HOW
TO BOOST THE DELIVERABILITY OF YOUR EMAIL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
By Chip House, Vice President of Privacy and Deliverability,
ExactTarget
When was the
last time you were waiting for an email that you never received?
Email messages fail to arrive in your inbox because they are caught
in spam filters. This situation not only irritates you, but poses
a significant challenge to legitimate email marketers everywhere.
False positives, as they are called, accounts for 20 percent of
legitimate emails being blocked or filtered erroneously, according
to Pivotal Veracity, a company that provides email delivery tracking
software.
So why is
delivery such a problem?
Despite advances
in the Federal CAN-SPAM effort, spam continues to be a problem.
In the United States alone, spam accounts for 67 percent of email.
With this much spam hitting Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
and coming into an organization, powerful spam-blocking technology
is put in place. There are bound to be some legitimate emails
caught in spam traps and filtered into junk folders.
What's more,
image and link suppression now is being used to prevent pornography
from instantly being displayed to an unwilling victim. This same
image suppression technology also will prevent your email photos
from being shown.
Luckily, there
are some steps that marketers can take to ensure their emails
arrive in their intended email inbox:
1. Ask
to be added to the address book: Asking subscribers to add
you to their address book is the best way to get around filters
and have your email delivered to the inbox. Outlook 2003 calls
it the "Safe Sender" list and AOL refers to it as "People
I Know."
2. Remind
people why they are receiving your email. Doing so increases
opens and reduces the chance that a user will send future emails
to the junk mail folder. Subscribers tend to forget how and when
they opted in to communications. Use a message like this:
"You
are receiving this email because you opted-in to receiving our
newsletter at xyzco.com. To ensure that you receive future emails,
please add abc@xyzco.com to your address book or safe sender list."
3. Maintain
a consistent "from" name and address: Once subscribers
add your "from address" to their address book, refrain
from changing it so your emails will continue to pass through
as "Safe Senders."
4. Minimize
complaints with permission and recognition: The fastest way
to get in the junk folder is by generating a high number of complaints
from subscribers at Yahoo, AOL or Hotmail. These systems all use
shared filtering across their users, so every time one of your
subscribers reports your email as spam, they increase your chance
of ending up in the junk folder. Make sure you send to only those
subscribers who have given you explicit permission and expect
your email.
5. Watch
spam-like content: The junk mail filter in Outlook 2003 scans
the content and sender of each message. Overly promotional words
and phrases, multiple exclamation points, all capital letters
and other text often used by spammers will trigger the filter.
6. Use
a permission-based email marketing provider: Companies practicing
only permission based email marketing, such as ExactTarget, are
able to develop whitelist relationships with major ISPs.
Chip House is vice president of privacy and deliverability
at ExactTarget, a leading developer of on-demand outbound email
software solutions with more than 3,800 customers. ExactTarget
offers solutions that meet the needs of all industry verticals
and all size organizations. To learn more, go to http://www.exacttarget.com
or contact Christopher Barnes at 310-686-2314 or via email at:
cbarnes@exacttarget.com.
