Join us today with another interview in our blog series: Authenticated Answers! We sat down with Daniel Deneweth, Head of Deliverability Services at Oracle.
At Valimail, we take our work seriously but try not to take ourselves too seriously. This value inspires us to get to the heart of what makes people unique and how it affects their careers to provide valuable advice, inspiration, and insights to people working with email daily.
In this lighthearted interview series, we connect with experts from the email, IT, security, ISP, and authentication spaces to learn more about them and their experiences.
About Daniel Deneweth
While Daniel is currently the Head of Deliverability Services at Oracle, he started in email marketing years ago. He had first-hand experience with how poor deliverability could devastate an email marketing campaign.
He noticed how much of an impact deliverability could have on email marketing performance, and he’s been passionate about it since then. Once he made the jump to deliverability, he never looked back.
He currently lives in Colorado, where he enjoys cycling and road biking. When he’s not working on email deliverability, he’s riding up and down the Colorado hills.
Keep reading to find out what Daniel had to say about how he approaches something challenging, stays motivated, and what he thinks about BIMI.
How do you stay motivated when learning something challenging or frustrating?
I’m driven by being able to bring value to clients and colleagues. My motivation comes from thinking about how I will be able to help a client or be able to share knowledge with colleagues.
Our clients look to us to be the experts and to have specialized knowledge. We must always keep learning.
What was the last wall you crashed through?
Over the past year, I made real progress in protecting clients against blocklistings. This required me to set aside my assumptions and to look at blocklistings in a new light.
We had gotten to the point where trusted methods were no longer enough, and the situation called for new ideas.
I sought input from many colleagues in the industry, and I listened. This ultimately fed into new guidance to our clients, which has resulted in significant improvements.
What’s your favorite way to show gratitude?
I am always ready to return the gesture and to help when I can.
In our industry, it’s necessary to collaborate to stay current. Collaborating across the industry not only keeps things interesting, it also helps us all succeed.
What’s the smallest hill you are willing to die on?
The objective needs to be materially impactful to someone.
If it’s a small detail that will drive big results, it’s probably worth digging my heels in. If it’s just about ego or bragging rights, I’m not interested.
What do you wish more people knew about BIMI?
It’s something you can do for the good of email at a relatively low cost and low effort. I believe that if email were invented today, BIMI would be required before a sender could send the first email message.
BIMI sounds technical, but it’s really about controlling your brand in a digital setting. How would you feel if the wrong logo was printed in your marketing materials, or if no logo was displayed at all? This is how your emails look without BIMI.
You work hard to do everything right for your email program. Why not take the extra step to assure your customers that your emails are really from you, and that they can be trusted?
BIMI provides an additional way your brand can benefit from a well-run email program.
How would you explain DMARC to your grandparents, friends, or relatives?
DMARC is a tool to help email senders protect against spoofing of their email brands. It also helps mailbox providers to know when to block potentially malicious emails.
This helps to protect you as an email recipient from misleading and fraudulent emails.
Learn more about BIMI
As Daniel mentioned, both DMARC and BIMI are great tools you can use to protect your brand’s email.
However, with BIMI being relatively newer, many people are still unsure about it, how it works, and some of its benefits.
Don’t worry, we have you covered.
Our free complete guide to BIMI will fill you in on all you need to know and get your inbox set up for success.