The next big hurdle!

Something new and potentially devious has just appeared in the world of email marketing. It relates specifically to delivery, and to those addresses on your database with a gmail, yahoo or hotmail suffix - it's called engagement filtering, and it's the latest weapon in the war on spam.

Engagement filtering will judge your email based on how well it engages the recipient - how they react to it - clicking links, replying etc - the first time that filtering has been based on positive behaviour.

If engagement levels are low, then so will your sender reputation be.

This poses all sorts of challenges for email marketers - to be seen as a good sender and avoid widescale filtering by the big 3, you need mechanisms in each and every email you send which prompt either response of clicking. In other words, your copy has to be very engaging and relevant.

Now, many people say this is a good thing - the industry is forcing email markeeters to do a better job. Fair point.

But at the same time, it effectively prohibits the sending of passive announcements.

It's another typically reactive measure by the big 3 to the spam problem. It's not the answer, and I suspect all it will mean is a lot of legitimate emails will fail to reach recipients.

Which given that 74% of hotmail users say the reason they have a hotmail account is to channel all commercial email to, doesn't make much sense.