” — meaning dealt with the set up and management of feedback loops many years ago (almost 20 years, in some cases), that a lot of marketers haven’t ever been required to set up or manage feedback loops themselves. Indeed, some modern email sending or relay platforms just manage the feedback loop stuff for you, automatically, suppressing complainers and generating reporting. So some newer platform maintainers may not have ever even set up and managed ISP feedback loops.Question number one: If nobody really knows about or remembers this, and if new platforms perhaps don’t even bother