The E-Mail Competence Group is an integral part of the German Internet industry, working to develop common standards for sending and receiving e-mails. The companies organised in the E-Mail Competence Group represent the majority of e-mail traffic in Germany and neighbouring European countries. In the Competence Group, technical problems of all kinds are solved through the “short official channels”, and new developments are jointly coordinated.

To operate successfully in this context, the E-Mail Competence Group sees it as its mission to define standards that cover all areas related to e-mail and offer support for the smooth running of the various business models.

It is a closed group, as e-mail traffic is particularly sensitive data, and the participants often have to talk more openly about their systems to solve new challenges than would be possible in a public setting. However, participation in the group is open to all eco ISPs. The group can also extend invitations to other qualified participants.

Proven experts lead the E-Mail Competence Group: André Görmer (Mapp Digital Germany GmbH) represents the sender side (ESP), and Patrick Ben Koetter ([*] sys4 AG) represents the ISP side. At the beginning of 2023, the Competence Group comprised 82 participants from around 50 companies.

As part of the E-Mail Authentication series, the guide “Authentication for E-Mail Senders” by Florian Vierke, Sebastiaan de Voss and Michael Kliewe was presented. This guide expands on the document “E-Mail Authentication for Receivers” presented in mid-2022 to include the perspective of the sending systems.

The Competence Group also began a discussion on what arguments can be put forward to companies to drive e-mail authentication across the board and to encourage companies to do so. Google’s announcement that e-mails from mass senders with more than 5,000 deliveries per day will only be delivered under strict conditions shows that the seamless use of known e-mail authentication methods such as SPF, DMARC, and DKIM is becoming increasingly important for companies.

Google announced that it will check such bulk senders for DKIM alignment and analyse the DMARC record.

The topic of e-mail reception and spam prevention is also relevant for large German e-mail senders such as 1&1 and Telekom. DKIM, as the basis for domain-based reputation mechanisms, plays an important role for mail providers as they transition from IP-based whitelists to domain-based whitelists.

The E-Mail Competence Group agrees that there is still a need for clarification in this area, especially for smaller mail processors, and began work on a joint policy paper on the implementation of SPF, DKIM and DMARC in 2023. Based on the feedback from the publications, the Competence Group aims to provide recommendations and examples on how to implement the individual e-mail authentication components and to compile these into a best practice for e-mail authentication in productive use.

E-mail marketing is one of the most effective and cost-efficient marketing methods. Small and medium-sized companies without ample resources or budgets can easily set up an e-mail marketing programme to inform customers and prospects about current products, goods or services.

However, it’s not as simple as it seems. In order for the advertising messages to reach the recipients, it is not enough to “just get started”. Not every e-mail sent ends up in the recipient’s inbox. Some e-mails are rejected directly by the receiving mail server, and others are delivered to the “junk” or “spam” folder.

In “Best Practices for E-Mail Marketing”, recognised experts from the E-Mail Competence Group explain how to use simple measures to set up your email marketing so that the emails really reach the recipients. The initial German-language version was published on 18 August 2023 and had already been downloaded over 600 times by 5 October – the English translation was published online on 2 October.

In 2023, it was once again evident that increased cooperation between senders and ISPs/e-mail recipients strengthens mutual understanding and is beneficial for the efficiency of both groups.