by Darren Fell
The 6 key areas that affect deliverability are Reputation, Content, Building trust, Timing, Data and Creative:
The first and most important area in deliverability is the
reputation of your sending servers or those of your ESP.
Many think that the reputation or ‘sending history’ is associated
with the sending domain name, but in most cases it isn’t. As we
know with ‘phishing’ attacks, sending addresses can be faked so
reputation systems look at the root delivery address that can never
be altered; the IP addresses of the delivery servers.
So, have you got a good reputation?
There are a number of services out on the internet that allow you
to interrogate the IP addresses you are using to deliver your
campaigns. If you don’t know how to find your IP address that,
you’ll see it within the first four lines of the email header when
you view the ‘source’ of the email campaign.
Services like Sender Score give a rating of between 1-100. For an
incredibly simple rule of thumb, scores above 80 are good and
anything below 30 indicates that the reputation of your sending
servers could be pretty poor. If it’s this bad it will instantly
have an effect on your deliverability and it’s highly likely your
emails will be blocked across numerous ISPs.
So if the score is low, how on earth did it get into this
state?
Well there are a myriad of possible reasons, but it all comes down
to poor management of either the internal corporate system, or the
ESP is providing the service through a shared set of delivery
servers – hence using shared IP addresses. The latter is akin to
giving the spare set of keys to your brand new car to your 17 year
old brother who has just passed his test.
The trouble with shared systems is that numerous ‘spam’ complaints
are registered across many customers. Most often don’t have
particularly good data policies – ie poor quality lists, so the
reputation score drops and free email services like Hotmail, Yahoo,
AOL and other ISPs eventually block the IP addresses. Funnily
enough, some ESPs can experience intermittent success in getting
through to certain ISPs with some email campaigns but not all. This
is experienced when, down to sheer luck, your campaign goes out on
a delivery server that hasn’t yet been blocked… Separate IP
addresses are all well and good, but again these can be
blocked.
Is there a better way? Yes of course. You see, it’s all in the
management of the process.
White-listing teams really need to know what they are doing and
should have numerous tools at their disposal. For example, MSN
provides a web-based system called SNDS, once you have the sending
IP addresses assigned to their feedback loop. It provides an
incredibly useful ‘traffic light’ sequence across the IP addresses
for Hotmail, showing green for very low spam complaints, amber for
medium level complaints and red for high complaints. Red will be
blocked if it hasn’t been already.
If the white-listing team have these tools at their disposal,
customers can be alerted to reduce the frequency of their email
campaigns, or can be questioned by account management teams about
their high complaint levels. For example, the main question asked
is ‘where did you get that data from?’
This is the second key area and looks at making sure the actual
email is as perfect as it can be; in the eye of the spam filters.
There are two main areas here: the quality of the HTML and the spam
scoring of the email.
The first is easily addressed. Double-check that the HTML is
perfect. It is so simple for designers to produce something that is
fabulous and that works in every browser. Trouble is, email clients
are not as clever as browsers and often can’t recognise mistakes.
Sourcing an HTML validator will spot simple errors like unclosed
off tags. Lines of HTML code stretching beyond one thousand
characters can cause problems in Microsoft exchange servers –
incredibly simple issues like this can actually prevent delivery as
the spam filters will pick the email up and spit it straight back;
particularly with web-based email systems like Hotmail or
Yahoo.
Ensuring your email has a low spam score is relatively easy these
days. The ESP, if you are using one, should have a spam checker
built in, so it is important that you double check your email
before sending it. Typically, Spam Assassin is used and email
campaigns will be checked live against Spam Assassin’s database.
This contains endless recordings of what constitutes spam and
apportions various scores for each ‘spam’ trait.
For example, all upper case letters in the subject line will get a
score of 1. Using spaced characters for impact will get another
score, and so on. The spam checker should then make it as easy as
possible to identify the issues with your email and allow you to
change it so you fly though corporate spam filters with low
scores.
This is possibly one of the most interesting areas in
deliverability and is fast becoming a critical part, particularly
if your lists have a high number of email addresses for ISPs like
Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo etc, which have a ‘report spam’ feature.
The theory behind this is that you simply need to keep reminding
the end recipient that they actually did sign up to your great
email communication, and while you are doing it, it’s worth
reminding them which email address you are sending the
communication to, just in case they have signed up a few times
under different addresses.
“But why?” I hear you ask. “They signed up legitimately and we even
used double opt-in.”
Ok, but are you aware of exactly how recipients manage the
ever-increasing torrent of emails flying into their inbox?
A recent survey conducted by the Email Sender Provider Coalition
(ESPC), across a fairly small sample of 2,200 people, was intended
to gauge consumer behaviour towards spam. The recipients involved
used some of US’s top ISPs: AOL, MSN/Hotmail, Yahoo!, Lycos,
Excite, Gmail, Netscape and Compuserve, and some startling results
were uncovered.
The survey found that 80% of the email-savvy users in the sample
were particularly familiar with the ‘report spam’ button as a way
of managing their email inbox!
What is the direct result of people clicking on the ‘report spam’
button? Yes, you’ve guessed it. It directly affects the reputation
of your delivery servers.
To give you an idea, over a 0.13% complaint rate from a delivery IP
address into AOL, over a 24 hour period, leads to a number of
warning notification emails being sent through to the ESP’s
white-listing team or your internal IT team. If these are ignored
(which would be madness), a block is placed so no emails get
through. Depending on the state of the IP address reputation at
this point, as the deliveries are stopped, the reputation slowly
rises and eventually lifts, with luck.
If this is the case then we need to continue to build that trust
and remind end recipients again and again, ‘You signed up to
us!’
The question is, how do we do this? All that’s required is a simple
line at the top, before the creative, that spells it out:
‘You signed up to www.your_brand_website.com
and we are sending this email to: johnjones@companyX.com’
Will it stop them clicking on the ‘report spam’ button? Possibly,
but combined with the other following tips, it will almost
undoubtedly make a difference.
Ok, so looking further into the ESPC survey, the following
statistics were revealed:
- 73% based their decision on the ‘from’ field.
- 69% based their decision on the ‘subject’ line.
- 79% used the report spam button when they didn’t recognise the
sender - 20% admitted to using the report spam button as a quick way to
un-subscribe
The importance of the ‘From’ field…
If the majority of decisions are based on the sending address or
‘from’ field, it really needs to be clear.
Using an ESP’s system that simply provides a cover address over
their broadcasting address could mean that it doesn’t comply with
Sender ID regulations on spam filters and you go straight to the
junk folder.
Using a system that broadcasts using the ESP’s domain to the end
recipient doesn’t look like the brand they signed up to. So why
shouldn’t they move immediately and click on that dreaded
button?
The ultimate way is to use email masking, where a sub-domain is set
up for your brand URL and points back to the ESP. This enables you
to send an email campaign so it’s easily recognisable as you,
without the issues of getting caught by Sender ID equipped spam
filters. Here’s an example. From: Brand area description
[brand@email.brandurl.com]
If the ESP does it properly your send and reply addresses will be
instantly recognisable. Expect to see every link in your plain text
and HTML parts reflect your brand exactly and not the ESP’s domain,
which will always cause suspicion, especially with phishing attacks
still in abundance.
As a last note on this sub-area, if your sending or reply address
has the longest line of alphanumeric digits you’ve ever seen;
please don’t think this is standard in the industry. It’s not. If
anything, many people will believe this is spam as it’s so unclear
who the sender really is. Here’s an example to feast your eyes
on:
support-b0rqmjhazetadyak1t3csbr9k4dcz6@brand.esp.com
Here’s a final suggestion to build trust. Perfecting subject lines
is a whole topic in its own right, but we’ll leave that for another
article. Taking all elements of the above into account, the
following provides the ultimate set of details that should be used
to create trust. Many will raise an eyebrow at my suggestion to put
the ‘un-subscribe’ option at the top of an email, but the question
I’d pose is do you trust your communication? If you do not think it
is fantastic material and wouldn’t want to receive it yourself,
then you have your answer. Getting recipients to click on your
‘un-subscribe’ at the top is far, far better than them clicking on
the spam button, which as we now know directly affects your sending
reputation.
Here’s an example of the copy necessary to go at the top of the
email, before the creative:
You signed up at www.emailmarketingmanual.com
and we are sending you this email to: darren.fell@pure360.com
If you cannot view the images within the email click here for the
web based version.
If you no longer wish to receive this please click here and we will
immediately stop you sending further communication from www.emailmarketingmanual.com.
Given the area discussed above and the realisation that people
actually manage their email using the spam button, it really starts
to make you think that if you consistently send your email
campaigns at the wrong time, people will simply manage your email
with that button.
First off, take a gut reaction call as to the best time to conduct
the send. This is exactly how you should start but the idea is then
to test your theories with an enterprise-level reporting system
within a top-end ESP that accurately shows when all the activity
occurs. You can also use intelligent time sending software which
pinpoints when recipients are most likely to open your email.
Ideally, recipients should be engaging with your email campaign
within the first few hours of the delivery, so it’s clearly worth
hitting your recipients when they are going to be the most
receptive.
I accept this is an obvious one but you’d be surprised how major
brands make mistakes over the data they use, or rather how they
manage the data. Get this key part wrong and you really won’t be
surprised when you get stacks of complaints…or at how fast you
get blocked, left, right and centre!
Brokered lists have to be used on occasions and that in itself is a
separate discussion. This is about making sure that the organic
lists you build follow a well managed, single opt-in route. For
example, when people un-subscribe, provide a facility that does it
automatically and instantly.
It is so surprising the amount of emails you see that say: ‘your
un-subscribe will take 5-10 days to be effected’. Oh dear! What I
see happening is some brands thinking they can make the most of
this time period and literally blast the poor individual with
emails every day, until the unsubscribe is actioned. Seriously,
don’t do it. If there’s one way to tarnish your brand, this is
it.
Provide this unsubscribe facility, which should be standard in
every ESP offering, and make sure it is instant. I believe that a
click through to a confirmation web page is sufficient; the need to
send an email to a special address is somehow lacking in the
assurance the end recipient needs.
If of course your data capture is managed through a double opt-in
process, then perfect. This method requires a welcome mail
(confirmation email) to be sent to the user to check they are who
they say they are. They simply click on a confirmation link within
this mail and they’re then validated. This avoids the whole saga of
people who didn’t sign up receiving emails that they then complain
about. In short, double opt-in requires a bit more effort but is
well worth it for the assurance that the data is perfect.
What does the creative have to do with deliverability? Well, it
follows the same principles as ensuring the subject line and ‘from’
field are explicitly clear to the recipient, taking them one step
closer to reading the email.
If the creative has been designed for the preview pane and a
fantastically crisp, powerful graphic appears here or a glimpse and
the key call to action can be seen in this area, this will, with
all the other elements combined, encourage the end recipient to
read the email properly. Again, all incredibly simple but it
works.
Overall, don’t consider email to be the lesser of the marketing
channels. Design your emails as though they are being created for
your best above the line campaigns (if you still do them) and I
promise you, you will see the results improve and improve.
Phew! We’ve covered some considerable ground and have hopefully
enhanced your knowledge of deliverability. Of course, if you still
manage your own internal email solution then you probably realise
the magnitude of successfully managing your IP ranges and the
amount of time it will take to get properly white-listed (where
possible) or simply get on the response paths. You could argue (and
I would say this) that this is exactly the reason why outsourcing
is so successful and far more cost-effective. Whatever you choose
to do, much of deliverability, as you now know, is in your
hands.
Source: NetImperative
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