Fixing the Broken Killer App: Key Strategies for Solving the Deliverability Crisis

Transcription

1 Best Practices in Deliverability Fixing the Broken Killer App: Key Strategies for Solving the Deliverability Crisis New standards and protocols now and over the next 24 months will require mailers to take their infrastructure to a much higher and more sophisticated level. Will you be ready? July 2005 Prepared by StrongMail Systems, Inc Island Drive, Suite 200 Redwood Shores, CA t. (650) f. (650) info@strongmail.com

2 Today s enterprises and service providers are caught between two worlds. The first is the current one where blacklists, spam filters and other techniques designed to curb abusive practices inflict harm on legitimate senders and their customers, inadvertently preventing the delivery of mail that is requested, desired and expected. Efforts to perfect these systems have often resulted in intercepting still larger quantities of legitimate . The second world is the one coming down the pike. Start now and over next 24 months, new regulation coupled with industry protocols including authentication and reputation scores will establish accountability standards for senders and finally put an end to the plague of spam, spoofing and phishing that are degrading as a communications channel. These new protocols show tremendous promise. And, if we are successful in achieving our goals, senders also stand to inherit a critical side benefit once the ecosystem is cleared of clutter and negativity, more legitimate mail will get delivered and read. However, there is a problem. These new rules of engagement will also make the landscape much more complex than it is today, and most enterprises and service providers do not have in place the infrastructure required to move their delivery to the next level. Without it, companies will find their communication strategies at a standstill. Not only will these companies lag behind the competition, but their may not get delivered at all. They may be locked out of the channel and forced to revert to more expensive means of communication, while suffering lost revenue and higher costs. In this white paper, we ll explain the issues and challenges legitimate senders must overcome to meet the requirements of the new world of accountability, and we ll review six critical strategies that must be in place to develop an optimal delivery infrastructure. Key things you will learn f The bottom line effects of poor deliverability. f The critical importance of effective bounce management, which will allow you to understand delivery failure by type; diagnose weaknesses in your practices and correct them; and proactively manage your your databases and lists. f Other components of your outbound infrastructure crucial to optimizing delivery. By putting in place the right infrastructure now, you can improve your deliverability today and safeguard your future success. Here, we ll show you how. 1 Fixing the Killer Broken App: Key Strategies for Solving the Deliverability Crisis

3 I. Understanding the Issues and Challenges With 93 percent of online consumers being active users, making effective use of is no longer a luxury. In fact, it could be reasonably argued that being able to effectively manage communications must be a core competency of any company wanting to grow and prosper in the digital age. today is a vital communication link that s become completely integrated into our societal fabric. It s as much a necessity, or even more so, than the telephone. Many companies have even optimized their operations around it and would not be able to revert back to offline mode if were to suddenly go away. In fact, with more than 36 billion s projected to be delivered annually by 2006 according to IDC, has the potential to displace traditional USPS mail as the primary information delivery channel. With more than 36 billion s projected to be delivered annually by 2006 according to IDC, has the potential to displace traditional USPS mail as the primary information delivery channel. That s not surprising when you look at s benefits over other communication channels. It s much less expensive, and is more convenient, effective, immediate, customizable, accountable/trackable, secure and intimate. It also contributes much to the economy. Roughly $39 billion in sales was generated in 2004 as a result of , according to the Direct Marketing Association. It reduces calls to and costs within contact centers and helps companies stay connected with their customers and build higher-value relationships. However, as more and more businesses collect addresses and attempt to build stronger more valuable customer relationships through the channel, the scope and scale of their use of has outstripped their infrastructure. Volume grows, infrastructures don t keep up In s early years, infrastructure easily handled the volume of mail they received, and ISPs and corporate mail servers accepted and delivered all the mail that came through their virtual doors. But over time, as more and more companies embraced for all the loyalty building benefits it provides, quantities steadily increased. At the same time, spam entered the picture and multiplied quickly, jamming recipients mailboxes with unwanted and untrustworthy . ISPs and anti-spam vendors worked to eradicate spam with blockers and filters, but resilient spammers continued to morph and adapt, and their anonymity has made them difficult to catch. As recipients frustration with spam heightened, it spilled over onto the senders of the legitimate , eroding the value and trust level they once had in those companies. Meanwhile, sending infrastructures remained static and companies were unable to adequately adapt to these challenges. Today, 10.3 trillion spam messages are delivered, compared with 4.9 trillion in Meanwhile, according to Jupiter Research, 25 percent of legitimate never reaches their intended recipients, even though they ve opted in to receive them. The bottom line is, by 2008, millions of dollars will be lost to blocked . And this doesn t begin to count the higher costs of defaulting to other channels or unnecessary customer support that occurs when can t be reliably delivered. Nor does it count the lost revenue from that is unfavorably 2 Fixing the Killer Broken App: Key Strategies for Solving the Deliverability Crisis

4 placed, such as in the junk folder, where it s never read, or the lost communication opportunity that happens when senders lose touch with customers simply because they don t know that their has failed to reach them Trillion Some industry sources have estimated that businesses lose an average of $.20 for every undelivered , while typical retailers lose more than $175,000 in online revenue per year for each 1 percent drop in their delivery rate. Yet, despite the passing of the CAN-SPAM and aggressive filtering tactics, up to 85 percent of mail received by some ISP domains is still spam. 4.9 Trillion This ineffectiveness forces companies to rely on other, more expensive channels, drives up customer service costs, degrades customers perception of the brand, erodes customer trust, and contributes to lost customer relationships. Deterioration of consumer trust is also increasing the popularity of blocking and filtering tools that consumers themselves control. A Pew Research study shows that 53 percent of consumers trust less than they used to and 22 percent use less. Phishing spam disguised as a trusted company consumers do business with for the sole purpose of stealing their identities and their money makes matters worse, since consumers question whether an they receive is legitimate (even when it is) and at the same time wonder whether their own outgoing is getting through. Today s solutions are ineffective 260 Billion Projected Number of Unsolicited s Sent Source: JupiterResearch in Time 06/16/2003 Let s compare the industry to the Internet industry. Since its proliferation in 1995, the World Wide Web has been through several iterations. Businesses have learned how to use the Internet smarter and have continually improved the underlying infrastructure and the way they sell and support their products and services to their target audiences. As a result, companies are generating better ROI online, while consumers positive experiences drive them to increase their use of online media, creating a continuous healthy cycle. , on the other hand, has not substantively changed in 10 years. We ve added HTML and other minor bells and whistles. We re trying to use to do more things, but haven t made any significant investments in the underlying systems to support those advancements. Companies need to know what s going on with their delivery, but they don t, because their current infrastructures don t give them that type of visibility. In fact, many don t keep a record of what they sent and therefore don t know what mail they sent to whom. This is particularly critical to contact centers, which bears the brunt of the problem, because when systems aren t integrated, customer service reps can t readily look up which communications callers have received, preventing optimal service and driving up contact center costs. But the biggest issue is one of sender identity. Due to the anonymous, open nature of the Internet, ISPs and corporations are unable to determine the identity of the sender. As a result, they can t differentiate the good guys from the bad guys, nor can they tell whether an is wanted or unwanted by a recipient. Tighter filters don t address the underlying problem and risk still higher false positives. At the same time, sending infrastructures that have been 3 Fixing the Killer Broken App: Key Strategies for Solving the Deliverability Crisis

5 cobbled together throughout the years don t provide the type of reporting insight companies need to make their delivery process more effective. The clock is ticking and time is running out. The new accountability standards being adopted across the industry will create even more complexity. Companies that don t start now to optimize their systems with the right strategies and infrastructure will find themselves and their communications the most effective tool in their communication portfolio left behind. - Frank Addante, President and Founder of StrongMail Systems According to Frank Addante, President and Founder of StrongMail Systems, The clock is ticking and time is running out. The new accountability standards being adopted across the industry will create even more complexity. Companies that don t start now to optimize their systems with the right strategies and infrastructure will find themselves and their communications the most effective tool in their communication portfolio left behind. Preparing for new protocol standards The new standards move the network from a simple, open system to one of secure protocols based on authentication and reputation ratings. These techniques will not only identify the sender, but will indicate the class of mail being sent, as well as the class of the sender itself. They will enable ISPs and corporations to verify that the sender is actually who he says he is and is delivering the type of messages he claims to be, making it impossible for spammers, spoofers and phishers to hide their identities. Once you know who the is from, the reputation of that company (class of sender) will determine whether a system accepts and where it gets put. The class of mail will also be a determining factor. For instance, a major airline would use different domain addresses for a general promotion versus the confirmation of your flight, and each of those is treated differently by the receiving ISP or domain. There are two approaches emerging for authenticating the identity of the sender of IP and signature-based (of which the combined Yahoo/Cisco approach, Domain Keys Identified Mail, is the most popular). With the IP-based approach, called the Sender ID Framework, authentication is verified through a published identity record called a Sender Policy Framework (SPF), which lists the IP addresses of servers authorized to send on behalf of a domain. When an is received, the receiving domain checks the SPF record to ensure that the sending server (IP address) and domain name match. Once senders of can be identified, they ll be held accountable for their practices through an assigned reputation score similar to a credit rating. Once this reaches critical mass, then reliance on less-than-perfect systems such as filtering will become passé. A company s score will directly affect its cost of sending , via a bond or e-postage, or indirectly through denied access or poor placement. Meanwhile, lower scores will force companies to use alternative and more expensive forms of communication. And, of course, there is the immeasurable cost of losing customer trust, since reputation scores will be public knowledge. Authentication and accountability can dramatically change the way recipients view and help increase their level of trust in the companies they receive from, and thus increase the value of both the company s brand and its customer relationships. 4 Fixing the Killer Broken App: Key Strategies for Solving the Deliverability Crisis

6 II. Solutions for Optimizing Delivery There are three things converging today that are causing the environment to change: legislation, technology and self-regulation. First, technology is being used by ISPs and corporations to try to prevent the delivery of spam. Second, legislation such as CAN-SPAM has been put in place to set rules governing sending and to prosecute violators of those rules. And third are the upcoming protocol standards in which the industry will embrace self-regulation around classes of senders and classes of mail. This convergence represents the tipping point of delivery management. When it happens, it will put tremendous demand on senders and their infrastructures, and companies will need to be ready and able to support it. This is not an option and it is not a luxury: it is an imperative for doing dayto-day business. An inadequate infrastructure will prevent companies from migrating customer communications to . If they can t -enable their applications, then they can t realize the benefits of the medium. However, the ability for legitimate senders to support IP- and signature-based authentication is only the beginning. Companies will also need to support reputation ratings, smarter recipient feedback and bounce management, dynamic content for relevant messaging, and the kind of intelligent differentiated sending that the new classes of mail and domain access rules will demand. In addition, senders will need to capture, interpret and act on data faster than ever before to meet rising consumer expectations and ensure regulatory compliance. These outbound infrastructure challenges will require much more powerful, technologically advanced platforms designed for tight integration and optimized for delivery. Legitimate senders must address these challenges to survive in the new era of accountability. An infrastructure designed to accommodate the upcoming protocol standards needs to maintain core competency in six key areas: 1 Smart bounce management Manage and measure your delivery rates. A good bounce management system provides accurate metrics, in-depth diagnostics and proactive database management tools that handle data capture, interpretation, organization, reporting and dynamic updating. With it, you ll be able to quantify your delivery rate, isolate the exact reason for failure, diagnose the underlying cause and take corrective action to proactively manage your list. 2 Mailbox monitoring Understand placement of your . It is critical to your open and viewing rates. While a bounce management system will tell you what didn t get received, a mailbox monitoring program tells you what did, whether they landed in the inbox or the spam folder and when they were received. 5 Fixing the Killer Broken App: Key Strategies for Solving the Deliverability Crisis

7 3 Recipient Feedback Management Utilize an infrastructure that allows you to identify, sort and appropriately respond to customer replies, unsubscribe requests and complaints as well as tracking opens and clicks. Without insight into your mailing results, you can t enhance or improve the customer experience. 4 Relevant messaging Make sure your message is relevant, and manage your delivery by message type. All the tracking and reporting in the world is not going to help if you do not send the right message to the right person at the most appropriate time through the channel of their choice. Relevant messaging based on customer needs and preferences is the best way to ensure that your messages get opened and read and to avoid complaints that could precipitate ISP blocks or anti-spam filtering. To conduct relevant messaging, your infrastructure should include personalization and dynamic content capabilities, as well as tags to label messages by mail class. 5 Intelligent, differentiated sending Send in a manner that suits domain policies, recipient preferences and your own segmentation business rules, through virtual routing, adaptive message queuing, dynamic configuration updates and other domain controls, such as speed or network connection throttling. 6 Sender reputation support Build into your outbound infrastructure a sender reputation report that ensures regulatory compliance and protects your brand and reputation. It should include IP and signature-based authentication, accreditation tags, and legislative compliance checking. If you outsource delivery, these capabilities should be part of your delivery partner s infrastructure. Delivery Infrastructure Features Business Results DATA CAPTURE INTERPRETATION ORGANIZATION LOGICAL REPORTING DYNAMIC UPDATES Smart Bounce Management Accurate Metrics and Diagnostics Customer Satisfaction LIST SEEDING TIME/PLACEMENT REPORTING REPLY MANAGEMENT UNSUBSCRIBE PROCESSING COMPLAINT MANAGEMENT OPEN/CLICK REPORTING PERSONALIZATION DYNAMIC CONTENT MAIL CLASS TAGS VIRTUAL ROUTING DOMAIN CONTROLS ADAPTIVE QUEUING DYNAMIC UPDATES Mailbox Monitoring Recipient Feedback Management Relevant, Dynamic Messaging Intelligent, Differentiated Sending Proactive Database Management Customer Reactivation Best Practices Good Reputation Improved Delivery Higher Revenues Lower Operating Costs Regulatory Compliance Higher ROI IP AUTHENTICATION SIGN AUTHENTICATION ACCREDITATION TAGS COMPLIANCE CHECKS Sender Reputation Support Delivery Infrastructure Optimized for Business Results 6 Fixing the Killer Broken App: Key Strategies for Solving the Deliverability Crisis

8 Including all six of these competencies in your infrastructure will properly position your business for the future. They must be tightly integrated with each other and with internal business applications to enable companies to capture, interpret and act on data quickly enough to meet customer expectations and regulatory requirements. Yet while all six areas are equally important, the first strategy bounce management is the critical foundation on which all the other layers are balanced. Without an accurate understanding of what s happening to your , the other five strategies are rendered ineffective, and will be a waste of time. Smart bounce management is the critical first step You may know how many of your s are not delivered, but do you know why they aren t delivered? There are many different reasons for poor deliverability and each one potentially has a different solution. Suppose you could improve your deliverability by two percentage points. How much would that be worth to your bottom line? How about 10 percentage points? Do you know how much you are losing every time an is not delivered and, conversely, how much you stand to gain by improving deliverability? Most readers of this report will not know the answers to those questions. The reason: they are not tracking or viewing the right data to understand delivery failure by type. You can t manage what you can t measure. Smart bounce management is crucial to a company s ability to manage improvement in its deliverability and data integrity. Today, most companies either underestimate the value of their bounce data or don t examine the right information. A comprehensive bounce management system allows companies to quantify their delivery rate, isolate the exact reason for failure, diagnose the underlying causes and take corrective action to proactively manage their databases or lists, change their practices and safeguard their reputation. delivery rates are only as accurate as the underlying data, but getting it right is easier said than done, says Dave Lewis, vice president of marketing for StrongMail Systems Inc., an infrastructure solutions provider. You must be able to capture all the data streams, correctly interpret a myriad of often inconsistent messages, organize the data into logical categories, and then produce the kinds of reports that make the data actionable in addressing the causes of failure. Many companies only capture partial data and misinterpret what they do capture. Others simply focus on their top line bounce rate, but don t drilldown to determine the specific types of failure they re experiencing. Or they focus on one type, such as hard bounces, and ignore the rest. To do it right, companies must sort through a mishmash of hundreds of conflicting, ever-changing failure codes and messages from thousands of gateways in different languages something most companies either don t have the capability or time to do. Yet, the success of their programs and the tangible increase in relationship value that can result delicately ride on this ability. To start, companies must meet the challenge of capturing both synchronous and asynchronous bounces. Synchronous bounces those that happen immediately when delivery is attempted are the most common. Yet, asynchronous bounces those that are delayed by a few hours or days 7 Fixing the Killer Broken App: Key Strategies for Solving the Deliverability Crisis

9 at the ISP or corporate mail server for one reason or another before being returned are important too. While larger domains use both types, smaller and corporate domains are more likely to rely on the asynchronous approach because it s more flexible and puts less strain on their infrastructure. Capturing asynchronous bounces is particularly challenging since most mail transfer agents (the systems that actually deliver the ) don t capture them and they re returned in the form of bounce s and must be sorted out from all the other replies to your mailing, such customer service requests, challenge responses, changes of address and spam complaints. Nonetheless, the capture of asynchronous bounces is crucial because they represent a large percentage of all bounces today. They may even represent the majority of bounces if you re mailing to a B2B audience or other users in smaller domains. Surprisingly, many companies don t capture asynchronous bounces, or if they do, don t combine them with their synchronous counterparts for a consolidated view of delivery results. That s a real risk when potentially serious problems are hidden from your view. It can lead to a false sense of security and unaddressed problems that compound over time increasing the risk of blocking and damage to your reputation. Other challenges come in interpreting and organizing the bounce data. While domains do provide bounce data synchronous or asynchronous the codes and messages they use don t mean the same thing and they re constantly changing. And with over 300,000 different domains accepting worldwide that constitutes a monumental challenge for companies to accurately interpret and organize their failure data into logical categories. Yet, understanding these codes and messages offers senders a wealth of information that can help them identify and correct the underlying cause of delivery failures. For instance, failures due to address error, such as misspelling or wrong punctuation, generally point to a problem at data capture; unknown user means the account either never existed or was closed, and suggests use of ECOA or doublechecking your own database for an alternate address would be in order. Challenge 1 Capture ALL Data Streams Challenge 2 Interpret Data Challenge 3 Organize Data Challenge 4 Make Data Actionable Asynchronous Bounces Thousands of ISPs, Domains 421: Timeout 421: DNS Failure 450: Mailbox Full Synchronous Bounces Access Denied Mishmash of inconsistent, incomplete, ever-changing failure codes and messages 452: Out of Memory 554: Account Spam not Disabled Accepted XXX: No Code 553: Address Unknown 554: Quota Violation 452: 421: Server Service Not Busy Available 450: Relay not Mailbox Permitted Unavailable User Unknown 552: SPAM 552: Storage Exceeded 421: Too Many Errors Account Inactive 571: Unsolicited Junk Mail Smart Bounce Processor 452: Server Busy Relay not Permitted 450: Mailbox Unavailable No Code 421: Timeout 552: SPAM Account Inactive No Description 452: Out of Memory Spam not Accepted User Unknown 552: Storage Exceeded 554: Quota Violation 450: Mailbox Full 421: Service Not Available 571: Unsolicited Junk Mail 553: Address Unknown StrongMail Delivery Reports Failures logically categorized for management reporting, diagnosis and corrective action Challenges to Bounce Management 8 Fixing the Killer Broken App: Key Strategies for Solving the Deliverability Crisis

10 Companies need an infrastructure that enables them to drill down below the dashboard level to review such actionable information on their top domains. They need to understand what the different types of failure mean hard bounce, soft bounce, block, technical failure the likely causes and corrective action that should be taken. The same is true for details on unsubscribe requests and spam complaints. Companies also need a system to monitor mailbox placement at the leading ISPs inbox, bulk, junk to determine whether their is likely to be read by recipients. With accountability looming large in our future, companies that can t access or apply accurate bounce information to improve their practices are truly tempting fate. They re putting their results, reputations and relationships with customers at risk. - Dave Lewis, VP Marketing for StrongMail Systems In addition to open, click and conversion, deliverability along with your unsubscribe and complaint rates are the key metrics for any program. Without accurate and specific data, companies can t gauge their success. But more than that, they can t take the corrective action necessary to affect improvement. That may not be critical if you re sending nice to have or getting to know you types of information. But for most companies, their outgoing are business-critical, including billing statements, order confirmations, marketing promotions and customer service responses the kind of communications you can t afford to let go missing or unread. With the churn in addresses running at 33% a year, it s critical that companies identify bad addresses, remove them from their databases and seek to find replacements so they can restore communications. Yet, as important as these things are to database integrity and deliverability, it s equally important that good addresses not be inadvertently removed a nightmare for companies who spend millions of dollars every year acquiring new customers and addresses. Everything hinges on a comprehensive and accurate bounce management system. It s crucial to managing all of your growing and changing delivery needs. It s the cornerstone of your success in today s environment as well as in the new era of accountability. Meanwhile, the entire six-part infrastructure will position companies well above their competition by helping senders adhere to and understand an ISP or corporate anti-spam solutions domain policies, the recipient s requirements and a company s own segmentation rules, including class of mail, type of authentication (cryptographic or non-cryptographic) and class of sender (based on accreditation or reputation ratings), as well as manage customer feedback, analyze message relevancy, track reputation scores and stagger sending to accommodate ISP and corporate anti-spam solutions traffic limits. Empowered with such actionable information, deliverability can be improved in many ways. First, false positives, blacklists and other headaches will become a thing of the past. And best of all, customers boxes will be much cleaner, allowing them to pay more attention to the that is important to them. Meanwhile, senders with poor reputation scores will either be forced to make improvements in their practices or will be barred from their use of the medium. 9 Fixing the Killer Broken App: Key Strategies for Solving the Deliverability Crisis

11 Intelligent, Differentiated Sending Goes Mainstream As more companies develop sophisticated infrastructures to handle all of the above techniques and raise the bar on achieving a higher level of customer satisfaction, this will not only cut down on spam, but will also drive companies to put more emphasis on targeting and message relevancy, customizing more s to the recipient s preferences and behavior. For companies with high reputation scores, will become even more affordable and efficient than it is today, and the ROI will be greater as message relevance increases and customers desire to open and act on s received from companies they trust grows. Those organizations that don t target and focus their run the risk of getting stopped at the gateway along with spam. Through it all, good bounce management plays a pivotal role. Legitimate Senders Accepted Passed Favorably Placed Authentication Check Receiver Access Rules Gateway Server Inbox > Mail Class > Reputating Rating > Permission > Traffic limits Bulk Reputation Database Junk of Tomorrow: Benefits of Integrated, Delivery Infrastructure 10 Fixing the Killer Broken App: Key Strategies for Solving the Deliverability Crisis

12 III. Conclusion: Optimizing your Infrastructure for Delivery Deliverability Best Practices 1 Keep your data streams clean and up to date. Use data verification systems such as having a person enter his address twice to eliminate misspells. 2 Maintain a sophisticated bounce management program to help you understand delivery failures by type; diagnose weaknesses and take corrective action. 3 Use a thorough recipient feedback management program to identify, sort and appropriately respond to customer replies, unsubscribe requests and complaints. 4 Ensure that your messages are relevant to the recipients preferences and behavior. All the tracking and measurement in the world can t help if you are not delivering a message to the recipient that he is interested in. 5 Use an intelligent, differentiated sending strategy to abide by the ever-changing traffic limits and access rules for ISPs and other domains. 6 Built a sender reputation report component into your infrastructure to protect your brand and reputation and to ensure the regulatory compliance of your . 7 Work with an technology provider that has in place today the infrastructure and protocols you will need today, tomorrow and beyond. Currently, few companies are prepared to move to the next level. In March 2005, Microsoft estimated that only about 20 percent of the mail it was receiving at its Hotmail domain included SPF records, while some of those records were found to be incorrect. But the ability of enterprises to capitalize on the advantages of communications has only been tempered by one thing low deliverability caused by spam and spam filters and that mountain is about to be lifted. The time to get started is now. protocol standards for authentication and accountability will change the entire delivery landscape, but without the proper infrastructure in place to handle it, companies will not be able to move forward. Poor deliverability can damage brand image, bottom line revenue, profits, customer relationships and a company s overall reputation. But focusing on one aspect of the new infrastructure will not work. All six components must be synchronized in unison to provide optimal results. You won t want to be left behind, but you also don t have to weather this storm alone. If you ve got specific deliverability problems and don t know how to handle them, look to your delivery provider for an overall assessment and help in moving forward. They can help you understand your current reputation and what people are saying about your domains and the IP addresses you send under. They ll help you review your practices and your bounce management results, then spot check to see how well you re doing. The time to start building a leading-edge infrastructure is now. StrongMail Systems stands ready to help. About StrongMail Systems StrongMail Systems, the innovation leader in digital messaging, is the only company that has solved the challenge at its core, thereby empowering businesses to fix, enhance and extend their communications. Its technology has been optimized for delivery, including the smart bounce management and actionable information required to overcome today s challenges and succeed in the new era of accountability that s unfolding. StrongMail Systems has pioneered the application server - the industry s first complete, fully integrated infrastructure solution for outbound . Companies use StrongMail software to -enable disparate business assets, and deliver marketing messages, order confirmations, and other transactional communications seamlessly and in real-time. StrongMail is application agnostic and easily integrates with CRM, e-commerce and financial applications, as well as custom developed solutions to unlock the potential of for enterprises, service providers and ISV s. Founded in 2002, StrongMail Systems is privately held and funded by Sequoia Capital and Evercore Ventures. The Company is headquartered in Redwood Shores, CA, and can be found on the Web at 11 Fixing the Killer Broken App: Key Strategies for Solving the Deliverability Crisis