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Deliverability Guide

BEST PRACTICE TIPS ON BEST DELIVERABILITY AND EMAIL RENDERING


« … or how to avoid landing in junk mail…! »


Version February 2011

 

Due to the existence of significant illegal sending practices or abusing the resources of recipients’ mailboxes, there have been implemented protective measures by market participants which affect any type of sending, including the legitimate communication with your customers. This document is a guide, describing rules that are imperative for good delivery to main ESP (Email Service Providers) and recommendations that contribute to inbox delivery for certain ESPs.

 

To optimize your delivery you must work conscientiously on the following:

  • Setting the sending fields
  • Manage your content and HTML code
  • Manage your contact lists
  • Manage user complaints/ abuses

 

Please find additional practices that can enhance the reputation of the sending and thus its deliverability.

 

HOW IS DIRECT-INBOX HELPING YOU
  • Direct-Inbox Customer Service and Deliverability teams are in place to assist you, you can join them either through the contact form within your account or by calling the numbers indicated below.

 

 

Setting the sending fields

  1. Never use deceptive headers, from-names, reply-to, or subject lines.
  2. Avoid generic email addresses in the sender and reply-to fields ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , etc.)
  3. Email marketing is a professional way of communication, so your recipients do expect the sender to be serious and use a recognizable business email address, not a webmail ESP.
    What do you think seems more professional and trust-worthy:
    This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ? Avoid using a gmail, yahoo, aol, etc sender address if your contact lists is preponderated with email addresses of the same ESP, ISPs don’t like it and your message is most likely to bounce.
  4. Don’t use spam triggering words in your subject line and in the HTML body (words like promotions, money back, free, click here, act now, limited time, etc…), do not become aggressive with lots of exclamation points(!!!!!!!) and ALL CAPS TURNED ON. Take it seriously, we’ve seen two exclamation signs in a subject and the message was flagged as spam.
  5. Don’t use the word “test” in your subject line.

 

 

Content and HTML code

  1. Don’t overuse fancy colors, styles and formatting.
  2. Remember mortgage, pharmacy and make money are spam words. Replace them as much as possible, or better stay away from the industry.
  3. If you use a WYSIWYG to code your HTML email, make sure the HTML code is clean. WYSIWYGs often throw in useless code that’s invisible to the user, but spam filters look at it and think you’re a sloppy spammer.
  4. Bad HTML in general can get you spam filtered. Missing table tags, content below the closing </HTML> tag, or empty <TITLE></TITLE> tags will get your message thrown into the junk folder.
  5. Any CSS that is placed inside the tags will be lost. It’s recommended to use embedded CSS instead, and make sure it’s below the <BODY> tag.
  6. If you send test campaigns, use content that’s as real as possible. Don’t type in one paragraph, then copy-paste it several times. Spam filters notice all the duplicate content and they also get suspicious of any "non-human language" text.
  7. It is not recommended to use a "one-big-image" HTML because the spam filters will have nothing to read, and will think your message is junk. We recommend using a reasonable ratio of text versus image.
  8. Do not use too many links within the HTML. Campaigns that performed best had 2-3 links included in the HTML. Also, make sure that the links are not dead or land on empty web pages.
  9. Check all the links against major blacklists. Spam filters are really harsh on emails with blacklisted links and ban the sending domain for a pretty long time.
  10. Don’t send the HTML email without including the plain-text version. The plain-text version is used by people whose email clients do not support HTML versions, they are not many, but every customer is a gem stone and needs to be treated accordingly.
  11. It’s a really good idea to also include some kind of reminder text, like "You are receiving this email because you signed up at our website."

 

Note 1: The ISPs are scanning blacklists for URLs and domain names. If they find your company’s domain name in a blacklist, they’ll block any future emails they receive with that domain name in it (no matter how qualitative are your sending resources).

Note 2: Recently, Orange (orange.fr & wanadoo.fr) has change its privacy policy and implemented a highly aggressive anti-spam filter, that allows delivery only of those emails whose senders are whitelisted, or on the recipients’ contact list. The emails that are not white listed are delivered with a considerable delay and most often to junk folder.

 

HOW IS DIRECT-INBOX HELPING YOU
  • Your account Direct-Inbox allows you to have to versions of the message (Text and/or HTML) that will be displayed based on recipient’s configuration system. The text version can be automatically extracted by our system.
  • When you create a message in your account, we run a test to identify for triggering words against major anti-spam filters. The results are based on the recommendations of Spam Assassin and should not be considered as a model for other filters (they have different algorithms).
  • SERVICE PREMIUM&GOLD: Our designers can help you create and validate your communication message. We will create a template you can upload on your account and use for any campaign you wish by updating the images or partially the content.

 

 

Contact list management

Proper list management is the most delicate issue in deliverability.
You must have proper, targeted lists that will receive from you only relevant content.

 

You must have clean lists:

  1. Double-check that there are no non-existent email addresses or domains.
  2. Make sure you do not have spam trap addresses (definitely make sure your list is opt-in, harvested lists often contain addresses that are solely used to check for spam, you cannot input them manually).
  3. If you haven’t contacted your recipients within the last 6 months, your list already needs cleaning.

 

It is indispensable for the success of your campaign and to maintain the reputation of resources we provide you that you understand your lists and know if they are clean or not.

 

Note 1: The ISPs check the email addresses and related domains. If they identify a high percentage of nonexistent email addresses (>1%) or that certain emails are traps, they block all emails associated with this sending (or any sending with the same content) and might block or blacklist the sending servers as well as the domains recalled in the email (e.g. the domain name of the landing page hosted on sender’s website).

 

HOW IS DIRECT-INBOX HELPING YOU
  • Our Customer Support assists you with the analysis and eventual list cleaning. Before your first sending, we advise you to clean your lists. Further, the list is autamatically cleaned on your account by instantly removing users who expressed their wish to be unsubscribed.
  • The list hygiene is assured in future, if you continue sending from your online account, by unsubscribers management and cleaning of emails that have meanwhile been deactivated.

 

 

How to manage recipients’ complaints

How to solve deliverability issues?

  1. Improve opt-in/opt-out practices (the unsubscribe option is mandatory within every email you send).
  2. Improve list hygiene: If you are not sure of the quality of your list, that is you haven’t contacted your users within last 6 months, contact us and we will work together on this issue.
  3. Improve contact strategy: be aware of how relevant your content is to your recipients, how often you communicate to them, encourage them to white-list you.

 

When a recipient clicks his is junk or report spam button, a little alert gets sent to his ISP. Then that ISP sends a warning to the sender (as long as the sender has responsibly signed up for that ISP’s feedback loop). If an ISP sends the sender up to 5 warnings, the sender is in trouble. At 5-10 complaints the emails get throttled. More than that (some of them say less than 1% of the contact list) the sending server gets blocked. None of the emails will get through to that ISP anymore, unless the sender can provide proof of opt-in for those complainers.

And ISPs aren’t just blocking email servers anymore. They’re scanning reported spam for URLs and domain names. If they find your company’s domain name in reported spam, they’ll block any future emails they receive with that domain name in it (no matter where it was sent from, or who sent it).

 

HOW IS DIRECT-INBOX HELPING YOU
  • Direct-Inbox thoroughly manages its sending resources to ensure best quality and reputation.
  • Direct-Inbox analyses the campaigns prior to the sending itself to anticipate eventual deliverability issues.
  • Direct-Inbox maintains relationships with ISPs to minimize and avoid blockage of resources.

 

 

Additional practices

 

Be careful with the sending frequency of the same content

If you think to re-send your message to a part or even the whole contact database, remember to modify even partially, the content of the message. We advise targeted sending with a high level of personalization.

 

How to protect the domains mentioned with the emails

To protect the domain(s) mentioned in your newsletter or promotional email from being blacklisted, Direct-Inbox adopted the practice of overwriting the links. We overwrite all links within your emails with a unique URL.

 

Address records on your sub-domain to our sending server

To maximize delivery into Inbox, we suggest the following procedure: to create a sub domain on your DNS network with an address record on our sending server. This technique is used to recognize you as a trusted and responsible sender since the sending of the campaign will go actually from the indicated domain which will consequently improve the reputation of your resources and email marketing performance. This is also extremely helpful in case your domain gets blacklisted, since the de-blacklisting procedure is faster. Another strong point is the fact that the landing page will be hosted on the same domain the campaign was actually sent from, and ISP's welcome this, which means again, the Inbox delivery increases.
 
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