Introducing Everest

Everest is a new product from Validity–the platform that is going to be replacing both 250ok and ReturnPath in 14West’s email deliverability tools. It’s a one-stop shop for testing content, monitoring the delivery of email, and your reputation as a sender. 

Log into Everest here

Your 250ok login credentials were carried over into the new platform. If you have any trouble logging in, submit a ticket to the Deliverability team for assistance.. 

If you’re already familiar with Everest but are looking for more in-depth operational or strategic information, Validity offers a series of Playbooks for each of their tools: https://help.returnpath.com/hc/en-us/sections/4404724155419-Learning-Options  

Validity also has a video overview of Everest’s tools and features available: https://help.returnpath.com/hc/en-us/articles/360049295312-Everest-Onboarding-video-  

Navigating in Everest 

The navigation bar, on the left side of your screen, allows you to quickly jump from tool to tool, and access dashboards easily.  

My Everest

My Everest is your operations center. Here you can build custom dashboards for a personalized at-a-glance deliverability update, configure your alerts, manage any apps/integrations (Feedback Loops, Google Postmaster Tools, and SNDS), and update your profile settings.  

A well-designed series of custom dashboards can make the day-to-day monitoring a matter of a few clicks. Rather than navigating from tool to tool, filtering and sorting data, you can see everything you need to analyze your test data and monitor reputation indicators.  

For more information about setting up dashboards, the following setup guide and playbooks will provide step-by-step instruction as well as more in-depth info: https://help.returnpath.com/hc/en-us/articles/360060166932-Everest-Advanced-Setup-Guide-1-Supplemental-Features  

Alerting can be a life-saver, notifying you of problems as they happen. For someone who has to monitor deliverability among many other email/marketing metrics, alerts can be a huge time-saver, by letting the user operate in a more passive “no news is good news” way. However, alerts must be tailored so that they’re rare or exceptional: too many alerts, alerts that are too broad/vague, or alerts that don’t prompt an immediate response can all lead to “alert fatigue.” And if you’re not paying attention to them, they’re not any help! For more about setting up alerts: https://help.returnpath.com/hc/en-us/sections/360009341332-Alerts  

If you have any questions about alerting, please submit a ticket to the Deliverability team.

The rest of the navigation bar breaks up the tools available in Everest by the time during which you’d use the tool: Pre-Send, In-Flight, and Monitoring. 

• Pre-Send is where you can check your content before sending. Design tests can give you valuable information about how various inboxes will render your templates, and whether any copy or code might cause delivery problems. It also contains tools for list validation and competitive intel. 

• In-Flight is where you’ll view seed test results. Seed tests give you an idea of how various inbox providers will deliver your email – will it make it to the inbox, will it be moved to the junk folder, or will it be delivered at all? It also provides detailed information as to how the recipient server rated your email, to help diagnose inboxing issues. 

• Monitoring is where you’ll manage your reputation monitors. These include Feedback Loops (FBLs) and Spam Complaints, Google Postmaster Tools domain monitors, and Microsoft SNDS IP ratings.   

Pre-Send 

Pre-Send is where you’ll find tools to run tests and checks on a campaign before... as you may have guessed... hit the send button. This includes List Validation and Design Testing (as well as a new feature currently not part of 14West’s offering: Competitive Intel). 

List Validation will check your lists for invalid/mistyped addresses, auto-reply, no-reply, role accounts (eg contact@ or postmaster@ addresses). Because 14West operates a global email validation program for its clients, you don’t need to rely on Everest’s List Validation to keep your lists healthy. Global email validation process

Design Testing allows you to check how your template will render in different mailboxes and email applications. All of the capabilities from 250ok are there, and more: design rendering, mailbox previews, spam tests, and now a Subject Line Preview tool that will show how your subject and preheader text will appear in various clients and on different devices.   

For more information, visit Validity’s Everest Playbooks for Pre-Send: https://help.returnpath.com/hc/en-us/sections/360009843591-Playbooks  

In-Flight 

The In-Flight section is where you’re going to manage seed tests and review your test data, as well as monitor your sending certification.

Seedlists and Seed Testing

Seed testing is looking for two things:  

• 1) That you’re sending properly authenticated mail, and  

• 2) That it’s getting to the inbox. 

There are two primary types of seed tests, what I call the “pulse check” and “spot check.” A pulse check is a regular, recurring test that helps you keep an eye on a particular campaign – usually once or twice weekly. The key to getting the most return in this case is to be deliberate about what you’re testing, and to track your results over time. 

A spot check is a one-time seed test, or one that’s related to a specific problem. This can be a pre-flight check to test subject lines, new copy, a new template, or a new campaign. It could also be a test to check in on campaign performance if an issue is found – for example, a sudden drop in engagement – and spam foldering is suspected. 

Please please submit a ticket to the Deliverability team if you have any questions about your seed tests.  

For more information about seed testing and how to interpret your data in Everest, check out the Validity Playbook for Seed Testing: https://help.returnpath.com/hc/en-us/sections/360012332352  

For more information about how to use your Everest seedlist with Blueshift campaigns, watch the video below, and read Blueshift’s seedlist documentation here: https://help.blueshift.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002745233-Seed-Lists  

Certification (formerly ReturnPath)

Certification is, in short, where Validity put ReturnPath when they merged their platforms in 2021. As with ReturnPath, Everest’s Certification is a signal from Validity to recipients' mailbox providers that this mail is from a legitimate sender that meets certain requirements.

14West’s Deliverability team monitors and manages ReturnPath Certification for all clients.

For more about certification requirements, download the Validity Certification Requirements (2021 edition).

For more about how certification data is used, click here: https://help.returnpath.com/hc/en-us/sections/4404672877979

At this time, the View-Time Optimization tool is not a part of the Everest package offered by 14West.  

Monitoring 

Monitoring is the true “Deliverability” section of Everest. This is where you can configure which reputation indicators you track for your IPs and domains. This is where you’ll find blocklist monitors, DMARC/DKIM/SPF authentication checks, as well as data from mailbox providers (Google and Hotmail) about your reputation as a sender. 

Where your dashboard gives you an at-a-glance update, this is where you can get under the hood to see what might be causing issues in your mailing infrastructure. 

The Reputation section shows you a dashboard of reputation indicators: block listings, your Sender Score, spam trap trends, Microsoft SNDS, Google Postmaster Tools, and Feedback Loop/complaint data. Each widget on the main dash board has a clickable element that lets you dive further into the available data to identify trends and investigate anomalies. 

The Infrastructure Section is everything you’ll ever want to know about the authentication policies (DKIM, DMARC, SPF) in place for your sending domains and IPs. 14West manages your sending infrastructure’s authentication setup.

For more about authentication, read the Everest Playbook for authentication here: https://help.returnpath.com/hc/en-us/sections/360012467091  

For further information on your managing reputation indicators in Everest, Validity offers a number of resources:  

• https://help.returnpath.com/hc/en-us/sections/4404675028251  

• https://help.returnpath.com/hc/en-us/articles/360060604891-Everest-Advanced-Setup-Guide-2-Sending-Reputation  

If you think you have a reputation or authentication problem, please submit a ticket to the Deliverability team.  

Further Documentation

• DLV 101

• https://help.returnpath.com/hc/en-us  

• https://help.returnpath.com/hc/en-us/sections/360009843571-Getting-Started

• https://help.returnpath.com/hc/en-us/sections/360009843591-Playbooks  

• Validity Certification Requirements (2021)