How much email do you send? A better question is, how much email do you ‘successfully’ send? We all want to push email through the ISP mail servers as best as possible. In order to accomplish this, a core ‘basic’ knowledge about deliverability management is needed. How much do you pay attention to your deliverability resources? Do you even care to consolidate and manage deliverability resources?
Emails are obviously content driven. And although the quality and integrity of your content is a main ingredient to getting your message past those filters, your email’s life cycle is still dependent
on — the actual delivery of that content. So aside from how clean your content is or the quality of recipients on your targeted list, the goal is one in the same; which is to obtain the highest amount of success possible!
For instance, internal success like recipients delivered and better inbox placement or maybe a client’s success, such as advocacy turnout. Whatever metric you wish to improve, basic Deliverability Resource Management (DRM) has to be applied before, during and after all email campaigns. Proper steps need to be taken in order to ensure that the bulk of your list recipients actually receive the message, regardless if it goes into their Bulk file folder or not. Certain practices can better position your available resources so that proper deliverability is present for your email blasts. Practices that would include setting up Feedback Loops (FBLs), monitoring and maintaining sender reputation scores, and consolidating a reliable set of black list filter detection and removal tools. Here are three things that anyone sending, or who is looking to send bulk email should know:
FBLs
Managing user complaints is a pivotal part to sending bulk email. There’s many reasons why an email recipient might hit that dreadful ‘Report Spam’ button at the top of their inbox. Maybe you’re sending them too many messages, maybe they’ve had a change of heart and no longer wish to receive your message, or maybe just by accident. Any number of reasons can exist why a user might be complaining about your content. This is why we require an inter-organizational system known as FBLs. After you set up your IP’s DomainKeys and publish your SPF records, you can then start registering with popular ISP’s and effectively manage user complaints through FBLs. This enables you to form a queue internally and start analyzing complaints and perhaps compare them with your business’s preferred expectations. How often you decide to remove those users who complain is totally up to you. However, please remember that washing your list of recipients who complain will enable you to avoid the probability of those same people sending additional complaints in the future. FBLs allow you to practice good list hygiene, and keep those complaints to a minimal. All of this formulates into a more organized and stable reputation for your IP’s. Keeping your complaint ratios low will enable your resources to successfully send more messages to the inbox, and avoid those pressing rate-limit schedules.
SenderScore
Your IP’s have a reputation to maintain! So be sure you keep them in the good graces of the ISP’s. Your sender reputation is just another way for you to develop and grow positive rapport with ISP’s and those filters that are looking for any reason to hinder your delivery. Your IP’s reputation is effected by conditions and factors in an equation that involves CANN-SPAM compliance, FBLs and white listing, complaint ratios, management of unsubs, mail frequency, and the quality average of recipients being delivered. Return Path is the industry baseline for identifying an IP’s reputation. It scores on a sliding scale, 1-100. And just like when you aced that 5th grade spelling test, a score of 100 is the best!
I happen to believe that deliverability weighs heavily on sender reputation, more so than the actual content in the message itself. And that reputation will effect your delivery success in general, and not necessarily whether or not your message will be placed in the Inbox or Spam folder. Return Path is a good place to register at, as it provides simple reporting features and a free black list look up tool. However, the blacklist feature is nothing I would recommend for the ‘say all/be all’ in detecting blocked IPs, but it’s something else to throw in your toolbox. — So pay attention to your reputations! Doing so will result in better overall delivery to your lists!
Avoid the Black list
New filters are being installed as you read this. So format, test, and always review your results. Nearly 90% of emails today are considered spam(1), and in order to ‘attempt’ not to fall victim to this classification you will need to avoid the black list! Being the internet, there are many different resources available to check the status of your IPs. Among others, one of the lookup tools I like is MX Toolbox. It allows you to scan your IP’s over a vast array of filters being used by most of the prominent ISP’s today and also helps point you in the right direction for removing any triggered blocks that are detected.
You should consolidate any reliable sources for blacklist removal and tailor your bookmark manager accordingly for easy reference when the time is right. I would also recommend at a minimal, doing an across the board sweep of your IP’s; checking each of them on more of a weekly basis, rather than every now and again or whenever you get around to it. I like to do this towards the end of the week, or sometimes more often if I know we are sending a heavier than normal volume of email. Simple methods like this need to be applied in order to help intercept messages lost in translation with ISP’s and perhaps combat those bounce back messages with those wacky codes denying your attempts at delivery due to being blacklisted.
Citation:
(1) Barracuda Central Networks, “Spam Data”, 21 December 2010.
http://www.barracudacentral.org
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Rudolph is everyone’s favorite Christmas figure. How can you not love a cute, sweet reindeer that comes to Santa’s rescue! But have you ever heard the story on how Rudolph came to be? My grandfather was a Vice President for the retail store Montgomery Wards and many years ago shared the story with my mom about Rudolph’s true origins.
