Since Return Path acquired the Bonded Sender email “whitelist” program last fall, the company has entered into discussions with marketers, online publishers, ESPs and ISPs, spam filtering companies, and others about how to retool the Internet’s largest and oldest email accreditation program. This spring, Return Path announced that it was relaunching the program, now known as Sender Score Certified. Many aspects of the program have been improved, and TRUSTe continues to play a key role in setting the standards adopted by the program and certifying whitelist applicants.

When it debuted in 2002, Bonded Sender’s innovative model required participating email senders to post a “bond” backing up their anti-spam procedures. Complaints from consumers would result in money being deducted from that bond.

Return Path has introduced significant changes to the program to meet the challenges that have evolved around spam and deliverability during the past few years. In particular, the company sought to address concerns about the validity of the application and compliance metrics; lack of transparency regarding why certain applicants were denied and why bonds were debited; and too many complaints from end users despite the stringent screening measures. Many participating senders also complained that their purchasing departments did not know how to post a bond or understand why they should.

According to Return Path, the reborn Sender Score Certified addresses all four main areas of concern while keeping the elements of the program that have worked well. These new elements:

• New and improved data: The program is now powered by the newly launched Sender Score Reputation database, which compiles reputation information submitted daily by scores of different sources.
• Improved transparency: The Sender Score Reputation Monitor service allows clients to have 100 visibility into every metric tracked for the program.
• No more bonds: By setting the standards higher, the Sender Score Certified program eliminates the need for the bond. Companies either qualify for the whitelist or they don’t.
• Reduced complaints: Return Path rebuilt the statistical model underlying the program to have a high correlation with leading spam filters, enabling it to remove a huge number of senders who were previously on the whitelist. Since the relaunch of Sender Score Certified, Microsoft, the program’s largest ISP user, reports a nearly 90 percent drop in the number of complaints in its network coming from users of the program.

However, Return Path retained many of the features that continued to drive the success of Bonded Sender -- namely, it still partners with TRUSTe to perform a critical, detailed practices accreditation of incoming clients and to help with ensuring compliance. More than 35,000 domains -- including Hotmail, MSN, Outblaze, and Roadrunner, as well as users of Spam Assassin and IronPort appliances -- continue to use Sender Score Certified to help them determine what email to let through. The improved, relaunched program promises to be the next generation of email accreditation and whitelists.

 

MAXAMINE