About the Certified Senders Alliance
The Certified Senders Alliance (CSA) is a project from eco – Association of the Internet Industry, which was created in cooperation with the German Dialogmarketing Association (Deutscher Dialogmarketing Verband – DDV) in 2004. With more than 1000 members, eco is the largest Internet industry association in Europe. The DDV is the largest national consortium of dialog marketers in Europe.
The CSA acts as a neutral interface between mailbox providers and senders of commercial e-mails.
The goal of the CSA
The goal of the CSA is to increase the quality of commercial e-mails (e.g. newsletters, invoices, order confirmations, etc.). To achieve this goal, the CSA establishes legal and technical quality standards. The quality standards arise out of prevailing law and the technical requirements for mailbox providers. They are regularly updated to correspond to market requirements.
Increasing the quality of commercial e-mails
The established quality standards are adopted in conjunction with a certification. Certified senders obligate themselves to maintain high standards. This removes some of the burden from the email-security team at the participating mailbox provider. In return, the certified senders receive a range of benefits.
Benefits of a CSA certification for a sender
The certicifcation has many benefits
- Improvement of the e-mail deliverability through whitelisting by the participating mailbox providers
- Support for technical problems and in the communication with participating mailbox providers
- Protection against legal risks and thus also the associated financial consequences
- Effective early-warning system through the CSA complaint management
- CSA seal of quality shows professionalism in e-mail marketing
- Access to current technical and legal developments in the industry through publications and events
How does whitelisting work?
Mailbox providers want to achieve the highest possible level of user satisfaction, but they face a challenge: They need to protect their users from unwanted emails and at the same time guarantee that wanted e-mails are delivered. To protect their users from spam, mailbox providers set their filters to be very restrictive. However, this can lead to wanted messages being filtered out and erroneously classified as spam, and therefore not being delivered to the receiver.
Given that the IP addresses of CSA certified senders are on the CSA Whitelist and mailbox providers can access this whitelist, CSA senders are recognized as serious e-mail senders. As a result, their messages will be delivered more effectively by the participating mailbox providers.
The certification process
The CSA quality standards cover legal and technical admission criteria. E-mail senders that are capable of fulfilling these quality criteria can be certified by the CSA.
Find out more about the certification
Further services
The CSA offers further services, such as workshops where experts train marketers in the optimization of email delivery, deliverability management and in the legal framework conditions for compliant and effective email campaigns. More on the CSA workshops….
Contact with the CSA
Senders that would like to get more information about the CSA or become a certified sender, visit the CSA website or contact them using the following email address: Maike Marx, [email protected]