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Improve the deliverability of your email messages |
Today, up to 20 percent of legitimate commercial email is not being
delivered to email boxes. The cost of that undelivered email could be
significant for your company or organization. Poor deliverability can
result in lost transactions, lack of and inconsistent communication,
ineffective marketing and more. Along those same lines, optimal
delivery can result in increased communication, more sales, brand
building and improved relationships.
So how can you improve your email deliverability to take
advantage of the positives and reduce the negatives? There are a
number of steps you and your email provider can take.
Maximize your list quality
Poor list quality is one of the leading causes of legitimate
email being incorrectly branded as spam. Make sure that you have
explicit permission from every address on your email lists. This is
one of the biggest steps you can take to minimize deliverability
problems. If someone has opted-in to receive email from you, then
they have already established a relationship with you, and they are
much less likely to view your messages as spam.
You can also improve list quality by removing email addresses
from your list that haven't been active in some time, i.e. they
haven't opened a message from you in the last six months.
SubscriberMail allows you to easily find and remove these inactive
email addresses with Dynamic Filters.
Avoid spam "trigger" words
Messages containing certain keywords, such as "free" or "teen,"
often cause messages to get caught in keyword filters at ISPs and
individual email programs. SubscriberMail customers can utilize a
built-in "Spam Score" tool to analyze the content of each message
they create. Spam Score enables you to identify and solve any
potential problems that could raise a red flag with spam filters. It
also gives you suggestions on how to resolve problem words or phrases
if any are found.
Cull your lists for bounces
ISPs sometimes penalize email senders if the messages they're
sending result in a large number of "bounces." Be sure to review your
lists on a regular basis and remove from your lists any email
addresses that hard bounce or that continue to soft bounce. A hard
bounce is an email address that is undeliverable because of permanent
failure, such as "This account does not exist." A soft bounce is an
email address that is undeliverable because of temporary failure,
such as "Mailbox full." We automatically handle bounce processing for
you, so the lists you're using to send messages are as clean as
possible. If your provider doesn't do this for you, then you need to
remove addresses with multiple bounces from your lists on a regular
basis.
Know and work with your ESP
For best results, the email services provider you select should
have someone who is responsible for maintaining ISP relations,
monitoring delivery and resolving any issues that may arise.
Make sure that your email provider supports emerging email
delivery technologies, such as Sender Score Certified, Sender ID and
SPF. We closely monitor these emerging technologies as part of our
efforts to maximize your email deliverability.
In summary, maximizing your deliverability should become an
integral part of your company's email marketing strategy. All it
takes is a commitment to adopt several common-sense business
practices, and select an email services vendor that manages ISP
relations and monitors emerging delivery technologies.
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