Marketers that fail to get to grips with Internet Service Providers’ (ISP) new spam-blocking filters are at serious risk of failing to deliver emails to the inboxes of consumers and potentially losing business for clients, according to Guy Hanson of the Direct Marketing Association’s Email Marketing Council (EMC).
Based on the findings of the Email Deliverability Review, the 10 key tips that marketers should follow to improve deliverability are:
1. Improve data collection – with the rapid rise in the importance of sender reputation, the quality of the email address data that is being used is absolutely vital
2. Implement authentication – with the explosion of “phishing” and “spoofing” emails it is essential for the various parties who process emails to have a mechanism that proves the email really has been sent by the party that it is claiming to originate from
3. Monitor your sender reputation – this is now the single most important factor used to determined email acceptance by ISPs and it is therefore vital to maintain a good rating.
4. Manage your IP addresses carefully – IP addresses used to send emails play an important role in determining a sender’s reputation and therefore should be carefully managed
5. Practise good list hygiene – this is vital to the successful deliverability of an email campaign. There are a number of ways to optimise list hygiene including conducting a data audit, implementing a bounce back management programme and spam traps.
6. Use complaint feedback loops – these will enable email senders to retrieve details of recipients who have complained with their ISP/webmail provider when receiving the sender’s email
7. Monitor blacklists – there are many out there that are made public and can be referenced by any organisation wishing to filter spam from their email traffic
8. Reduce spam complaints – there is a direct correlation between spam complaints and subscriber engagement levels. Because of the algorithms that are now being used by inbox providers to determine placement and positioning, it is vital that the marketing mantra of “right message, right target, right channel, right time” is observed.
9. Conduct pre-broadcast testing – testing before sending with major ISPs will help spot any content related issues
10. Accreditation schemes – these establish a sender’s credentials, and then confer a range of benefits such as reduced throttling restrictions, preferential treatment by spam filters, and auto-enablement of images
Source: www.returnpath.net
