Best Practices that Improve E-Mail Deliverability (Part 1)
Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, Founding Editor,
Web Marketing Today, Rocklin, CA
Aug 14, 2007, 13:46
Because of the spam deluge, it is harder to get legitimate, bulk e-mails delivered to your recipients' inboxes. E-mail is certainly less reliable these days, but that doesn't mean it is dead. While a few industry pundits trumpet RSS and desktop message delivery systems as e-mail killers, I don't see that happening soon. E-mail remains the most widely used -- and, perhaps, most cursed -- Internet tool, bar none.
For those who rely on bulk e-mail lists to communicate with members, subscribers, customers, or prospects, achieving high inbox delivery rates is vital. The subject is too complex for a single article, so this first of a multi-part series that details specific best practices.
1. Use a Reputable E-mail Marketing Service (EMS)
These days, do-it-yourself e-mailers can't match the inbox delivery rates achievable through reputable E-mail Marketing Service (EMS) providers. I have long been a proponent of desktop and self-hosted e-mailing systems. I still use Gammadyne Mailer (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/gammadyne.htm) for smaller e-mailings and AutoResponse Plus (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/arp3.htm) for the complex autoresponder system I use to deliver online training programs. However, for my main business list where high deliverability is essential, I use an EMS provider. Good EMS providers achieve high deliverability because they:
- Constantly monitor e-mail delivery. When they spot a delivery problem with a particular ISP (Internet Service Provider) they deal with it quickly, because they
- Maintain constant working relationships with the 20 to 30 major ISPs in their market areas. They
- Aggressively protect their reputations with ISPs by screening out spammers and demanding client compliance with legally required e-mail practices. They sometimes
- Subscribe to e-mail reputation services that place them on "whitelists." These subscriptions encourage preferential treatment for the e-mails their clients send. (More on this later.)
Small businesses will want to look at iContact (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/icontact.htm), Got Corp. Campaigner (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/gotmarketing.htm), Constant Contact (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/constantcontact.htm), and VerticalResponse (www.wilsonweb.com/afd/verticalresponse.htm). Space prevents me from providing an exhaustive list of the many excellent EMS providers. The reason I mention using EMS providers as my first recommendation is that they help you follow a number of the best practices outlined below.
2. Unsubscribe Bouncing E-mails
Make sure your system correctly unsubscribes hard bounces ("No user at this address") and soft bounces ("Mailbox full," a sign of an abandoned e-mail address), while not deleting temporary bounces ("Out of the office" and "On vacation"). If your list contains a significant number of bouncing e-mail addresses, the major ISPs will stop delivering your e-mails once your bouncing e-mail count reaches their (unpublished) bounce threshold. Keep your list clean.
3. Use Multi-part MIME, Not Bare HTML
ISPs tend to see HTML-only e-mails as more likely to be spam than text-only e-mails. Thus, if you're going to send HTML (which gets a better response rate), make sure to send a "sandwich" consisting of both text and HTML messages (called "multi-part MIME"). Most modern e-mail software helps you do this. This technique helps only a little, but in deliverability we're dealing with minor improvements to a lot of practices that, taken together, show a significant affect on delivery.
4. Minimize Graphics
ISPs tend to see graphic-heavy messages as more likely to be spam, so keep your graphics to the minimum you actually need. At the same time -- and this point is related not to deliverability but to getting e-mails opened and your message across -- don't rely on graphics to carry your message. Rather, use images as message enhancers, since an increasing number of web-based e-mail programs, as well as desktop software such as Office Outlook, don't display e-mail images by default.
I have 14 specific best practice recommendations, but why don't you get started with these?
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Dr. Wilson is an Internet marketing pioneer and author of more than a dozen books and reports, including The E-Mail Marketing Handbook (2005) and Planning Your Internet Marketing Strategy (Wiley, 2001). He is the founding editor of Web Marketing Today.
