Anyone who has ever worked in email marketing knows the value of getting your emails delivered into the inbox. You probably also know just how difficult this can actually be. The hardest part is knowing that your business objectives – open rates, click rates, revenue – all can be affected by poor delivery and for which you have no idea why.
In the internet space today, Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail/MSN and AOL dominate the free email account market in the United States. That being said, it’s probably a good idea to familiarize yourself with each of these ISP’s rules so that you can ‘play nice’ and comply with each one. Each ISP has its own rules of what email messages they consider spam and what they don’t. They also are constantly changing their email filters to protect their customers, so where your email lands is a day-to-day task to tackle.
Probably one of the simplest ways to help with your inbox delivery is to make sure that your sending IPs are set up properly. This includes having both the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) records available for all of your IP addresses and domains. Basically, these records are checked by the ISPs to ensure that they mail they are about to deliver is actually from you. Spoofers and spammers set up IPs quickly and don’t usually bother with the SPF or DKIM records, so if either (or both) of these two verifications is missing or broken, it’s likely that your email will not be delivered. Practically every ISP relies heavily on these records for email sender verification, so remember to check them frequently.
Some ISPs are willing and able to work with marketers to get email delivered to the customers who actually want it. This comes in the form of whitelists and feedback loops. Whitelists are available only with a few ISPs – Yahoo, AOL, Verizon, to name a few – but can give you preferential inbox treatment. While whitelisting doesn’t guarantee that your email will always make it to the inbox, it shows that you are willing to comply with the ISP’s policies. Putting forth this effort to send reputable email to the customers in your email list resonates well with ISPs, so this is definitely an email best practice worth acting on.
Feedback loops are another relationship you can create with an ISP to help with your delivery. This process allows you to be notified by the ISP when a customer makes a complaint or reports your email as spam. You can then build services to automatically remove these customers from your email list. This shows the ISPs will see that you are complying with your customers’ wishes and only mailing those that want to receive email from you. In turn, you are likely to have better inbox delivery of your emails. Still, inbox is not guaranteed, but any extra help you can get is beneficial. Again, there are only a limited number of ISPs that offer feedback loops – Comcast, Yahoo, Hotmail/MSN, to name a few – but definitely worth the time spent to set these up.
Another – albeit expensive – option to help you achieve inbox delivery is to pay for email certification. By using this service, you pay a per-message fee and agree to comply with very strict spam complaint regulations in exchange for guaranteed inbox delivery. As simple as this sounds, you can never predict how the customers in your email list will respond to your messages, and your IP addresses can go in and out of certification with a single mailing. So essentially, the ISPs are leaving your certification status up to their customers. To ensure that you comply with the complaint rate standards, optimize your email stream so that the customers that receive your emails are, in fact, the ones that want to.
In addition to implementing all of the above options, you will constantly need to monitor your inbox delivery. If you don’t have the time or resources available, there are a few 3rd party options available to help. Companies such as Return Path and Pivotal Veracity offer several tools that can help you keep your email in the inbox. On a day-to-day basis, you can send emails to their test or seed lists that will determine what percentage of your email list received their emails in the inbox. While these are not actual statistics, they are a solid indicator of how your mail is delivered overall.
These companies usually offer other tools to assist with your email delivery such as screening your email content through spam filter checks, IP reputation monitors, delivery statistics alerts, benchmarking standards, among many others. As an added plus, these companies can help with the whitelisting, feedback loop and certification processes. It’s likely that they may also have established relationships with several ISPs. This can be incredibly beneficial when troubleshooting IP and delivery issues that are not resolved by usual means.
A last – and sometimes obvious – method for battling the inbox war is to simply comply with email best practices. However old school they may seem, they are consistent with what the ISPs want to see from bulk mailings. And as the customers in your email list get more and more advanced, it’s always a good idea to stick with the standards and play it safe.
1. Text-to-Image Ratio – In your email templates, be sure to use a combination of both images and text. Even though it is easy to use all images and allows for better branding, ISPs do take this ratio into account. Simple text additions such as promo codes, product descriptions, personalization, expiration dates and fine print can all help with your email delivery.
2. Reinforcing the Email Relationship – It is usually a good idea to remind the customers on your email list how they got there. A small line of copy in the footer of your email that includes their email address and the site they signed up on is usually sufficient.
3. Links and Images – Make sure that the links and images you use in your email have matching domain names to your own. While using external links isn’t wrong, it can be picked up by some ISP’s filters and can seem like spam. If you must use external links, try masking them by sending them through a tracking server.
4. Check for Spam Words – There are still a number of words, phrases and syntax that indicate spam to ISPs. Such things as the words ‘free’ and ‘guarantee,’ typing words in all capital letters and dollar signs can all get your messages caught in the spam filters, so avoid using them where applicable. Remember both the subject line and email content are ‘read, ’ so apply the best practices to all of your email copy.
All in all, ISPs are willing and able to deliver your email to the inbox if they determine that it is what their customers want. If there is any indication that you are sending spam – even if you believe you really aren’t – they will err on the side of caution and send your emails to the junk folder. It is definitely in your best interest to ensure that you have done all you can to comply with each ISP’s standards and take any action that they require. This is probably the best way to get your email delivered to the inbox, which will certainly have an effect on the statistics of the email since all of the intended recipients in the email list actually received it.
















