Email deliverability firm Pivotal Veracity and email list broker Eclipse Direct Marketing have partnered to offer a new auditing service - Independent Deliverability Email Audit (IDEA) - for list owners and email service providers, reports ClickZ. IDEA assesses the deliverability of email campaigns by factoring in infrastructure, reputation, permission policies, messaging practices, inbox penetration, and advertiser/partner policies.

Intended both for in-house mailers and for marketers who outsource their email efforts and want to remain involved in the process, the new service provides a scored analysis of current email practices, systems and methodologies; if any issue arise, it provides best practice, legal, technical, and strategic guidance.

Among Pivotal Veracity clients are email service providers Blue Hornet, Digital Impact, Exact Target, Responsys and Silverpop. List owners are expected to welcome the ranking service because it would identify problems and help fix them, improving list quality and attracting higher rental fees.

According to a Pivotal Veracity spokesperson, the service goes beyond what accreditation and reputation service providers such as Habeas or Bonded Sender offer. Return Path is testing a similar approach, called Sender Score, to rate a sender's reputation and deliverability.