Following email industry best practices will help keep email marketers on the path of achieving high deliverability and more importantly, will help avoid getting into trouble.
This includes list management, how to be a professional email marketer, how to take advantage of reputation technology, the speed of sending, and using segments and triggers to better target your mailings using email marketing software.
1) List Management One of the biggest mistakes marketers make is they start with a list of email addresses that has been poorly managed in the past.
The Internet Service Providers (ISPs-they manage incoming mail for their account holders) want email marketers only to send to clean lists.
This means doing some due diligence BEFORE sending out emails.
Email addresses that have bounced as invalid should not be mailed to again.
Recipients that have unsubscribed or have hit the Spam button should also never be mailed to again.
The presence of role addresses can also cause delivery problems.
These addresses rarely are used for general mailing reasons, and can raise flags with the ISPs' mail filters.
Examples of these addresses include: abuse@, jobs@, contact@, and info@.
The key to list management is being concerned with the quality and not the quantity of the email addresses.
A smaller list of legitimate email addresses will yield much better results than a large list of people who don't know why they are receiving your message.
2) Be a Professional Marketer.
Even before creating the message content, a marketer needs to ensure that the following is in place.
Make sure that you have a corporate domain for your landing pages and a list subscribe form.
Put a privacy policy on the bottom of any list subscribe form.
All of your corporate domains should have a public "whois" record.
If someone does a "whois" lookup they should see valid information, not blocked or private data.
Have a corporate "from" email address.
Do not use a "from" address with a free email account domain.
Once you have the above in place, focus can be turned to content creation.
Always make sure your email design is professional and the organization's brand is clearly visible and identifiable.
Identify yourself in the subject line - keep it short and don't be misleading.
All messages should have both a text version and an HTML version.
Most email services will send both versions, allowing the recipient's email client to determine which version is displayed.
Very few email clients will display the text version, but the ISPs like to see it as a sign of legitimacy.
The HTML version needs to be a balance of text and images.
No more than 40% of the area of your message should be image.
Do not send one big image.
Many ISPs will block one-image messages, plus many email clients suppress images by default.
Include a sentence letting recipients know why they are receiving the message.
To help keep messages out of the spam folder, ask that recipients add the "from address" to their address books.
To reduce complaints, let recipients know where the unsubscribe link is, or better yet, move the unsubscribe link to the top of the content.
Make sure your messages are CAN-SPAM compliant by including a valid postal address and a simple one-click unsubscribe method.
3) Reputation Technology Sending Authentication technology offers a way for the ISPs to determine if the source of the email is legitimate or not.
The most popular Sending Authentication technology right now is an SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record.
Many ISPs - big and small - will use SPF records to verify that the mail is actually coming from the person or company who claims to be sending it.
SPF records, included in the senders' DNS, have become a key tool in preventing 'from address' forgery.
For more information on SPF, go to http://www.
openspf.
org/.
To test the validity of your SPF record, you can use the following site: http://www.
kitterman.
com/spf/validate.
html.
Always verify that the SPF record includes your mailing server's IP address.
4) Speed of Sending Another common mistake email marketers make is importing a large list and then sending to everyone all at once.
This behavior triggers filters at the ISPs that are meant to spot large volumes of spam.
Start slowly.
Send to a couple thousand of your best addresses to start.
Don't rush it.
Send, monitor and then increase the volume slowly.
A good rule of thumb is to send to 10,000 members for the first 3 sends, and then double the number every 3 sends.
So sends 1,2 & 3 will each be to 10,000 members 4, 5 & 6 will be to 20,000 members 7, 8 & 9 will be to 40,000 members and so on In non-technical terms, this is called "warming" up an IP address 5) Using Segments and Triggers to Better Target Mailings Include democratic information when you add list members, and then use this information to send tailored content.
This will allow you to segment your messages by gender, age, prior purchases, or website behavior.
The key here is to focus on personal relevancy.
Triggers offer you the ability to send based on a date.
Send a welcome letter on the subscriber's join date, send a survey 30 days after someone joins your list, send a "we miss you" email 90 days after the last on-line purchase, or send a happy birthday message.
Sending relevant content that meets the recipient's needs will decrease the chances of complaints.
This includes list management, how to be a professional email marketer, how to take advantage of reputation technology, the speed of sending, and using segments and triggers to better target your mailings using email marketing software.
1) List Management One of the biggest mistakes marketers make is they start with a list of email addresses that has been poorly managed in the past.
The Internet Service Providers (ISPs-they manage incoming mail for their account holders) want email marketers only to send to clean lists.
This means doing some due diligence BEFORE sending out emails.
Email addresses that have bounced as invalid should not be mailed to again.
Recipients that have unsubscribed or have hit the Spam button should also never be mailed to again.
The presence of role addresses can also cause delivery problems.
These addresses rarely are used for general mailing reasons, and can raise flags with the ISPs' mail filters.
Examples of these addresses include: abuse@, jobs@, contact@, and info@.
The key to list management is being concerned with the quality and not the quantity of the email addresses.
A smaller list of legitimate email addresses will yield much better results than a large list of people who don't know why they are receiving your message.
2) Be a Professional Marketer.
Even before creating the message content, a marketer needs to ensure that the following is in place.
Make sure that you have a corporate domain for your landing pages and a list subscribe form.
Put a privacy policy on the bottom of any list subscribe form.
All of your corporate domains should have a public "whois" record.
If someone does a "whois" lookup they should see valid information, not blocked or private data.
Have a corporate "from" email address.
Do not use a "from" address with a free email account domain.
Once you have the above in place, focus can be turned to content creation.
Always make sure your email design is professional and the organization's brand is clearly visible and identifiable.
Identify yourself in the subject line - keep it short and don't be misleading.
All messages should have both a text version and an HTML version.
Most email services will send both versions, allowing the recipient's email client to determine which version is displayed.
Very few email clients will display the text version, but the ISPs like to see it as a sign of legitimacy.
The HTML version needs to be a balance of text and images.
No more than 40% of the area of your message should be image.
Do not send one big image.
Many ISPs will block one-image messages, plus many email clients suppress images by default.
Include a sentence letting recipients know why they are receiving the message.
To help keep messages out of the spam folder, ask that recipients add the "from address" to their address books.
To reduce complaints, let recipients know where the unsubscribe link is, or better yet, move the unsubscribe link to the top of the content.
Make sure your messages are CAN-SPAM compliant by including a valid postal address and a simple one-click unsubscribe method.
3) Reputation Technology Sending Authentication technology offers a way for the ISPs to determine if the source of the email is legitimate or not.
The most popular Sending Authentication technology right now is an SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record.
Many ISPs - big and small - will use SPF records to verify that the mail is actually coming from the person or company who claims to be sending it.
SPF records, included in the senders' DNS, have become a key tool in preventing 'from address' forgery.
For more information on SPF, go to http://www.
openspf.
org/.
To test the validity of your SPF record, you can use the following site: http://www.
kitterman.
com/spf/validate.
html.
Always verify that the SPF record includes your mailing server's IP address.
4) Speed of Sending Another common mistake email marketers make is importing a large list and then sending to everyone all at once.
This behavior triggers filters at the ISPs that are meant to spot large volumes of spam.
Start slowly.
Send to a couple thousand of your best addresses to start.
Don't rush it.
Send, monitor and then increase the volume slowly.
A good rule of thumb is to send to 10,000 members for the first 3 sends, and then double the number every 3 sends.
So sends 1,2 & 3 will each be to 10,000 members 4, 5 & 6 will be to 20,000 members 7, 8 & 9 will be to 40,000 members and so on In non-technical terms, this is called "warming" up an IP address 5) Using Segments and Triggers to Better Target Mailings Include democratic information when you add list members, and then use this information to send tailored content.
This will allow you to segment your messages by gender, age, prior purchases, or website behavior.
The key here is to focus on personal relevancy.
Triggers offer you the ability to send based on a date.
Send a welcome letter on the subscriber's join date, send a survey 30 days after someone joins your list, send a "we miss you" email 90 days after the last on-line purchase, or send a happy birthday message.
Sending relevant content that meets the recipient's needs will decrease the chances of complaints.
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