Six Strategies for Improving Newsletter Deliverability

When you send an e-mail, your message can be delivered to one of four places:

• The majority of sent messages go exactly where you'd like them to go: your recipients' inboxes.
• A growing number of messages land in junk or spam folders that may or may not be accessible to the addressee.
• Sometimes the message is returned to the sender, bouncing back as undeliverable.
• Occasionally, the message is missing in action, lost forever in the Internet's version of never-never land.
  

Don’t let your legitimate e-mail newsletter campaigns fall victim to increasingly scrupulous spam filters. This issue of Good Thinking provides six strategies for navigating spam filters and improving the deliverability of your messages.

The Internet brims with an endless onslaught of spam. Microsoft, for example, reports that four billion pieces of spam are sent to 280 million Hotmail inboxes every day; that’s more than 14 pieces a day per user! When designing filtering programs, internet service providers and IT departments are being forced to err on the side of caution, and rightly so.

But what does this mean for legitimate e-marketers? To spam filters, your message is guilty until proven innocent. A growing percentage of legitimate e-mail is being sent by well-intentioned filtering systems to spam and bulk mail folders instead of inboxes. As a result, you may see good delivery statistics for your messages while at the same time, your open rates drop.

Our eMS software makes it easy for e-mail servers to recognize you as a legitimate sender, but there are still some steps you should take to get more messages into subscribers’ inboxes.

1. If you haven’t already, set up an SPF record on your domain. All Katey Charles Communications clients are advised to become Sender ID compliant. This means adding what's called an SPF record to your domain name system (DNS) records. The SPF record will let ISPs know that you are sending e-newsletters and campaigns from a third-party, or "Outsourced," server. (See “Sender ID Compliance/SPF Records” under the tab marked “Technical.”)
   
   
2. Maintain a consistent “from” address, and encourage each of your subscribers to add the address to his or her address book or list of accepted senders.
   This not only increases your inbox delivery by allowing the message to bypass filters, but it also ensures that when the mail arrives, images and URLs will be enabled by default. The best way to encourage recipients to take this action is by using a standard header on all your messages that asks subscribers to add your “from” address to their address books.
   
   In addition, if you are using the standard sign up form generated in your eMS account for online sign ups, you will notice that a “Thank You” page pops up immediately once someone has filled out your form. That page includes a request for new subscribers to add your address to their address books.
   
   
3. Run a delivery test periodically to spot-check for issues.
   SureSend™ Domain Delivery Reports are available through eMS on a cost-per-use basis, once activated. You can use this tool to quickly measure the effectiveness of your e-mail marketing efforts and spot changes and problems with particular domain holders. The testing tool sends your e-mail to a seed list that contains 197 addresses from the top 20 U.S. e-mail domains. If the report indicates a delivery issue, we can help you investigate any problems that may be affecting the delivery of your campaigns.
   
   To activate Domain Delivery Reports for your account, contact us at (314) 918-8088 or techsupport@kateycharles.com.
   
   
4. Place your company name or newsletter name in your subject line.
   
   
5. Purge old, invalid, or inactive e-mail addresses from your lists. Chances are you have a number of subscribers who haven’t opened a message from you in ages. It’s time to either delete those subscribers or reach out to them with a special message or campaign. You may want to start by searching for subscribers who have not opened a message from you or clicked on any hyperlink in more than 12 months. Not sure how to search for these inactive subscribers? Call us at (314) 918-8808 or e-mail techsupport@kateycharles.com.
   
6. Check and double-check your message links before clicking send.
   If any URL in your message points to an invalid website, your message is at risk for delivery problems.