subject: Major steps you can make to provide effective email deliverability [print this page] Major steps you can make to provide effective email deliverability
Having taken the resolution to grow a list of subscribers it is vital to take specific steps so that you are maintaining a high deliverability rate at all times. Some important factors will ensure that ISP's recognize your email as genuine and increase the chance that it is delivered to your subscribers.
Building a list over time which is appropriate for your market is a critical factor in ensuring that email deliverability is accomplished. Buying lists can result in your email marketing campaigns being regarded as spam. So if you have a feasible list and supplement it with a one off hit to a list you have bought you could damage your reputation and be blacklisted for your actions. Unless your email marketing is permission based you do run this problem. So build your list in an organic fashion by ensuring that each subscriber is an enthusiastic participant in your email campaigns by having a sign up facility via an opt in box.
You should have your opt in box clearly noticeable on each of your web pages. If you use offline methods to gather email addresses ensure that these are collected in a genuine way and with the full agreement of the potential subscriber that they will receive regular messages from you.
Your opt in box should also certainly explain what the potential subscriber will receive if they decide to join your email list. If you have offered a free service as a means of gaining the email address ensure that you also obtain permission for sending future communications. Give subscribers the ability to receive emails on a daily, weekly or monthly basis depending on the kind of information you would normally provide through your email marketing campaigns.
Ensure that any new subscriber is sent a welcome message as well as a request to establish that they are indeed willing to subscribe to your list. By using this permission based method of email marketing you significantly reduce the potential to have your email communications marked as spam.
Bear in mind that the major ISP's are now using ingenious methods to protect their users from unwanted email communications. Spam is obviously the number one issue as a certain proportion also contains malicious code. However ISP's are also monitoring their customers' open rates and if a high proportion of regularly delivered email is never opened it will lead to the sender being consigned to the spam folder.
Rather than only targeting size as the main criteria for a email subscriber list it is now becoming vital to measure the opening rates of your email marketing campaigns. There is little to be obtained from continuing to send emails to subscribers who never open them. Just like any activity where you oversee to confirm effective results so with your subscriber list it is prudent to consider removing any who repeatedly fail to open email messages. If a retention program has failed to improve these targeted subscribers then it is probably best to remove them from your lists totally to ensure they do not impact on your overall delivery rates. This will also importantly promote your standing with the major ISP's.
