Much like a drawn out boxing match, the ISP’s and the SPAMMERS have been dancing around each other and duking it out for years now over the contents of your inbox. And honest entrepreneurs who use email marketing as the powerful permission based marketing tool that it really should be are seeing their deliverability and profits plummet.
We get lumped in with the SPAMMERS (and blocked from the inboxes of people who truly want to get our emails). So how do we navigate this boxing ring of deliverability without getting knocked out in the process?
Here are some deliverability tips to help you with managing email campaigns:
1) BE CONSISTENT. Mail regularly. The best advice I’ve heard is to mail about three times a week, and don’t let your subscriber base increase too fast (you can grow your list, just try to “ramp” it up slowly and steadily.)
2) BE CONSISTENT (2): Always mail from the same domain, with the same reply and from address fields. That’s partially for the ISP’s and partially for the end user, so they recognize you, and don’t feel like they are being spammed.
3) Mail Good Content: If it looks like SPAM, it will be filtered like SPAM and you’ll feel it in loss of deliverability. Always run any emails you send through a SPAM checker first.
4) Mail Simple: If your email broadcasts are packed with big images, strange fonts or any attachments, you could be damaging your deliverability, by triggering other types of filters at the ISP’s, or in the end user’s software (like Outlook, Mac Mail client etc.).
5) Ask For Whitelisting: Make sure when people sign up for your list that they “white list” you in their email account. That will be a signal to the ISP’s that you’re a responsible marketer, and your reputation and deliverability will increase.
6) Use a Double Opt-In Process: The double opt in process is key to knowing that people aren’t giving you bogus addresses (which can be used as SPAM traps, further hurting your deliverability.)
7) Practice good “list hygiene”: You’ll need to be monitoring bounces, and removing the hard bounces to improve your deliverability. Weeding out the bad addresses will also give you more accurate open rates and click-throughs.
8) Register with organizations like Return Path, DKIM, SPF, and others. Some cost money, some are free, but each will give you different advantages with deliverability.
9) Honor unsubscribes and process them right away. Unsubscribe requests that go untouched will quickly turn to SPAM complaints, destroying your deliverability.
10) Monitor your deliverability regularly. there are many deliverability monitoring services out there, such as Delivery watch, Return Path, in addition to the major Autoresponders, many of which have built in deliverability monitoring.
Imagine if you made $100 last month from your email marketing strategy (with 30% deliverability), then by boosting your deliverability to 90% you would triple your income - seriously powerful.
Improving your deliverability strongly effects profits, and it’s a key element of your email marketing strategy. But equally important is your overall email marketing strategy, from lead generation to back end sales...
How do I know?
I’m part of a small team of Marketing geeks who take email marketing strategy as seriously as you do. We love this stuff and if I don’t say so myself, the millions of dollars in sales each year is hard to argue with.
Whether you’re just getting started, or managing email campaigns for a major company, we’ve got resources that can help you truly explode your email marketing profits. For a free taste of what’s possible, click here:
http://www.OvercomeEverything.com/deliverability
