We recently wrote a blog post on the new spamhaus domain blacklist and what that means for your company.  You can read that here to get up to date on the subject.

We thought we’d carry on this subject to offer you advice on how to make sure that you are doing all you can to avoid the domain blacklists.

Self-Built Mailing Lists

Arguably the best thing you can do to avoid blacklists is have an opted in, self-built list.  The reason for this is that the people on that list have specifically asked for your emails to be sent to them and they will be much less inclined to report it as spam if they have recently asked for these communications.

Correct Sign Up Processes

So you’ve decided to avoid the purchased list route and go for the self-generated option – fine work.  But then you go and sneak in the subscription details where you can and essentially sign people up without them really knowing that they’ve opted in.

This will straight away cause high complaint rates against your campaigns as you’ve not let them choose whether they want to be on the list.  If you’re unsure whether your sign up process is being done correctly, just think “is it opt-in?” Are your subscribers actually requesting this information or are you assuming that they will want it? 

Be Consistent

A trap that people can fall into is that they do have a self-built list but haven’t emailed that list in some time.  At this point, you run the risk of subscribers forgetting signing up for your emails and marking them as spam.  The longer you hold off from sending to them, the worse it will get.

Feedback Loops

A good way to keep control of your reputation with ISP’s is to have feedback loops set up.  Feedback loops allow ISP’s to report the spam complaints they have received from their users back to you.  This allows you to then remove these subscribers from future mailings and also keep track of how your campaign is being received.  Of course, if you’re a mailingmanager customer, this is already set up for you and monitored.

Authentication

This is a subject which really requires a whole post of its own, so I will try and put this is in an understandable nutshell.

Authentication was introduced to counter spoofing and phishing emails being sent to its intended recipients.  A spoofing email is that has had its ‘send from’ and ‘reply to’ addresses changed from the actual sending domain.  This can lead to phishing, which is when you receive an email from someone claiming to be your bank etc and asking you to fill in your details, but they are in fact trying to obtain your card details and money.

The problem is, legitimate email marketing can occasionally be caught in this same net if you use ESP’s.  This is because you’re masking the ESP’s sending domain with your own.  The filters sometimes won’t be able to differentiate between the two and will put your campaigns in the same category.

So Authentication was brought in to make sure that the legitimate senders could be distinguished from the ‘bad guys’.  The different authentication systems are:

Domain Keys
DKIM
SPF
Sender ID

If you are a current mailingmanager customer though, we will for this month only do this for you free of charge.  Contact us to request your authentication file.

Furthermore, any new customer that signs up for a monthly account before March 31st, 2010, will also receive the authentication set up at no additional cost.  The normal cost for this service is £75 + VAT.

I have brushed upon this subject in a previous post but as this Spamhaus DBL is coming into place, it is worth going into more detail.As I’m sure most of you know, sending reputation has been predominantly based on the IP address that your mail is originating from.  This means that if you had a serious blacklisting problem on your sending IP address, you could just move to another address and your reputation would start again.

With domain listing, you can’t escape as easily.  Your sending domain, regardless of the IP you’re on will still have that listing against it.  Obviously, the IP reputation will still be a bug factor but this added factor of domain based reputation means the sender has culpability for their actions.

So you can’t now escape your bad sending practices – definitely a good thing for the future of email marketing but what could that mean for you?  Well, let’s say you are a good sender but fall into trouble for some reason; you could end up having your works email address blocked due to your marketing activity.

A good way to avoid this is to put all of your marketing mails onto a different domain so that any of the repercussions of your marketing activities don’t directly effect the day to day running of your company.

Of course, that should never happen in the first place if you are a legitimate conscientious sender.

2010 is about having interesting, engaging emails to send to your subscribers.  With your recipients receiving more and more marketing messages, yours really does have to stand out from the rest.

This is why whenever we speak to prospective new clients, we always tell them they should be building lists of their own customers and potential customers*.  People are receiving enough emails from the companies they have requested information from, without other unwelcome senders getting in on their precious inbox space.

So for the legitimate senders out there, here are a few suggestions on what can help your campaigns have that little bit extra…

Be experts in your field

If your company happens to be in an industry that your recipients are genuinely going to be interested in, why not write articles that relate to your industry on a whole.

Say you’re in the cosmetics & beauty industry, you could be writing articles right now about tips for good winter skin and hair.  At the end, recommend some of your products as a good example of what could be used.  Not only are you selling on your products but also offering information that people will be interested in and forward on to friends.

Have additional, useful information

We all seem to be obsessed with gadgets, apps and time saving devices nowadays.  Take this idea on board and try and incorporate this into your campaigns.

For instance, if you’re a financial company you could be having interest rates and projected changes to it as a small widget-like section of your email.  If you’re a last-minute holiday company, why not display the weather forecasts of some of your most popular destinations?

Humour

This is a tough one to integrate into your campaigns but does work.  Think about it, what is the one thing that gets sent to you via email that you will forward on? Jokes, funny stories, random facts etc all seem to be the things you’ll take some time out to read through.

I recommend using this with caution though as humour is something that if not done absolutely right, can cause offence to some.

Not all of these ideas will work for you (maybe none of them), but hopefully this will give you some inspiration for own campaigns.

If you do have any other ideas about what you can do or have done, please contact us via the comment box below or via our twitter page – I’d love to hear how people have innovated in this area.

Other useful posts that will help on this subject:

Email Campaign Life Cycles

Maintaining Engagement and Sometimes Forgetting Targeting

Passive Segmentation

*For any prospective clients who may be reading this – as some personal advice, we do recommend that you use your own data and then tell you we won’t allow you on our system with purchased or rented data.  Please view our anti-spam policy for more information.

What’s in store for Email Marketing in 2010The start of the year always seems to be a time for marketers to take stock and start planning for the forthcoming year.

Over the past year we have seen some parts of the email marketing industry progress and become more prominent whilst we have also seen announcements which mean certain aspects of email marketing will stay the same for quite some time.

Domain Based Reputation

One of the big issues to arise for me is ISP’s adoption of domain based reputation.  There’s a couple of great articles on it here:

Times are changing for E-Mail Marketing
The coming gold rush with domain based reputation

In a (very small) nutshell, this potentially could mean that you’re accountable for your sending practices regardless of how many different IP’s or ESP’s you go through.

Although in this Return Path post it does point out that rather than being the sole solution to everyone’s problems, it will more likely be another tool for ISP’s to adopt to be more accurate with their reputation filtering.

So what does this mean to you?  Well, basically it’s another step forward in promoting good sending practices and sending relevant emails.  Those of you who are conscientious about your sending practices and campaign content, will see your campaigns strive, whilst those who don’t will see their campaigns continue to lose effectiveness.

Engagement

The best way to adapt to domain based reputation filtering is to keep your subscribers engaged in the emails you send out.  Engagement has become a more prominent issue throughout 2009, and I can see that continuing through 2010.

This post from Mark Brownlow brings up a great point “organizations managing incoming email (particularly the big ISPs) would broaden the list of criteria used to define spam (unwanted) email to include how people interact with a sender’s messages”.

As reputation filtering progresses, so does the definition of spam.  Marketers still looking towards what the law defines as spam will ultimately fail as its definition is now the opinion of each person you send to; legal terms won’t stop a recipient from disengaging or pressing the “this is spam” button.

Have a look at a previous post I wrote for inspiration on how to maintain engagement.

Preference Centres

Another way to keep your recipients engaged is through preference centres.  Okay, not a new subject but it has continued to grow in popularity since it was introduced.

Preference centres are an alternative to unsubscribe links.  They will allow your subscribers to choose what they receive from you.  In theory, this should reduce the levels of unsubscribes you receive – great.  This in turn will allow your subscribers to also choose what emails they receive, which should keep them more engaged in your messages – also great.

So why not use them for your campaigns? Read more here:

Why an email preference center matters
Preference centres and positive unsubscribe processes

Strategy

The new year is a great time for marketers to start to plan ahead for the year.  A post I wrote last year outlines how some campaigns become stale and fall into a rut.  Eventually you could see your recipients becoming emotionally unsubscribed from your messages – an email marketers’ nightmare.

So with the new year in place, why not try planning out a full years campaigns using the email campaign life cycle model?  The idea is that by setting out your campaigns with a definite end to it, it will keep you engaged in your own campaigns as well as your recipients.

Design

News in 2009 was that Microsoft confirming that Outlook 2010 will keep the same rendering engine as Outlook 2007. Despite a big uproar from the email marketing community, the engine in Outlook 2010 will keep the design side of the industry limited.

Here’s an email design essentials post I wrote a while back to help you on your way in this area.

For all designers out there, here is the only guidesheet you need.