The Inbox : Best Practices

Reputation and Avoiding the Junk Folder

Christopher Harris — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:41:00 GMT

A client recently asked "Do you have any suggestions on how to not have our email go into people's junk folder?"

Hitting the inbox is the holy grail for email marketers and whether you believe it or not non-profits who send email are definitely email marketers. There are a couple of key factors I'd like to discuss that determine whether your email gets into the inbox, but first I'd like to commend the client who posed the question above on referring those he is trying to reach as "people"! This is the first part of Email's Golden Rule.

Reputation, Reputation, Reputation!
In order for an ISP like Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL or others to accept your email you must have a good reputation as a sender. Reputation is king - it doesn't matter how clean the content of your email is if the ISP blocks your email because of a reputation because the content will never be checked.

Your reputation as a sender is based on two things: the From Address of the email and the IP address of the sending email server. The From Address is the one that you specify when you send the mailing and its reputation is largely based on the percentage of complaints, invalid accounts and spam trap hits that emails with the same From Address have generated in the past. (A complaint is what the ISPs call it when someone clicks the "this is spam" button.)

You have complete control over your individual reputation based on the From Address used in your emails and you influence it every time you send an email. You can severely damage your reputation by mailing to an list of questionable quality. Regardless of whether the list is from RE, NetCommunity or is an imported list, if it contains invalid accounts or spam traps it will have a negative effect on your reputation. Or, if the people reading your email consider it to be spam and hit the spam button your reputation will be affected. To avoid these reputation problems, make sure you only send email to people who have asked for it and make sure the content is relevant. For more on this see Email's Golden Rule.

One note, while you might be thinking you can run away from your reputation problems by changing your From Address frequently, this will have a very negative effect on your email campaigns. Different From Addresses will confuse your constituents and negate the positive effect of clients adding your address to their address book which will help get your email into the inbox and cause images to display by default.

The other part of your reputation is the IP address of the sending email server (MTA). The shared and Private IP addresses used by Blackbaud’s MTAs are accredited by SuretyMail and whitelisted at AOL, Yahoo and other major US and Canadian ISPs. In addition we are on the feedback loop with all major ISPs that provide one and we carefully monitor the percentage of spam complaints as well as hard bounces for each client. As a result, we rarely experience any IP address reputation issues with major ISPs. In fact, as a result of becoming accredited with SuretyMail we have see a dramatic improvement in email delivery with Yahoo in particular.

However, due to the fact that small ISPs and corporations do not provide feedback loops it is difficult to determine if users at these organizations feel the email our clients send is spam. Consequently, occasionally one client may cause a shared IP to develop a poor reputation at a small ISP or corporation. This can lead to email being sent to the spam folder or even blocked entirely. As soon as we detect or learn of these issues we work with the client and the ISP to resolve them as quickly as possible. While clients who use a shared IP also share a reputation, clients with Private IPs are not affected by these kinds of problems.

Content
Another key factor in avoiding the junk folder is ensuring that the content of your email doesn’t look “spammy.” There has been a lot written on this topic and as I said above content doesn't matter if your reputation causes your email to be blocked. I'll consider writing a future post on the subject of content if there are some specific questions that folks have. In the mean time, here is a good article that discusses avoiding spam words:
http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2006/01/can-i-get-a-list-of-spam-words.php

Happy mailing!

<>< Chris ><>

Email's Golden Rule

Christopher Harris — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:26:00 GMT

This is a very short post and the information is incredibly obvious, yet many mailers tend to ignore it.

It all boils down to this: Treat others as you would like to be treated.

Treat each of your email addresses as if it were a person - not just an email address.
Only send email to people who want it. You don't like it when you receive email you didn't ask for - right?
Encourage people to join your mailing list by offering them something they want – like useful information – then deliver it.
Ask people to trust you by adding your email address to their contacts or safe list – but don’t violate their trust.
Tell people up front what you will be sending and the frequency – then stick to it.
Tell people about things that are interesting to them – don't waste their time.

Happy mailing!

<>< Chris ><>

CAN-SPAM Clarification

Christopher Harris — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 01:31:00 GMT

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recently approved a clarification to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. These new rules went into effect on July 7th, 2008. All email senders are encouraged to adopt the relevant changes as soon as possible to prevent possible criminal and/or civil charges for violations.

It is important to note that even though many non-profit’s email may not fall under the CAN-SPAM law because it is non-commercial in nature, it is still crucial to follow the regulations to ensure good deliverability.

At a high level, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 stated commercial emails must contain all of the following:

The ability to unsubscribe through an opt-out link or by replying to the message
The physical address of the sender
A valid, non-deceptive subject line and header (routing) information
A warning label if the email contains adult content

With the exception of the physical address, these rules remain unchanged.

There are 4 points in the new provisions. The first point regarding opt-outs will require changes by a number of NetCommunity clients.

Cannot complicate the opt-out mechanism.
The final new rule ensures that senders provide an easy, straightforward way for recipients to unsubscribe from unwanted email communications. Senders still have 10 days to complete the opt-out process. The new rule states that the opt-out mechanism:

Must be available through a single web page, by replying to the message, or through an unsubscribe button feature on the email that allows recipients to unsubscribe through a single click
Must only require unsubscribers to enter their email address and associated opt-out preferences – it cannot require an unsubscriber to log in or require personal or other information such as a reason for unsubscribing
Cannot include a fee or persuasive text on the unsubscribe landing page

Notice to Blackbaud clients
In order to comply with this provision, all NetCommunity clients must ensure that their opt-out page (aka email preferences page) does not require a logon in order to unsubscribe.

NetSolutions is already compliant with the provision.

Liability may attach to any “person,” including non-natural persons.
This rule follows the same guidelines as the Telemarketing Sales Rule by defining the liable party as an individual or as any form of corporate or unincorporated group, partnership, or other business entity, including incorporated non-profit organizations, but excluding politically-based emails.
Designated sender rule.
This new rule states that when an email has multiple contributors the contributors may designate a single sender of the message, who is referenced in the From line of the email, whose physical address appears in the email, and whose products or services are promoted in the email message. The sole sender assumes responsibility on behalf of all the contributors for complying with the CAN-SPAM regulations. If the sole sender does not comply with all of the CAN-SPAM regulations, ALL of the contributors will be held accountable. Each individual advertiser will be considered the sender of the message, and each will be liable for non-compliance.
Valid postal address satisfied by accurately-registered P.O. or private mailbox.
The new rule states that a valid post office box or a private mailbox may be used, as long as it is registered with the United States Post Office, or with a commercial mail receiving agency that follows all USPS regulations.

For More Information
Original CAN-SPAM law
                http://www.internetcases.com/library/statutes/can_spam_act.pdf
Overview of the original CAN-SPAM law
                http://www.silverpop.com/downloads/documents/Can_spam_detail.pdf
CAN-SPAM Clarification
                http://www.ftc.gov/os/2008/05/R411008frn.pdf

Disclaimer

I'm not a lawyer. Please consult your own attorney if you have legal concerns.

<>< Chris ><>