E-Mail Marketing

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What's the most important factor in getting your bulk e-mails delivered? Many industry leaders are pointing to reputation of the sender. It used to be that ISPs would scan e-mails for content. But these days, most have turned to reputation as they key factor. Of course, this concept of "reputation" includes a number of factors (that I mentioned in a series of previous articles on e-mail deliverability, where you can see some of the details.) www.wilsonweb.com/email/wilson-deliverability1.htm

Just what does "reputation" mean in an e-mail context? It has two aspects:

• Recipient reputation. Your track record with your subscribers in providing timely, relevant content at an appropriate frequency from a readily identifiable sender.
• ISP reputation. Your track record in sending e-mails to accurate, live e-mail addresses, from consistent "from" addresses and IP address(s), with content that is opened by and clicked on by recipients.

Here are some tips to improve your reputation -- and thus your inbox delivery rate:

1. Send only relevant content. Send only e-mails that will build a positive reputation with your subscribers. Anything that they will view as irrelevant will hurt your reputation, so stay targeted.
2. Don't send more e-mails than necessary. When subscribers receive too many e-mails from you, they may not unsubscribe, but they will no longer open most of them. Since ISPs such as Yahoo, MSN, Gmail, and AOL can track both open rates and click-through rates, your ISP reputation will suffer -- fewer e-mails will be delivered -- and your recipient reputation is degraded, fewer e-mails opened.
3. Set up feedback loops with major ISPs, such as AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail, etc. so you can immediately unsubscribe recipients that tag your e-mail as spam -- and so they don't receive another e-mail and hit the spam button again.
4. Remove recipients with excessive bounces from your list. If you keep sending to bad e-mail addresses, it hurts your reputation with the ISPs.
5. Find ways to woo back subscribers with special offers in the subject lines for those who no longer open or click-through on your e-mails. Opens and click-throughs can be tracked with many e-mail marketing services. Inactive subscribers are much more likely to tag your e-mail as spam than those who regularly open and click-through on your links.
6. Instruct subscribers how to white list your send address in their address book, white list, etc.
7. Send e-mail in shorter spurts to keep excessive volume from triggering blocking by ISPs.
8. Keep a consistent "from" e-mail address and sending IP address(es).
9. Employ SPF and Domain Keys authentication so ISPs can see that you're a legitimate sender.
10. Consider paying for third-party whitelisting as a certified sender by Habeas, GoodMail, or ReturnPath ScoreCertified.
11. Use double or confirmed opt-in to keep from getting bad e-mail addresses or unwilling recipients on your list.

In spite of all you may do, you won't achieve 100% deliverability, but working to maintain a good reputation with both subscribers and ISPs will boost the number of your e-mails that are delivered and opened.