Ensuring Email Deliverability
Everything we’ ve talked about so far is moot if your emails aren’ t reaching your subscribers’ inboxes. Did you know that 21 percent of emails worldwide never reach the desired recipients? A whole lot of work, effort, and brilliance are being wasted on emails that end up floating around in cyberspace.
How do you make sure that all your work isn’ t wasted? It comes down to one simple thing: You have to prove that you aren’ t a spammer and that you have no intention of being one.
Sadly, the Internet service providers responsible for determining whether you are sending spam consider bulk mailers to be guilty until proven innocent. They assume that emails are spam from the outset, and until you can show them that you don’ t act like a spammer, your email deliverability will be affected.
In the following sections, we provide some methods for improving deliverability. Most of these methods are very technical. If you’ re a tech wizard, go forth and set up your infrastructure to ensure deliverability. If you need help with technical stuff, find a local tech person or call your email service provider, and get some systems in place to ensure that your emails reach the people you want to reach.
Monitoring your reputation
To ensure deliverability, you have to keep track of how you’ re interacting with your list. Do the following things:
Monitor the complaint rates and the volume of complaints you’ re receiving. Your email service provider should provide reporting capabilities on the number and rate of complaints your emails are receiving. See Chapter 16 for recommended email service providers.
Respond to complaints in a timely manner.
Make sure that you unsubscribe and stop sending email to anyone who unsubscribes. Your email service provider should provide a path to unsubscribe from every email and automatically remove those that unsubscribe from your email list.
Keep your message volume steady. Don’ t send a million emails one month and then none for six months.
Check your blacklist status on the major blacklist sites including Spamhaus( https:// www. spamhaus. org /) and Spamcop( https:// www. spamcop. net /). These major blacklist sites are referenced by mailbox providers like Google’ s Gmail to help them determine whether your email should be delivered to the inbox. Each blacklist has its own process for removal from its blacklist; you can find this information on its website.