Your opt-out process could be affecting your reputation. This might sound counter-intuitive, but ease of opt-out can be critical in protecting your email reputation. It is important that the opt-out process is made as easy and transparent as possible.

Customers receive a growing number of emails that they’ve subscribed to but are no longer particularly interested in. While email clients are working to filter these, there is the very real danger that consumers can simply hit the spam button to permanently remove them. Given that spam reports are fundamental to your reputation with ISPs as a trusted email provider, this can have disastrous consequences on the deliverability of all future campaigns.

Email marketers need to make it easier for customers to manage their subscriptions, even if this means that they ultimately decide to unsubscribe. Ensure that every email is clear about where subscribers have to click to opt-out. If the process isn’t instantaneous, manage expectations and let them know that they may receive some additional emails over a specified and short period of time.

To lessen the risk of complete disengagement, marketers can offer customers the opportunity to “opt-down” rather than opt-out by allowing customers to quickly and easily:

• Reduce the frequency of emails,
• Opt-out of some communications but also opt-in to new ones, or
• Further refine preferences so they get what they want.

In either scenario, you can use the process to gain more valuable data from customers, asking them to share their reasons for leaving and provide suggestions on how to improve your email communications. In making opt-out and opt-down more customer-centric, you can protect your reputation both with ISPs and with customers.

For more information on protecting your email reputation and improving deliverability, download Experian Marketing Service’s white paper, Three pillars of successful email deliverability: Ensuring safe arrival and optimum placement in the inbox

Obviously there could be an endless number of reason for this perception, and many of them probably stem back to the days when deliverability was just becoming an important topic of conversation. Back then, many people were unsure of what deliverability really was, they just knew that it was important and there were not a lot of people in the industry who were considered to be experts in the field. From there I believe ESP sales folks most likely used their in-house experts as a way to differentiate themselves from others, which continued this sense of only a few “experts” really understanding what deliverability really was.

So is this still true today? Personally I don’t think so because if you look at most delivery issues they come down to 4 things.

1. Unknown users — these are email addresses that are no longer valid and should not be mailed. If a sender has too many of these addresses on their list, the ISPs will look at that as though they either are not following best practices and cleaning their list, or they just don’t care about their users.
2. Complaints — when a user marks your message as “Spam” or “Junk” that is considered a complaint by the ISPs and it is their best way to understand if users want your email. If you get too many of these they view that as people don’t really want your mail (even if they signed up for it) and they will begin to bulk or block your mail.
3. Spamtraps — this is one of the most severe issues when talking about deliverability. A spamtrap is an email address that has either never signed up for any marketing messages (pristine trap) or an email address that has been closed and bounced as an unknown user (see above) for at least 6-12 months (recycled) and then reopened by anti-spam organizations to track if senders are keeping their lists clean. By hitting spamtraps, not only are you not processing your bounces correctly but if you hit a pristine account you would not have any type of opt-in for that account, which signifies to the ISPs that you are not following best practices.
4. Engagement — this is the newest factor when it comes to deliverability and while not all ISPs are currently taking this into account, many of the top tier are, with others close behind. When talking about engagement many of the ISPs are looking at a number of factors including opens, read time, forwards, clicks etc. They are able to use the data that they can collect to see how often and for how long people are “engaged” with your campaigns, which means that as marketers we must ensure that our campaigns are relevant to the customers we are sending it to.

So remember, deliverability is not some black box or dark science, it is rather simply: keep your list clean, follow best practices and make sure that your content is relevant to your customers.

Good luck and good sending!

Much has changed since last holiday season. You are probably already aware that ISPs have significantly modified their filtering processes, putting heavy weight on engagement to determine a sender’s reputation and whether or not an email should get delivered to the inbox. In past holiday seasons, many marketers have often taken advantage of this time of year as a reason to “blast” more messages and promotions to its entire subscription list. While this strategy, as you could imagine, often can generate more revenue, it can now negatively impact deliverability. The truth is that deliverability rates decline during the holiday season.

The truth is that deliverability rates decline during the holiday season.

Engage early
We always encourage our clients to try to win back and re-engage inactive subscribers year round.  While re-engagement may not always be first priority on a marketer’s “to-do list,” having a list of highly engaged subscribers come holiday time is imperative.

During the holidays, think about the frequency in which you email your subscribers. Are your offers personalized? Are they relevant? As subscribers take more control over their inboxes, marketers must still be mindful to treat their subscribers as individuals and make their holiday messages resonate with their audience. Remember, the more relevant your messages are, the more likely a subscriber is to engage and interact.

Mailing to unengaged or disengaged subscribers can negatively impact your ability to deliver holiday messages to your best customers!

You know your customers, but ISPs don’t
From an ISP’s point of view, engagement is based solely upon how a subscriber interacts with your emails in that one email box. Unfortunately, ISP’s don’t have the data to go beyond this channel like you do. Regardless of how frequently a subscriber engages with your brand in other channels, you must ensure they are engaged in the email channel particularly.

You’ve got the data. Utilize what you know about your customers to ensure email engagement. Today’s shoppers expect high levels of personalization and relevancy. We also encourage our clients to leverage all touchpoints and channels to connect with customers and encourage them to engage via email.

Point of sale address collection
Point of sale is always the highest risk for collecting bad addresses – especially during the holiday season. Most cashiers are extremely busy and aren’t incentivized to enter accurate or even real email addresses. Thus, it is important that you utilize list hygiene services like Experian QAS, and avoid mailing to ‘fake’ addresses.

For more tips and strategies on collecting email addresses at point of sale, download Experian CheetahMail’s white paper, Point of sale email: Managing compliance, privacy and deliverability with in-store email acquisition.

Set expectations
Set expectations with subscribers about the types of communications they will receive and how often they will receive it from you. Welcome emails are a great opportunity to communicate subscription benefits, as well as set expectations – then don’t deviate from these promises. When you over-mail customers during the holidays, your messages have a higher chance of being marked as spam or customers unsubscribing – thus reducing your engagement rating with ISPs.  Just because companies like Groupon or Living Social may email their subscribers every day, does not mean that your customers are expecting the same from your brand. You must do what works best for your customers, your brand and your engagement strategy.

If you do have subscribers that may not want to engage with you as often as others, it’s a good practice to offer an opt-down subscription, rather than simply an opt-out.  This gives control to the subscriber and allows them to choose frequencies and types of communications that are most relevant to them.

New rules – so now what?
Our advice is still the same as it has always been: send engaging messages that are relevant to your own customers. Be strategic with your holiday campaigns and utilize email marketing technology to treat your subscribers as individuals. Leverage the holiday season to increase engagement levels, while understanding the risks associated with mailing to inactives.

If you follow these simple guidelines, happy holidays are sure to come!

For more information about deliverability and ISP engagement filtering, download Experian CheetahMail’s white paper: Three pillars of successful email deliverability.

The creation of this specification is one that we believe aligns closely with one of our core businesses here at Experian CheetahMail-eliminating messaging abuse and protecting recipients from the fraudulent behaviors of other senders. While we believe that this technology is something that all senders should investigate and eventually implement, we believe those that are in the financial services industry, or otherwise have witnessed phishing attacks against the brand, should be the first to determine their company’s strategy with regards to DMARC. For most companies this will involve working across different departments, such as marketing, IT and security.

For those of you that have been in the email industry for some time you might remember when Yahoo! created a special relationship with Ebay/PayPal to reject messages that were not signed with the DomainKeys authentication protocol and stop phishing emails that were coming into their system claiming to be from these companies. DMARC, which stands for “Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance” has taken that same premise and grown it. DMARC standardizes how email receivers validate messaging using the well-known SPF and DKIM authentication protocols. A DMARC policy allows a sender to indicate that their emails are protected by SPF and/or DKIM, and tells a receiver what to do if neither of those authentication methods passes – such as deliver messaging to another folder such as spam or junk or reject the message altogether. DMARC removes some of the guesswork from the receiver’s handling of these failed messages, limiting or eliminating the user’s exposure to potentially fraudulent & harmful messages. DMARC also provides a way for the email receiver to report back to the sender about messages that pass and/or fail DMARC evaluation so they can potentially take action against those fraudulent senders.

An important aspect of the DMARC specification that is unique as compared to other similar initiatives that have come out before it, is that it allows the sender to determine what the ISP’s should do with messages that fail, and it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing approach. There is also no charge for senders to implement this technology. A sender can simply tell the ISPs not to do anything with failed messages, to quarantine a certain percentage of the failed mail or fully block any messages that fail and claim to be from their brand.

Over the years I have seen a number of similar proposals come into our industry and it always seems as though we have a chicken and the egg issue. Usually what happens is the ISPs say that they will start checking for the newest form of authentication once enough senders are using it. While on the other hand the sender community says that it isn’t worth their time to implement something if none of the ISPs are checking for it. The great thing about DMARC is that not only was this created by both senders and receivers there are many folks on both sides that are already using and checking for it. We currently know of at least 4 of the largest receivers in the world that are either currently checking for DMARC policies or finalizing their implementation of it . There are also a number of senders that are already publishing these records and it will only continue to grow.

We believe DMARC is an important step in order to continue to ensure the on-going health of our email eco-system and an important implementation for many senders, especially those at risk of being spoofed or phished. Experian CheetahMail will continue to monitor any changes to this latest initiative, or any other new industry developments to reduce messaging abuse and work to ensure that you are kept up to date on any additional developments.

So what does using a hammer versus a crowbar have to do with email marketing and deliverability? It is all about using all the tools you have to produce the best product as quickly as possible. In email marketing, there are a number of tools I often find many people are not using in order to better understand what is — and what isn’t — working effectively within their email campaigns.

You can use a number of tools to evaluate the success of your campaigns. Most marketers are using the reports that are available from their sending platform, or ESP. These reports are the first step toward understanding what your overall reputation is with the domains you send to. From the reports, you can gather information on how much of your mail is being accepted at the Internet service providers (ISPs), what clicks your customers are acting on, and which users no longer find your information relevant to their needs and unsubscribe.

The next important email marketing tool is seed listing, which can help you understand what happens with your emails once the ISPs accept the messages. You can receive a statistically significant sample of what the ISPs are doing with your messages based on default antispam settings. While a seed list that shows a 100 percent inbox rate doesn’t guarantee that all of your mail actually landed in the inbox, it does give you another way to understand the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts.

Finally, the latest available tool allows you to see where your email was opened on a user-by-user basis, helping you to understand how each individual interacts with your brand and your marketing campaigns. For example, let’s say I received a message from your company. If you were using one of these diagnostic tools, you might see that I opened your message on my iPhone at 7:30 a.m. (while getting the kids ready for school) and then again at 10 a.m. in Outlook. This type of information helps the marketer understand a number of things — most importantly, who the most engaged users are and how they view messages. By knowing that I opened it twice on two different devices, you now know that I found the message compelling enough to go back and open it again. You also know that in the future if you optimize your messages for the iPhone or have a new app available, you can segment me into the iPhone group and send me a specific targeted message.

So by using the tools in your email marketing toolbox, you can not only better understand what is effective and what isn’t, but you also can utilize the information to improve on future mailings and continue to increase your return on investment.

Good luck and good sending.