15 Email Deliverability Tips for Business

There are certain key things that can be done to as part of your standard methods of operation as a company to circumvent any email deliverability issues that might come from getting blacklisted because you didn’t play along with the rules.

Keep in mind that these rules, when applied, result in EVERYONE being happy. You have high deliverability and open rates, the email server watchdogs are all happy, and everyone on your list wants to be there. It’s win win.

This advice is based on my own experiences and the experiences of various clients through the years.

In no particular order, here’s a smattering of advice on keeping your emails reaching their intended targets.

1. Check Your Server Setup…
The most common problem behind email deliverability issues that I’ve seen is that the email server’s DNS is not set up properly. Every host has different requirements, but the point is that if you don’t have a reverse DNS check resolve to the same domain as the email from and reply to addresses, your deliverability will decrease. You needed to ensure you never look like you’re spamming, and any trackbacks that are run resolve to the correct server address.

You can check your current email IP to using a reverse DNS lookup/reverse IP search. Mail servers needs to resolve to the same domain name you’re using in your promotion.

2. Get Names Correctly…

Requiring double opt in for anyone you send out promotional messages to will make it so that you can keep all the names gathered and can qualify for even the most stringent of email verification/certification processes. The double opt in process can simply be a check-box when they input their email address and a “click to activate and verify your profile” email that is sent to the person at the same time as the data is initially sent to the database. If you’re programming your own, keep this in mind. With most plug and play software, this is a simple setting and you should default to the harder signup process with double opt ins, in order to minimize deliverability issues caused by people who didn’t actually want to be on your list.

3. Sign up for an email certification and monitoring program…

The service my clients have used most is called ReturnPath… There are others. Gaining certification through a certification program is how to monitor your blacklist status and gain status on a whitelist.

Whitelist/blacklist services WILL create a profile for your IP whether you play along with them or not. Your profile will exist, and whether that is a good or bad profile can be affected by whether you certify with them, and how you maintain your relationships with these sites. When you’re actively emailing people, this can be very important. I’ve seen companies that were sending millions of emails a month suddenly figure out that they had a nearly ineffectual deliverability rate with high open rates, when they thought they had a terrible open rate and had spent thousands on copy and creative changes, rather than on repairing their relationship with the blacklists.

There are various levels of membership and programs. The certification program is vital if you email often or your business model depends on email deliverability.

At the very least, whether you can certify or not, a monitoring program would be a good offset – a great way to make sure you know EXACTLY when you arrive to the first blacklist so that you can start the process of repairing it. It’s not usually cheap to certify or to track and monitor. But it turns out to be with it in beans if your business model depends on email promotion.
4. No Machine Gun Email…

Never sending emails out from the mail server at too fast a speed, or send too many emails to the same addresses in too short a span of time. There will be a happy equilibrium that must not be exceeded.

5. Keep Your Eggs in Different Baskets…

If you’re high volume, you don’t combine email and web servers. The DNS resolves, yes, but don’t use that IP for  any other traffic. Period. It helps keep you off blacklists. And don’t combine your mail server with any other company’s mail server unless you also control their email promotion.

6. Make Unsubscribing Stupidly Simple and Easy…

It seems counter-intuitive to growing and maintaining a large deliverable email list, but having an incredibly simple one-click unsubscribe process that is easy to find in your emails is essential to making sure that the email recipients you DO have stay happy – and thus don’t mark you as spam.

Because, if you don’t make it really easy to unsubscribe, the usual “mark as spam” button is way easier to find, the guy already knows how to work it, and is very likely to do so. Sure, he double opted in, but fewer than 20% of people out there know the difference between SPAM and promotional email that they actually requested. Marking something as SPAM is often considered synonymous with marking something as “ah… I change my mind, I don’t want it anymore.” To counteract this, some people place a second unsubscribe button, called “mark as spam” that does the exact same thing, just next to the regular unsubscribe link. Enough people mark you as spam, and you’re on a blacklist, even if every single person you sent that email to double opted in and you hand-picked the list.

Another reason to automate the removal process, and make it instant or near instant, is that this will keep you from getting marked as spam repeatedly by the same person, which makes it harder to get yourself removed from a blacklist.

Obviously, you don’t make the unsubscribe process more of an eyecatcher than your call to action, your “Act Now!” button, but keeping it easy and one-click is the best route. The easier to unsubscribe, the less often you’ll get blacklisted. It’s the factor I’ve seen is most capable of affecting your deliverability.

7. Be Willing to Waste People…

Bear in mind that if you’re hesitant to release people from your list just because they don’t want to be there, you’re heading dangerously close to BEING a spammer.

Don’t worry about wasting email addresses. Get MORE by being interesting, promoting yourself to the general public intelligently and maintaining your existing lists by being involved, real, and making them feel important.

8. Remove All Your Hard Bounces …

Don’t leave hard bounced emails (the email’s toast/kaput/useless) in your list. Continuing to send to these can flag you as being too effusive without being responsive to the mailer daemon responses that you’ve received.

Soft bounces are common and can be the result of overload, vacation hold, or what have you. Whether to remove those is your call.

9. Any Messages that Don’t Have to be Email, Send on Other Lines.

There are absolutely tons of options for mass promotion these days.

Build a Facebook following, Tweet, set up a program that sends text messages to your clients. You get it. Don’t depend too heavily on email. Heck, even real live snail mail. Don’t depend too heavily on ONE means of communicating.

Obviously, weigh effectiveness and cost against this. It’s obviously not cost effective to send glossy flyers out on a low-ticket item, unless the up-sell is worth it.  I’m just saying, don’t be lazy about this. Email is not the catch all that it once was. And sometimes finding people on a fresh media where they are more engaged works better than yet another email in their inbox.
If your website has user profiles, is it possible to simply make the message a notification in their profile? Can you use live chat to assist people instead of using email for customer support? Keeping as much messaging traffic off your promotional email server as possible will help.

10. Allow the Person to Control their Email Settings Easily…

Again, in a user profile setting, make it really easy to opt in or out of any list easily and simply. You can even (if done tactfully) run an unsubscriber through a “change your email settings” page, and increase retention.

Making it easy to find where on the site to effectively control their own settings will offset the number that mark you as SPAM later.

11. Don’t freak out if you’re on a black list, but do fix it – fast…

In spite of all that, if you’re emailing your lists consistently, and haven’t got a trained expert on staff, you WILL still end up on a blacklist once in a while. Following all the rules all the time is nearly impossible without a fully dedicated absolute professional watching out for problems. Violating a obscure rule or accidentally sending out far too many emails, well, it is easy and common. Mistakes such as sending too many emails to yahoo email addresses in one day, or sending something with too many links in it… It’s impossible to never end up on those lists, but having your email monitoring service in place (such as return path above) should make these problems easy to spot and fix quickly.

Changing the methods you’re using whenever you do find that you have been blacklisted is vital. Being unresponsive to what you know you’ve done wrong actually does make you a spammer and will get you permanently blacklisted, with good cause. So, learn from your mistakes and work within the rules.

12. Don’t send a list of links…

Minimize the number of links that are contained within any particular bulk email. There are THREE necessary links there, but there should not be too many more. The necessary links are:

• The “view this email online” or “trouble viewing this email?” link
• The link that takes the person further along the process you’re emailing them about (the call to action or the link to the project, an activation link for their profile, the video still, etc)
• The unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email

A well crafted email doesn’t need ANY other links.

13. Keep Your Templates Simple…

Try not to include ANY unnecessary files in your emails, and keep the email template minimalistic – few images and minimalistic HTML code if you have to have it at all. The more complex the email’s HTML, the fewer emails will be deliverable. Using plain text over HTML cuts the undeliverables in half, in my experience. But if you’re using HTML, make it look like your website.

Since HTML improves the branding and noticeability of your email, you’ll need to carefully craft these to maximize visual effect while also keeping spam triggers to a minimum.
You don’t need 50 images in an email template. Also, too many images can make the email unreadable, as many email readers don’t load images unless you tell them to do so.

14. Avoid trigger words…

Do not mention anything that might trigger a filter – such as housing, pharmaceuticals, physical enhancement stuff, solid gold watches, etc. You’ve gotten the same kind of spam I have. Just don’t use those words. And don’t write them in leet either or try to include them through tricks and ploys.

Avoid using thousands of exclamation points or words in images.

15. Don’t Tick off Your Readers…

If you write something designed to raise the hackles of your readers, some will mark you as SPAM just because they were offended.

Obviously, staying professional and courteous is a good idea. So, unless it’s part of your business model to be aggravating, avoid doing so in emails.

Here’s what Google has to say about bulk mail best practices.

Here’s what the SuretyMail deliverability service has to say about best practices.