Certified Senders Alliance
The Certified Senders Alliance (CSA) has been in existence since 2004 as a central certification body for email senders. The joint project with the German Dialogue Marketing Association, DDV, establishes high legal and technical quality standards and certifies companies that meet these criteria. Certification offers numerous advantages: In addition to improved delivery of emails to recipients, companies can counteract bad reputations, dissatisfied recipients, and legal penalties for violations.
Growth and international network
The CSA received a large number of requests for certification, including from abroad. Some international events and trade fairs were able to take place again and opened up opportunities to expand the CSA’s network. In addition to newly certified senders, the CSA was also able to expand its international partnerships in 2023, e.g. with a new Czech partner. Through the partnership and the integration of the CSA IP list, certified senders receive benefits in the deliverability of their emails. On 31 December 2023, the CSA had 174,797 IP addresses on the certified IP list.
Added value for participants
The “Certification Monitor”, launched in July 2021, enables certified senders to independently track spam complaint rates at company, IP and domain levels. This transparency provides an effective early warning system that can be used to identify and notify problematic customers at an early stage. Certified senders can optimise email strategies together with their customers and protect their platform from abuse and spammers. In addition to the spam complaint rate, senders can find out about DKIM errors, spamtrap hits and individual complaints that can also damage their reputation. By sharing data with mailbox providers, the CSA was able to monitor approximately 536,000 individual DKIM domains in 2023 and provide information on an email volume of approximately 327 billion.
The Certification Monitor was enhanced with several new features in one release in 2023:
- Improved usability
- Extended DKIM reporting on errors and alignment
Effectiveness of spam control
The quality control of certified senders is always a high priority for the CSA. The background to this is the promise of quality to mailbox providers and the promise to certified senders to be legally on the safe side and technically up to date with the CSA criteria.
The CSA could effectively warn certified senders in 2023 and protect the email ecosystem. Even though manual quality mechanisms are largely automated, the individual advice provided by the eco Complaints Office continues to be an important pillar for ensuring quality.
Digital formats for a strong network
The email community is international and very active. Various players are uniting to set up technical standards and improve the medium of email. The CSA is part of this and offers certified senders access to this network. Through blog articles on various legal and technical topics and intensive digital communication with its members, content could be shared, and the network strengthened.
This year’s CSA webinars were very successful, with many international guest speakers; more details are presented in CSA Live Webinars. All webinars are available as recordings.
The CSA also invited relevant international partners to a get-together at a major security conference in Dublin.
The CSA looks back on a successful 2023 with a growing international focus and continues to work on quality standards and their implementation in order to improve the quality of commercial emails.
