Does your email marketing software or service provider guarantee email delivery
optimization?
Certainly most do not!
There is a misconception with marketers and providers that email marketing software is
a bulk mailing solution. When the emails are blasted out of a bulk mailer, they are
assured that it will reach the recipient’s inboxes. Is that so simple?
Let us look at some of the email deliverability myths that most marketers seem to have.
1. We don’t spam!
2. We send emails only to opt-in lists
3. Someone has blacklisted us for no reason
4. ISPs (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL) treat us badly
5. If our emails reach recipient’s junk folders, we will request recipient to add us to
safe lists
We don’t send Spam!
The marketers first need understand the definition of Spam! It is not just the Viagra or
the porn stuff! Any message that doesn’t suit the need of the customer is spam, whether
it is the message subject line, content, broken or dodgy HTML code, relevance,
frequency of the emails, etc. Moreover, messages that do not comply with CAN-SPAM
(Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003) act
may be classified as SPAM by receiving ISPs.
Marketers have to stop sending messages that are boring, mundane and uninteresting.
Marketers need to check if their messages are CAN-SPAM compliant. Marketers have
to monitor their campaigns reports like opens, clicks, spam complaints, and abuses
from their customers and ISPs. If they don’t, they may be surprised to see sometime
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later, their messages are being categorized as SPAM and lying in junk folders or being
blocked by ISPs.
We send emails only to opt-in lists
Sending email campaigns to opt-in lists is a good practice, because you are assured of
good deliverability. But have you given control to your opt-in customers, the power to
opt-out or unsubscribe in each campaign? If you haven’t, start doing it now. Even if you
have given the power to opt-out or unsubscribe, are you acting promptly within a
reasonable time (with one week) to stop sending further email campaigns? Have you
opted them again, after a reasonable amount of time through another promotional
campaign? Are you acting on bounces and taking action to get your list cleaned out of
bounced email addresses? Are you educating your opt-in subscribers, to opt-out instead
of complaining to ISPs about abuses from you? Are you capturing the opt-in subscriber
preferences to send relevant campaigns that suit their interests and the frequency of
email campaigns in a given period?
The success of keeping your list clean and emails reaching out to your opt-in customers
lies in understanding the needs of the opt-in subscribers, measuring the success of
each email campaign and working to address the issues above. If you don’t, even your
opt-in customers will soon be opting out or complaining you to ISPs on email campaigns
as SPAMs.
Someone has blacklisted us for no reason
Emails Marketers have to understand that email communication is being heavily abused
by spammers around the world. For every genuine email sent, there are 90 others
which are spam. Most of the email service providers and companies are putting tough
measures to block spam emails reaching their infrastructure or for processing and
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storing Spam emails and damaging their employee productivity. There are service
providers who constantly scout for spammers, monitor their activities on the web and
maintain a list of their IP addresses (blacklist). They provide various companies the
blacklisted IPs, to block the email senders from that IPs. The black list service providers
employ various complex and advance techniques to monitor increased email sending,
patterns, and their web crawlers checking various things on their servers, and etc. to
collect lot of statistics to classify them into the blacklist.
Hence Marketers need to understand the challenges if they are using their own bulk
mailing solutions and constantly monitor if their IPs are blacklisted by any service
providers. They should take immediate action, if needed with those service providers
and get their IPs white listed.
ISPs (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL) treat us badly
Most of the opt-in customers have their email addresses on the major 4 ISPs Google,
Yahoo, MSN and AOL. Hence Marketers will be sending a bulk of their emails to these
4 ISPs. They have to ensure that their emails are getting delivered to recipient’s inboxes
on these ISPs. Why should these ISPs block the marketer’s emails? They have several
reasons and some of them have been stated earlier. Most of the ISPs provide free email
infrastructure to their customers and hence they need to optimize their email
infrastructure. They have to protect their recipient’s privacies and their reputation as the
best ESP in the world.
The emails in those ISPs may also bounce for various reasons like account deletion,
inbox full, etc. The sender email server or the email service provider has to remove
these bounced addresses from the next mailing; else the ISPs may treat you as a
spammer and deny service.
Major ISPs such as Google, AOL and MSN/Hotmail provide their users to complain on
the sender of the emails or domains. The ISPs also have strong authentication and
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dynamic filtering mechanisms that your email software and service provider have to
deal with.
If your email marketing software or email service provider doesn’t implement the
authentication response mechanisms, adjusting to the filtering policies of the ISPs and
dealing with the abuse complaints, there is no reason to complain against their unfair
treatment!
If our emails reach recipient’s junk folders, we will request recipient to add us to
safe lists
This is a myth that marketers have! If they request the recipients to add the sender
email address into the recipient’s safe list, then the messages will be reaching the
inbox. While this may be true, it still doesn’t address the deliverability of the sender
emails.
ISPs will deliver the email to the recipient’s inbox after their server has successfully
received the email, passing through white listed sender IP reputation, authentication
mechanisms, dynamic filters (which are changing every moment).
Then there are other questions that marketers need to understand?
1. Does the marketer always use the same send email id for sending different
promotions? Is there a need to use different email ids for different e-mail
communications like newsletters, campaigns, promotions? What about from
different brands or departments in the company?
2. Do you see a recipient adding every marketer’s email ids into the safe list? What
is the guarantee that you will not start sending irrelevant and innumerable email
communications to the recipient?
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If you don’t have answers for most of these questions, then this trick will not work in
most of the cases. The marketer is back to seeing his email moved to junk folders and
soon deliverability takes a hit.
Email Marketing is a disciplined process and in order to get it right and realize the
benefits, Marketers have to work with companies and agencies who really understand
the science and art of email marketing.
If not, there will no differentiation between your marketing campaigns and the spammer’
campaigns. Ultimately the recipient’s and the ISP’s are the better judges.
Hence it is very important to measure the success of each of your email marketing
campaigns.
Aghreni Technologies is part of a global email marketing giant whose competitors
include the best names in the business. Team Aghreni has over 4 years of experience
in email marketing working with some of the world's largest brands across the world.
For more information, visit URL
http://www.aghreni.com/email_mobile_messaging_platform.html
Aghreni Technologies Private Limited – Bringing in Best Practices in Direct Marketing to Indian Marketers
http://www.aghreni.com