Email Deliverability Tips
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Ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to subscriber inboxes is an increasingly difficult battle in the age of spam filtering. Open and click through response rates can be dramatically affected by as much as 20-30% due to incorrect spam filter classification.
Permission
Confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for deliverability. You should be using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.
Subscriber Addresses
When requesting website visitors to opt-in ask for their “real” or “primary” email address instead of a free email address like Yahoo or Hotmail. Free emails tend to be throw away accounts and typically have a shorter lifetime than a primary ISP address.
List Maintenance
Always promptly remove undeliverable addresses that bounce when sending email to them. An address that bounces with a permanent error 2-3 times in a 30 day period should be removed from the list. ISP’s track what percentage of your newsletters bounce and will block them if you attempt to continually deliver messages to closed subscriber mailboxes.
Message Format
Usage of HTML messages to allow for text formatting, multiple columns, images, and brand recognition is growing in popularity and is widely supported by most email client software. Most spam is also HTML formatted and thus differentiating between requested email and spam HTML messages can be difficult. A 2004 study by AWeber .com shows that plain text messages are undeliverable 1.15% of the time and HTML only messages were undeliverable 2.3%. If sending HTML it is important to always send a plain text alternative message, also called text/HTML multi-part mime format.
Content
Many ISP’s filter based on the content that appears within the message text.
Website URL
Research potential newsletter advertisers before allowing them to place ads in your newsletter issues. If they have used their website URL to send spam, just having their URL appear in your newsletter could cause the entire message to be filtered.
Words/phrases
Choose your language carefully when crafting messages. Avoid hot button topics often found in spam such as medication, mortgages, making money, and pornography. If you do need to use words that might be filtered, don’t attempt to obfuscate words with extra characters or odd spelling, you’ll just make your messages appear more spam like.
Images
Avoid creating messages that are entirely images. Use images sparingly, if at all. Commonly used open rate tracking technology uses images to calculate opens. You may choose to disable open rate tracking to avoid being filtered based on image content.
Attachments
With viruses running rampant and spreading thru the usage of malicious email attachments many users are wary of attached documents. It’s often better to link to files via a website URL to reduce recipient fear of attachments and reduce the overall message size.
CAN-SPAM Compliance
The January 2004 Federal CAN-SPAM law introduced a number of rules regarding the delivery of email. It’s important you have your legal counsel review your practices and ensure you are in compliance. The two most important rules include having a valid postal mail address listed in all commercial messages and a working unsubscribe link that is promptly honored to remove the subscriber from future messages.
Reputation
Reputation services are often used by large ISP’s as a way to vet email senders regarding their email practices and policies. Businesses listed with these services are then given less stringent filtering or no filtering at all. Several reputation services are:
•http://www.isipp.com/iadb.php
•http://www.bondedsender.com
•http://www.habeas.com
Relationships & Whitelisting
Contact with major ISP’s and email providers is essential in letting them know about your requested subscriber email. Many large providers such as AOL and Yahoo have specific whitelisting programs and postmaster website areas to ensure your email is delivered as long as you meet their policies and procedures in handling your opt-in list.
Email deliverability is about ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to the intended recipient. While no single tip will enable you to get 100% of your email delivered each one utilized as a group can go a long way to reaching that goal.
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Email Marketing Campaigns
Imagine if 10 years ago, someone had told you that, in the future, you would be able to communicate directly with your customers or potential customers, sending them any message you choose and that it would be free. No paper required, no printing, no envelopes, no brochures, and no stamps. In addition, that message, could be sent to anyone in the world. And as an added bonus, instead of having to wait 24 or 48 hours, it would arrive within seconds.
It would have sounded too good to be true?
This is exactly what happens with the internet and e-marketing.
Promoting your products or services by email can be a powerful and flexible form of direct marketing. An effective email marketing strategy, can grow your business by up to 30%.
Here are a number of simple guidelines to help you get started with an effective e-mail campaign.
Identify your target audience.
Email marketing is more successful if it focuses on people you know are interested in what you are offering. If you have a large database of customers and potential customers, it’s worth analysing what you know about them, so that you can send a more relevant message.
Decide on the format of your email message.
You may want to send a monthly newsletter containing a number of news items, articles, pictures, offers and incentives, or you may go for the basic letter format that you send on a regular basis. There is a great deal of debate at the moment about which is the best method to use. The simple answer is to be consistent with the method that you choose. If you start a good monthly newsletter that has useful tips and advice on your area of interest, you will build a great relationship with those that receive it and a good percentage of them will convert to customers. But remember to keep it up.
Collect e-mail addresses and look after them.
They are gold dust if you use them correctly. Your website should be the main source for collecting email addresses. Every page on your site should have the opportunity for people to leave their details. However, there needs to be an incentive for people to leave their details. Give a report, article, offer or discount when they complete your form and follow it up immediately. There is software available that ‘autoresponds’ to completed forms from your website. Don’t forget to include an e-mail address option on all the marketing materials you may be using.
Encourage people to ‘opt in’ to your email marketing.
It is illegal to send unsolicited email messages. If customers have agreed to receiving information from you in the past, i.e. opt in, you can send them information on other things you think they may be interested in. However, you must always give the option to opt out of receiving any further messages from you.
Monitor the effectiveness of your email campaigns to make sure that you’re getting value from your time investment.
Keep a record of the number of responses you’ve received and from what type of customer. You can then assess which groups are more likely to respond to this sort of marketing approach in future. Response rates for email marketing are often higher than for other forms of direct marketing.
