There’s no point in embarking on an email marketing campaign unless you’re sure your message is going to arrive where it should. Deliverability is the key.
Your business could have the killer app, a cutting-edge service or the cure for cancer, but if your communication languishes in a spam filter, or is kept at bay by a firewall, who cares?
Reputation
Staying out of the filters is all about your reputation. Does the recipient know you? Do they want to hear from you? There are steps you can take to avoid being left out in the cold.
Email reputation is based on the sender’s history. ISPs monitor the flow of email over time and build a picture of email sending practices. The following are crucial to determining your email reputation:
- The length of time the domain has been operating;
- The number of invalid email addresses to which email has been sent;
- The number of spam complaints submitted by recipients;
- The domain’s presence on whitelists (see below);
- The configuration of the email server.
Quality
Maintaining a quality list of clients is essential to keeping a good reputation.
Ideally, businesses should avoid using rented lists. You should own the data. If you simply blast your message out there, you will significantly damage your reputation and hinder your chances of future success.
Make sure you monitor unsubscribe and complaint rates to ensure that spamming or other bad practices don’t occur. Avoid sending unsolicited emails and you will avoid a bad reputation, avoid the filters and avoid high opt-out rates.
According to the DMA’s ‘National Email Benchmarking Report’, the average view rate stands at 14 per cent for acquisition programmes and 19 per cent for retention.
The DMA asserts, “there has been a downward trend in acquisition email open rates…. It appears that email marketers are having issues with getting their emails opened… it is something [they] should be looking at.”
However, it’s not all bad news. By following best practice, some agencies are bucking this trend and achieving open rates that are close to double the national average.
Permission
It is against the law for a business to send email without consent. No matter the reputation of your organisation, if you don’t have the permission of the people you email your message won’t be welcomed.
Partnering with a registered email service provider eliminates much of the pain. Put simply, companies that work with a registered provider are able to send permission-based emails to clients and known prospects without the need to register themselves.
Trust
If you’re building a relationship, trust is everything. The only difference when building email relationships is that you may want to involve a third party.
Safelisting, or whitelisting, is big news in email marketing. Do you know what this is? Does your digital marketing agency?
Check that your email service provider is partnered with a company such as Return Path. This business – which calls itself “the world’s largest email reputation management and deliverability service provider” – acts as a kitemark, lending legitimacy to email communications. It operates the Internet’s most widely-used third-party whitelist, Sender Score Certified.
The Return Path stamp of approval will guarantee your emails whizz past firewalls and spam filters and be welcomed by the world’s largest ISPs and most Fortune 1000 companies.
Watch it
Keeping your reputation high is all about monitoring your activity. How many bounce-backs are your campaigns generating? Can you determine whether they are permanently or temporarily undeliverable and take appropriate action?
Stay on top of complaints and deal with any problems as they arise. How long has the complainant been receiving emails and how many have they had?
Monitor blacklists to guarantee your server is never classified as an unsafe source. Continually build and strengthen relationships with ISPs. This will mean you are added to whitelists and regarded as a trusted communicator.
If you have the capacity to do this then what’s stopping you?! If you don’t, consider working with an agency that can, and does, do all of the above. Without a good, well-maintained reputation, your email campaign is off to a bad start.
