Do you have a good reputation? Tricks for effectively delivering emails
by Steve White
Here’s a scary fact for you. 20% of legitimate email never actually reaches its intended destination; the inbox. Can you imagine if the Royal Mail only delivered 80% of its mail? Mmmm actually, let’s not go there! Anyway, you understand the point I’m attempting to make. Deliverability is a big issue.
The culprits for this statistic have to be the ISPs, right? Wrong! Well, they are partly to blame as they are certainly making things harder for legitimate email marketers like you and I. However, when 90% of all email is spam then they really do have quite a job on their hands if they want to keep one step ahead of the spammers. I’m afraid if there is any doubt as to the legitimacy of your email messages then you are going to be spammed. You can’t blame them can you? When 9 out of 10 emails are spam then they’re bound to lean on the side of caution.
But the real culprit for this frightening statistic is you and I. We are to blame. It’s our sending practices that determine whether our email message reaches their intended destinations. However, with blame comes responsibility and with responsibility comes the ability to change and improve. We have the power to control our deliverability rates.
Reputation
Five years ago the key factor as to whether an email reached its intended target was very much based on the email’s content. We used to try and avoid such words as “sale” and “save” as we feared that they would trigger the spam filters. However, the content of an email plays a significantly smaller part in whether the message is spammed or delivered. In fact, with some ISPs it plays no part at all.
The key factor in 2010 as to whether your email message gets delivered is now your sender reputation. In actual fact a recent study by email deliverability specialists ReturnPath reported that 77% of delivery problems were based on sender reputation.
The sender reputation is based on five key data factors and ISPs look at each of those when determining authenticity of your email communication.
1. Volume
Spammers email in big numbers so if you’re emailing in high volumes then it’s absolutely critical that your complaint, hard bounce and spam rates are low.
2. Complaints
If the number of recipients hitting that “report spam” button is high then you really are going to have a problem, as the ISPs will assume that you are a spammer.
3. Hard bounces
If you’re emailing to unknown or non-existent email addresses then again you will be looked upon negatively.
4. Spam trap hits
ISPs can be a little sneaky in their pursuit of spammers. One thing that they do is reactivate old inboxes; this is done because a reactivated address shows to have never been registered to receive email and consequently, any email that land in that inbox can very easily be regarded as spam.
5. Authentication
The final factor is authentication, which probably deserves a blog article all of its own. In basic terms, it lets an ISP know that the sender is who they say they are. There are several ways (SPF, Sender ID and Domain Keys) which you can authenticate your emails but authentication alone isn’t enough as many spammers also authenticate there IP addresses.
Monitor
It is absolutely essential that you constantly monitor deliverability from the viewpoint of sender reputation. It really is the only way to know whether your mail is reaching its intended destination. The best way to do this is to use seed email accounts. This is something that you can carry out yourselves or this is a service that could be carried out by your email service provider.
Data Hygiene
If you find that you have a problem regarding reputation then don’t panic, it’s not necessarily the end of the world. You just have to put the time and effort in to repair the damage. The key thing that you need to do is carry out a strict and immediate heath check of your data. Data hygiene is crucial to your sender reputation.
The first thing that you can do is look at reducing or ultimately eliminating “unknown” addresses from your lists. As we’ve already discussed. ISPs do not like emailers who email incorrect email addresses. It might be an idea to consider making it a requirement on registration for email addresses to be inputted twice. However, this tactic does need to be considered carefully as this might act as an obstacle for some recipients from registering at all.
Do not be scared to pull email addresses. If they’re bouncing pull them immediately from your lists. By doing this you should see that you instantly lower your bounce rate and the chance of your message being trapped within spam traps.
Complaints
If you’re receiving complaints then you need to act. However, you can only respond to this problem if you have information regarding the complaint, so I would recommend that you sign up for ISP feedback.
The obvious thing that the ISP feedback will give you is the email address that has hit that ‘spam button’. The only course of action to take at this point is the removal of that email address from that file with immediate effect.
If you find that new subscribers are complaining then I would seriously consider whether your emails are actually meeting the promises that you have made on your email subscription page. Perhaps, you need to make your proposition clearer. Remember, there is absolutely no point in mis-leading people into giving you their email address. The only likely interaction with your email programme will be negative.
I would also advise that you keep a record of the source from where the complainers originated from. For example, if large numbers of complainers originated from an external data source then stop using the addresses with immediate effect!
Just as you would with unsubscription rates, you should keep a close eye on complaint rates when you make significant changes to copy, creative or email frequency. As if you begin to experience increased levels of complaints then you seriously need to ask yourself whether you need to revert back to the “norm” or certainly reduce the level of change.
If you have a solid sender reputation or if it appears that you’ve fixed a previous problem then it’s absolutely crucial that you don’t rest on your laurels. Your reputation can change at any time so it needs to be monitored just like any other key performance indicator.
Summary
The issue of deliverability is a highly complex one and I hope this overview has given you some food for thought and enough reason to continue searching out information on the subject. A great deliverability rate isn’t going to “make” your email programme but it certainly has the ability to “break” it. However, by closely monitoring your sender reputation it will allow you to be reactive in identifying and fixing any problems and therefore reducing any long term damage.
Tags: Data Hygiene, Direct Response Marketing, Effective Email Marketing, Email Marketing Agency, Marketing Agency, New Media Agency, Online Advertising Agency, Online Marketing Agency, PPC Agency, ReturnPath, Sender Reputation, SEO Company
