Email Marketing - Unlock the door to your deliverability

Collect your keys to the Deliverability door...

Good IP reputation + Best Practices + Engaging, Enticing content = Good Deliverability & Inbox Placement

Anyone currently running an email marketing strategy will know that getting your emails delivered to the inbox is not always easy, with obstacles not only blocking your path into the inbox but also your view of what is actually happening there. Plus, with the introduction of various forms of smart inbox seen in 2010 and the buzz around facebook mail, our job as email marketers has just become even tougher.

Not only do we need to ensure that best practice and legal angles are covered, but also that our IP sending reputations are high, we are connected with the recipient through social networking and that our emails constantly engage, interest and excite the reader into interacting.

Additionally, as permission based marketers we are always fighting against the label of the spammer and even now ISPs do not always get their filtering right; the February 2010 Return Path Email Deliverability Report showed that as much as 20% of permission-based email is not making it to the inbox.  Every email that we do not manage to get delivered to our intended recipient is an opportunity lost for engagement and in turn revenue.  Nowadays it is prudent to employ additional monitoring tools above and beyond those provided as standard by your ESP to look at your inbox placement; if your emails are not getting into the inbox, chances are they won’t be seen.

The first and most vital step to getting your emails through the door is to maintain a good IP reputation.

How do I build a good IP reputation?

Building a good IP reputation takes hard work, commitment and know-how. To begin with you need to take an in-depth look at the following key factors:

1.   Database hygiene

If your data is not accurate or has been illegally collected, you are immediately getting off to a bad start in your Deliverability mission.

-       Look at your sign up process

Ensure that all data has been legitimately collected and where possible use a double opted in program to ensure the best possible data in your main list.  You should also ensure that your signup forms prompt users to correct email addresses if they are incorrect and resolve syntax errors.

-       Keep your database clean by looking at your unsubscribe, complaint and bounce management

Make sure that unsubscribes, complaints and hard bounces are immediately marked as non-contactable in your database as well as ensuring appropriate rules are in place to deal with soft bounces (soft bounce rules may vary depending on your mailing frequency, but I would advise removing after around 3 soft bounces in a 30/60 day period.)
Complaints can be properly managed and recorded by signing up to ISP feedback loops.  It is essential to do this as ISPs will monitor your complaint rate and how you deal with this.  From personal experience , I know that not signing up for feedback loops and broadcasting emails can do a lot of damage to your deliverability and IP reputation and result in temporary or even permanent blocks from an ISP.

   - Divide your database into Active and Inactive subscribers and tailor your messaging

Whilst looking at your database, it is also prudent to split you base into two cells; active and inactive. Your active cell will include anyone who has interacted with you company in the last 6/12 months including opening or clicking on an email, making an order or purchase or any other interaction that is positive with your business. Inactives will include anyone who has not completed these actions in the time period. By splitting your database in this way, you can target these groups with specific messages; in the case of the inactives, with a reactivation programme to encourage them to interact and engage with your brand again. By doing this, you will also help to remove spam traps* from your base as well as inactive users who are not engaging with you.

With Yahoo! being the strictest in terms of not active accounts and closing an account after only 160 days of inactivity (Hotmail and Gmail are a little more lenient giving 270 consecutive days of inactivity before an account is closed; and hotmail giving users 90 days after this to reactivate their account), it is more important than ever to keep a clean and engaged database to avoid adversely effecting your IP reputation.

2.   Ensure IP authentication is in place

It is important to ensure that the receiving email client can identify who the message is being sent from by publishing an SPF record and ensuring that DomainKeys, DKIM and Sender ID are properly set up on your IPs

3.   Warm up IP addresses slowly & ensure sends are throttled going forward depending on ISP sending protocols

A new IP has no reputation and so you need to get the ISPs used to you sending to them.  You should slowly ramp up the volume of your sends per day over a couple of months so the ISPs can get used to you sending, when you send and the volume you send.  It is also important to monitor not only your overall volume on your IP but also the rate at which you send your emails in this warm up period to the different ISPs.  It is not widely published for most what they will accept, but as an example, Hotmail will only accept around 4K per day for an IP with no reputation.  You should then double this every day to build up the sending volume over time.

4.   Watch your complaint rate

As previously mentioned, it is important to immediately mark anyone who complains to your emails (reported from feedback loops) as un-contactable for future emails.  Even if you are doing this, a continuing high complaint rate can do a lot of damage to your reputation.

Try following these top tips for reducing your complaints:

·         Set subscriber expectations of your email programme from the point of sign up

o   Use your registration form and welcome email to let the subscriber know what to expect from you emails and when to expect them

·         Ensure you have an unsubscribe link at the top of your email as well as the bottom to try and discourage people reaching for the spam button

·         Make sure your unsubscribe link works!

·         Implement a preference centre to find out what consumers want to receive from you and segment your list and communications accordingly (dynamic content will assist you enormously here)

5.   Monitor everything

Once you have pressed that send button, your work does not stop there.  You must ensure that you are continuously monitoring complaint rates and your delivery rate as well as open and click rates, to ensure there are no problems with your broadcasts that need to be resolved.

What else can I do to improve my deliverability?

·         Increase Engagement

With the rise in smart inboxes in the last year including AOL, Yahoo!, Hotmail and Gmail, it is important to provide quality and engaging content to your consumers once you have got through to their inboxes.

Engagement now not only includes the standard open, clicks, unsubscribes and spam complaints but more in depth elements based on how recipients interact further with communications such as:

·         Messages replied to

·         Messages read, then deleted

·         Messages deleted without being read

·         How frequently messages are received and read from a sender

Deliver the right message at the right time, to the right person.

·         Keep a close eye on your content

Not only should you be looking at how your messages render in different email clients with images switched on and off (40-60% of people will not turn images on so ensure your most important content and calls to action feature in your copy), but also don’t forget to look at the spam content of your messages that may trigger the spam filters including:

·         Large images

·         A high image to text ratio

·         Number of spam words and phrases

·         Incorrect HTML coding

·         Plan a reactivation strategy for the inactive addresses on your list

Inactive addresses in your list impact on your deliverability and sway your open and click through rate results negatively; it’s not uncommon for 40-60% of your list to be disengaged.  By planning a reactivation programme, you can clean up your list and re engage anyone who has not been responding to your communications.

How often you run a campaign like this will depend on the frequency of your regular mailings – e.g. if you email your subscribers every day, a reactivation programme every 1 or 2 months might be appropriate. In these mailings take the opportunity to tell the consumer that you miss them and they are missing out on your valuable content; let them know what they are missing out on and why it is valuable to them.  These communications are their chance to let you know that they are still interested in receiving messages from you or you will take them off of your sending list.  You can also try using a different design from your usual messages to make them stand out and add a deadline for them to respond to create a sense of urgency to drive engagement and elicit a response.

·         Ensure a consistent volume is sent over your IPs

It is a common spam practice to send a lot of emails infrequently.  Make sure you don’t fall into this cycle and keep a regular consistent volume being sent from your IPs to show the ISPs how and when you mail and what to expect from you going forward.



If you do currently have a bad IP reputation, don’t panic!  As with a credit score, a bad reputation is better than no reputation, and if you follow the tips outlined above, you can get back on track and get your emails delivered.


How is your deliverability? Have you unlocked it's secrets yet?


TOP TIP:
Don't forget to always ask the recipient to add you address to their safe sender list - by doing this, you will bypass a lot of the obstacles!!



*Spam Trap - A spam trap is an address that has either been created specifically by the ISP and published on the web to entrap spammers harvesting data without permission, or is an email address that has been dormant for as little as 6months (in the case of some ISPs) and is taken over by the ISP to trap anyone not regularly cleaning their database.