Deliverability is today’s biggest issue for every email marketer. Email marketers face deliverability problems because of email overload. Many people who spend much time online and that have businesses very much related to computers and Internet often get more than 100 emails per day. Usually, 8 out of 10 emails are considered as SPAM. Problem is that your email message, supposedly that you are legitimate marketer and have permission for contacting, can be flagged as SPAM. This can make harm to your business and reputation.

Here you can find some interesting facts about deliverability and SPAM:

http://antispam.yahoo.com/funfacts

Using some Hosted ASP email marketing software you will loose money because of the fact that you will pay for every message sent and not for every message delivered. Beside that, you will loose money in lost sales. Using desktop email marketing software like GroupMail you will pay one-time-fee for software licence and not for number of messages delivered.

You can have deliverability issues because of anti-spam lists, because of ISP filters and because of corporate/user filters. So there are three hurdles you have to jump over to get your messages delivered. So, how can you improve your deliverability rates?

Subscriptions

The first necessary step in getting your email message delivered is that you have permission of your members to send them your messages. Never, and we mean never, put people on your list without their permission. We recommend you double opt-in method for getting new subscribers so that they have to confirm their request to be your subscribers. It is recommended to ask them to enter their work email instead of free email addresses. Some companies go that far that they don’t allow subscribing if you use free email address. It is because of the fact that work email address is considered as more reliable and stable than a free email address.

Welcome message

So, after they confirmed their request you have to take the next step. You have to automatically send them your welcome message where you will give description of your company, email newsletter and list management info (information about subscribing, unsubscribing, digest mode, archives…).

In this welcome message it is very important not to forget two most important things. To tell them to put your From address in their Whitelist filtering rules to ensure that your message will arrive in to their inbox and not in their Bulk folder. And second very important thing, you should ask them to save your welcome message for future reference. Many people forget that they subscribed to certain email newsletter. Because of that they can accuse you for spamming and report you to your ISP or email marketing company.

Regulations, relations and reputations

You have to constantly have good relationship with major ISP in order to ensure good deliverability. ISP relation often can be a complex job so many email marketing software companies have special people assigned for this type of job. They have to actively watch news about ISP politics and to fulfil their request.

For example, some ISP won’t deliver your message if your messages don’t have a so called DomainKeys or Sender Policy Framework (SPF) key to ensure that the message really came from your domain name and to protect email sender identity. This prevents email spoofing. Some other companies won’t deliver your messages if you are not compliant with Habeas Sender Warranty Email Header. The Habeas headers allow you to guarantee that the emails you are sending are not spam and bypass filter systems.

Speaking about DomainKeys, for example if you send your message from one Yahoo email address to another Yahoo email address the recipient will see this info below From name:

“Yahoo! DomainKeys has confirmed that this message was sent by yahoo.com.”

You can have your own DomainKeys so that your recipients get similar message like above only with your domain name in it. Not only that it is recommended to have your own DomainKeys it is also very professional to see that your company is have one. It shows that email communication is very important for you.

For more information about those standards and regulations visit:

http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework

http://www.habeas.com

You have to ask your email service provider what steps they take in order to ensure the maximum deliverability. If your email service provider is blacklisted your messages won’t be delivered on many places. Also, you have to check whether your domain is blacklisted. You can use different services like http://www.dnsstuff.com, http://www.spamhaus.org, http://www.spamcop.net, http://www.OpenRBL.org. Having a good reputation with major anti-spam lists and policies ensures that your messages won’t be filtered.

List maintenance

You have to track which email addresses are undeliverable and if it repeats several times you have to remove those email address if your software won’t do that for you. Also, if you don’t use double opt-in method for getting subscribers it can happen that someone make a typo in entering their email addresses so instead of, for example, username@domain.com they enter username@domain in your subscription form. Email marketing software like GroupMail has add-on called Email Inspector which removes bad email addresses and can validate recipient addresses by format, using DNS lookup and full SMTP user account testing.

Content and consistence

“Content Is King!” – one of the best known rules on the Internet. In email marketing, it is not only important that you include quality content. It is also important that your message don’t look too “spammy”, that it isn’t full of words used by spammers like: free, buy now, guaranteed, limited time offer…etc, thay you don’t write words all in capitals. It is considered as SHOUTING!

There are several useful tools that will check your content if it is considered as “spammy” before you send your message. One of those services is EzineCheck (http://www.ezinecheck.com).

Also, you have to follow one of the most important rules in email publishing and that is consistency. You have to choose your From field name and stick to it, you have to make your Subject line in that way that it clearly represents you, to choose one format and always use it.

For example, let’s say you have a newsletter called Best Practices Guide. You can design your subject line this way:

[BPG] Article Title, Issue No., Date

This can be your template so it is more likely that your message won’t be deleted by mistake. You can make your style even further. You can make a practice that your every article starts with number or question so this template can be:

[BPG] 7 Best Deliverability Tips, Issue No. 10, 10/10/2005 or [BPG] How To Get Your Emails Delivered, Issue No. 10, 10/10/2005.

We have said that you have to choose your From field name and stick to it. Beside that, your From email address is even more important. Many subscribers make filters based on From email address so if you change your email address it is more likely that your message won’t be delivered or read. That’s why your From email address has to be consistent.

Let’s face it – we live in a world full of information. Just take a look in email publishing industry. There are several hundred thousand email newsletters and we are all aware of rising spam problems. People are reluctant to give their email address to email publishers. Moreover, you have to offer top quality email newsletter to retain your email subscribers. However, quality email newsletter is not always enough. It is usually only one thing in building strong email relationship and making your subscribers loyal.

Building long-lasting email relationship is essential for your online business. If you have loyal subscribers who eagerly await your new message in most cases they will be your loyal customers, as well. That’s why smart marketers know that it is much more important to focus on keeping your current subscribers than to focus in finding new subscribers. Moreover, it is much more expensive to look for new subscribers than to focus on present ones.

In order to have loyal subscribers you have to treat them like kings! You already know that customer is always right and in most cases your subscribers are (or they will be) your customers.

We have already said that people reluctantly give their email addresses to subscribe to email newsletters. They are afraid that this way they will have even more spam in their inboxes. That’s why you have to assure them how you will use their email address. You need a good privacy policy. There you will explain all important items related to privacy of your subscribers. Also you can make your privacy policy reviewed and approved by TRUSTe. It gives more credibility to your privacy policy. TRUSTe, the online privacy leader, is an independent nonprofit which certifies thousands of web sites to strict privacy standards.

If you send an email newsletter, one item in your privacy policy should be about the use of the emails of your subscribers. Here is an example:

“We only collect and hold your email address in order to send you the newsletters you have requested. You can unsubscribe at any time for any reason. We never rent or sell our email lists! If you ever have a problem with your subscription, feel free to contact us at privacy@yourdomain.com.”

Also, here you can see an example of Infacta’s privacy and security policy for GroupMail: http://www.group-mail.com/asp/common/privacy.asp

It is useful that you offer your subscribers an easy way to subscribe and unsubscribe from your email newsletter. The best thing is that you offer a so called “one click” unsubscription using unique address. This will assure them that they can unsubscribe at any time if from any reason they don’t want to receive your email newsletter anymore.

The second very important thing is that your subscription boxes should never be pre-checked. CAN-SPAM Act requires that people (and not publishers) should check boxes depending on email newsletters they want to receive.

If you want to build strong email relationship with your subscribers, you have to know what they are interested in. It is one thing and the second thing is to fulfil their expectations. Just because they subscribed to your email newsletter doesn’t mean that they are absolutely happy with the service you provide. At least you can always do better. That’s why you have to ASK them what THEY want. You can make periodical surveys where you will ask what they like like/dislike about your email newsletter. You can offer them some useful value-added content like white papers or discount on your products in order to more people participate in your survey.

Some savvy marketers offer to their subscribers and customers opportunity to have their Profile or Preference page. This way they will be able to even more personalize communication with their customers and their customers will be happy and grateful because they will see how much they are important for their email publisher.

It is obvious that you should always provide quality and targeted content in order to make them stay. However, beside quality content your visitors have to be sure in several more things in order to be your loyal customers.

They have to know the frequency of your email newsletter and the exact date when they can expect your email newsletter in their inbox. If they subscribed to a monthly newsletter they want to receive it once a month and not once a week or “when I have time I will send it” schedule. Also, like with print magazines you have to decide a date in the month when you will send your email newsletter. It doesn’t mean if it is the 1st, 15th or 30th in the month – just stick to that date. If you prefer days more, you can say something like this: “You will get our Messaging Times Newsletter on every first Wednesday in the month”.

You can see that making a strong email relationship is not so hard if you abide to several rules. Time invested in loyalty management is always rewarding, because the best customer is – loyal customer.

Some people say RSS is better than email, some people think that RSS will never replace email. I’m from one of those that thinks that RSS and email are a perfect match and smart marketers should use both chanels in promoting their services.

Dr. Mark Brownlow, publisher of well-known Email Marketing Reports, has compiled interesting articles about RSS vs. email marketing. Those articles can give you an answer how web feeds can be used in order to complement with email marketing and if you really want, to replace it.

Infacta Ltd. and Nooked have formed a strategic partnership to bring RSS marketing to mainstream online marketers with Nooked RSS integration into the latest release of Infacta’s email marketing software, GroupMail.

With release 5.1 of GroupMail, released on Tuesday, April 25th, Infacta is offering RSS marketing solutions in a click to its clients and prospects through a strategic relationship with Nooked, the leading RSS marketing solution.

According to Advertising Age’s Interactive Marketing and Media Fact Pack 2006, RSS is currently used or is planned to be used within the next 12 months by 63% of consumer product marketers, 65% media and communications marketers, 37% retail marketers, 37% financial services marketers and 38% equipment and tech marketers. According to a recent MarketingSherpa survey, 40% of marketers are definitely planning on adding RSS feeds to their marketing mix in 2006, and 19% who have already incorporated the technology are planning on spending more than they did last year. Email still tops the charts as the leading content distribution platform on the Internet, with 88% of men and 94% of women online using the platform according to Pew Internet’s report, How Women and Men Use the Internet.

Combining the growing popularity of RSS with the ever popular platform of email is a win-win strategy for marketers.

“We recognize the need for online marketers to offer both email and RSS marketing to their customers” said Fergus Burns, CEO of Nooked. “Infacta is a leading provider of online marketing solutions, and we’re excited by the opportunity of thousands more organizations driving their RSS marketing needs through Nooked”

Jonathan Hill, Managing Director of Infacta said “Using the Nooked API will allow users to insert items from their Nooked RSS feeds into their email messages, insert subscription links for their Nooked RSS feeds into their email messages and insert email messages into their Nooked RSS feeds.” But Mr. Hill stated that the real benefit of this partnership is that “GroupMail will now be able to generate and deliver custom unique subscription links to their feeds which will allow 100% user tracking. This means that you can see precisely what each of your readers is doing with your feeds.”

GroupMail is the first email marketing application to allow Nooked users to be able to leverage this type of functionality to their email recipients in such an efficient and automated fashion.

MarketingSherpa published interesting case study about Bell Canada titled How to Grow Your List to 2 Million Opt-Ins — and Which Tactics Give You Higher Quality Names.

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