Email Marketing News and Tips

There are many ways to improve deliverability within your email campaigns. In this blog article, we will discuss the various ways to help you improve your deliverability when using an ESP like Boomerang.

SPF Records

SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework. It is based on a DNS record that is imported into the domain that will be used in the From line of your emails. Many ISPs consult these special DNS records to ensure that the IP addresses delivering the emails are authorized by the domain owner. It is assumed that because these special SPF records exist in the domain that the domain holder has authorized those IP addresses to send on behalf of that domain. So, SPF records are important to authorize Boomerang to send emails on your behalf.

There are two types of SPF records v=spf1 (version 1) and spf2.0/pra (version 2). Both of these records are required because different ISPs support only certain records. The content of the records are identical between these two versions, it’s just that some domains look for version 1 and some look for version 2. So, including both of these records is important.

Domain Keys and DKIM

Domain Keys is way to both authorize and ensure the emails have been delivered unaltered. Like SPF, the use of a special record in DNS implies that your ESP, like Boomerang, is authorization to send on behalf of the domain contained in the From line. Additionally, the emails are signed by Boomerang using a private key. The public key is held in the DNS server. Yahoo (or other ISPs) can process the message, using that public key, to ensure the email has been unaltered in transit. So, this allows for even more protection than SPF. But, setting this up requires a special DNS entry and the generation of PGP-like private and public keys.

DKIM works much in the same way, but requires its own records. DKIM, however, is based on another non-proprietary specification based loosely off of Domain Keys.

Dedicated IP address

When sending your emails out, using a dedicated IP address ensures that only your emails are sent out using that specific email address. This means that no one else is allowed or authorized to send using this IP. Because it’s dedicated to your use alone, this allows you to set up whitelists (see below) with various ISPs like Yahoo, Hotmail/Windows Live Mail/MSN and AOL. Without using a dedicated IP address, it is impossible to set up whitelists as other people may also be sharing the same IP addresses you are using to send. All ISP based whitelists required dedicated IP addresses or they won’t approve the whitelist request.

Whitelisting

Whitelisting will greatly improve your deliverability. There are many ways to whitelist. If you are sending to large consumer ISPs such as AOL, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, Roadrunner, Charter and the like, then to get the best deliverability to these ISPs, it is highly recommended that you obtain a dedicated IP from your email service provider.

Note that whitelistings don’t last forever and may require reapplication as often once every year. Also note that whitelisting is based on both your company and the IP address. So, if the IP address changes, you must reapply for a whitelist. Additionally, whitelistings only last as long as you are sending. If you take a break from sending email campaigns for over 30 days, you may be required to reapply for the whitelist.

Whitelist approvals can take between 10-30 days. If your use of that IP address is new, some ISPs require a 30-60 sending history before they will approve your whitelist. The reason for this is that they want to see what kinds of emails you are sending and the amounts of complaints those campaigns might receive.

Request the user to add to Address Book

By requesting your recipients to add your From address to their address book, this can get around many filtering systems. address book entries, however, do not always work. Address books for web based email, such as Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo and similar, will work better than those who use external clients like Outlook, Thunderbird and MacOS X Mail clients. However, adding to external mail clients’ addressbook does help prevent the email from going into Outlook’s or Thunderbird’s spam folder system.

Commercial Whitelist Services

Additionally, there are commercial (for-pay) services such as Goodmail and Return-Path that can be utilized that will also improve deliverability. However, these don’t come without costs. In order to use Goodmail or Return-Path, you will be charged on a per email basis (much like the cost of a postage stamp). Goodmail, for example, stamps your email through an appliance and that stamp is processed by the receiving ISP and given special dispensation based on the stamp. Return-Path keeps track of lookups and charges you based on that.

Again, to be approved for such a service, you must go through a 3-6 month waiting period to build up a sending history. Once approved, you can begin enjoying the benefits of these services.

Email Scoring

Most email sites today employ some type of spam filtering mechanism that scores the email based on content. As a result, scoring your email before you send the email may give you an idea of the things you may need to improve before you activate the campaign. Scoring systems will score on how much percentage of the email is the image, HTML validity, key word checking, long lines and various other common mistakes. These various mistakes can combine to score your emails higher which may cause the email to be filtered into the spam folder.

Varying Content

Some email campaigns are flagged after just a few emails are sent. The reason this happens is that each email is pratically identical other than the From address. Because one email is just like the next, when sending the same emails to the same ISP, your emails can be flagged as bulk identical. Varying your content through services like Boomerang’s dynamic content service allows for differing content on a user-by-user basis. Using dynamic content can eliminate the sameness issue and help prevent the ISP from seeing things as identical.

Testing

Always test your emails when sending to services like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo and AOL. It is free to obtain these accounts, so you should create your own and send tests to these accounts. If you have difficulties receiving the email in the Inbox, you may need to rework the content and/or contact those ISPs to find out the reason it was filtered.

Through Boomerang’s Professional Services, you can also have us review your content manually and give you any additional hints or tips to improve your campaign’s deliverability.

Notes

The above are all suggestions. You do not have to do any of the above to send emails. However, each step you add should improve deliverability and reduce the chances of your emails landing in the Bulk/Spam folder and, instead, help place it directly in front of the recipient. For example, if your deliverability shows to be 50%, then you can expect to improve up to 65% by making nearly all of these changes. By adding commercial services such as Goodmail, you might be able to get it up to 80-85%, but that comes with a price tag. Note that these percentage numbers are just an estimate and not a guarantee. Also note that the suggestions above are just suggestions to help improve your deliverability. Each ISP and company varies in its filtering implementation. So, these suggestions may or may not help depending on which ISP or company you are emailing and the type of content you are sending.

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