CSA celebrates its 20th anniversary

In 2024, CSA celebrated its 20th anniversary at the CSA Summit. The three-day event attracted over 180 visitors from 20 different countries to the Hotel Wasserturm in Cologne. Forty international experts presented various topics in workshops, sessions and lightning talks. The evening events provided an opportunity for networking in a relaxed atmosphere.

In addition to the CSA’s 20th anniversary, the entire community also celebrated the first email sent in Germany 40 years ago – together with its recipient and Honorary President of the eco Association, Prof. Michael Rotert.

Added value for CSA 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. Through data sharing with mailbox providers, the CSA was able to monitor 838,157 individual DKIM domains and 123,443 IPs in 2024.

The Certification Monitor was enhanced with several new features in two releases in 2024:

• Combined Trendgraphs
• Benchmark – Deviation Inbox Placement
• Anomaly Detection
• News Block on Dashboard
• Alert Management
• Updated User Profile

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 2024 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. 

The CSA looks back on a successful 2024 with a growing international focus and continues to work on quality standards and their implementation to improve the quality of commercial emails. The Certification Monitor, which works with real data from mailbox and spam filter providers, is constantly being developed as the basis for this.