Today, it’s more important than ever that customers trust how their data is handled, stored, and processed. As a data company, Validity helps customers maintain clean data, find valuable insights from that data, and provides the tools they need to improve the quality and use of data. As a result, we’ve been evaluating the data we collect and how our approach fits with the latest security and privacy standards.  

As part of our focus on privacy and building trust, Validity has decided to exit from the panel data business – our data source known as the Consumer Network. In its time, the Consumer Network transformed the email industry, but the data privacy landscape has evolved, and we are evolving with it. It is always our obligation as a leader in the email marketing space to help the industry leverage data to improve email for users, and to do so with the highest integrity. 

Changes to Our Products 

Consumer Network 

The Consumer Network data source has been removed as of January 31, 2020. As a result, we have made some changes to the functionality of Partner Platform. The Recent Inbox Placement Changes section was removed on January 31, while the Client Trends and Inbox Placement Trends sections have switched to CoreSeed data. On the drillthrough page, Consumer Network was removed from Inbox Placement Performance, but additional SmartSeeds data has been introduced (see below). 

In the IP Pools section, Inbox Change % of Data was replaced with Complaint Count for the last 7 days. Within the IP Pools drillthrough, the Inbox Placement % tile in the Trends section and the IPR column in IP details were removed.  

SmartSeeds 

Over the last several years, top mailbox providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft have moved to advanced filtering technology that uses engagement metrics to make decisions about your inbox placement. The Return Path Consumer Network provided insight into these metrics, but there were some challenges. Coverage depended on how much the Consumer Network overlapped with your subscriber list. There was also no way to drill into engagement metrics to understand different types of subscribers by how they interacted with their inboxes. 

To address these issues, we developed a new data source: SmartSeeds. SmartSeeds for Gmail launched in October 2019, and SmartSeeds for Yahoo and Microsoft launched in a phased rollout beginning January 15, 2020. You can see SmartSeeds in Partner Platform when you drill into a client’s performance, under Inbox Placement Performance, including the ability to drill down by engagement persona.

See the changes your clients are seeing in Return Path Platform.