Deliverability: often misunderstood, despite being important to everyone engaging in email marketing. Here are a few articles covering the topic that might provide a degree of enlightenment:

• Why poor email deliverability is your own fault – and what you can do about it
• Deliverability Emergencies from the ISP Side of the Desk – a reality check
• Engagement: The New Frontier In Deliverability? – or is it simply a new way of looking at things?
• Rescuing reputation – many small steps
• Email deliverability: what’s it all about? – detailed basic information

This week saw the announcement of the new Composite Snow-Show (CSS) blacklist from Spamhaus, which aims to work around the problem of widely spread, low-use IP addresses which are used for spamming. Naturally, this was covered by the usual suspects around the blogosphere, with a nice overview from the excellent Word to the Wise. On a related note (and just possibly prompted by news from Spamhaus), Return Path also announced the latest version of their Reputation Network Blacklist, which they describe as a real-time list of senders categorized as the “worst of the worst”. In a quick return to our litigious friends over in America, (and as the third link to a post by “laura” this week!) I’d like to point to a hilarious argument-turned-ugly at the DMA. Lawyers, on your marks! Lastly, special mention this week to an article over on MediaPosts‘s Email Insider that I have to confess was very enlightening for me: My Name Is Loren. BTW, I’m A ‘He’. Steve Knigge’s note in the comments also made me laugh.