MAAWG Best Practices: Top Six Areas to Focus On
Jun 05, 2007
You and your team should definitely take the time to review the new MAAWG Sender Communication Best Practices document and discuss how you can implement the practices. But because he understands it can be hard to find the time to do this, George Bilbrey listed the below top six areas to focus on in this post.
1. Make your unsubscribe process clear, easy and fast.
If there is any one thing the average marketer could do to reduce complaints and increase deliverability it would be this. I'm constantly stunned at how difficult it can be a get off the list of a Fortune 500 company. MAAWG also recommends allowing email based and offline unsubscribe request. Basically, if someone asks you to stop sending them email – no matter where or how they ask – it is in your best interest to stop.
2. Set clear expectations around how quickly you process their unsubscribe request.
This is a corolloary to #1, but it's important enough to call out
separately. Ideally you subscriber will not get anymore email after
they unsubscribe. But if that isn't possible you must tell them exactly
how much more email they can expect and in what timeframe. It doesn't
guarantee that they won't complain about subsequent messages, but it
helps.
3. Use the List-Unsubscribe mechanism within the header of each message.
Many ISPs are considering adding an unsubscribe button, either instead
of or in addition to the "this is spam" button. This mechanism allows
that to happen for your messages. Instructions on how to do that can be
found here:
4. Your "from" address should make sense to actual humans.
This, by the way, applies to all parts of your "from" – display,
domain, and so on. Making sure your "from" is clear increases
recognition of the message and helps recipients and ISPs alike identify
the good from the bad.
5. Don't just keep re-sending your message indefinitely.
When ISPs have outages the continual re-sending from marketers makes it
even harder for them to get back on line. It's best to investigate the
matter and follow specific re-try protocols when available. But MAAWG
recommends, in all cases, discontinuing re-tries after four days to
accommodate weekend outages.
6. Pay attention to the bounce messages.
Errors that tell you that "delivery is not authorized" indicate that
you've violated acceptable use policies. In layman's terms, they think
you are spamming them. Continuing to send email to that domain is going
to make matters worse. Investigate the issue to figure out why you are
being blocked.
Source: Return Path