Practices to Avoid Roadblocks in the Email World

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Becoming a reputable sender in the email world is like becoming a reputable driver on the road. In this post, learn how to drive your emails from point A to point B while avoiding the various roadblocks that prevent them from reaching your recipients inbox.

Getting good directions.

Obtaining good directions is the first step to getting your emails to your end destination. This involves testing your route first before solidifying your road map to inbox placement success.

Avoid short cuts and test for mobile design functionality, HTML errors, link errors, and A/B testing on different segments of your list. Also make sure your content is relevant to where you want to take your recipients by keeping your content less promotional and less informative.  Remember it’s your responsibility to point them in the right direction.

Have a good driving record.

Sender reputiation is important and your IP and domain should have a clean record. Just like a driving record, your reputation is built from day one and is hard to clean once you commit a violation and become blacklisted.

Make sure you’re not receiving a lot of complaints and hitting spam traps. Keep it in excellent condition and if you do get blacklisted, take the necessary steps to reroute and determine whether your content is being customized for your list.

Speeding.

Sending emails at high frequencies is like speeding—you’re likely to fall into a spam trap. It will result in recipients blocking your messages at any attempt to slow you down.

Reckless sending is sometimes inevitable, like during the holiday season for example. But doing it on a consistent basis will get you blacklisted at the network level especially for B2B senders who send to small business domains. Just make sure you’re monitoring the volume and frequency of your emails.

Rerouting

Once you’ve tested your various email lists, reroute your emails to the right customer. Poor quality lists that contain bad email addresses, domains can be the catalyst of an email block.

By testing your lists regularly, segmenting them into groups based on engagement, you will keep your data fresh and ensure that the people on your list actually want to be involved. Also, never deny your recipients the right to opt out all together.

Know the rules of the road.

How can you have a clean sender record if you don’t know the rules of the road?

Violating email marketing regulations like the Canadian Anti-Spam LEGISLATION (CASL), and basic email privacy and CAN-SPAM laws will tarnish your record so badly that you might get kicked off the road altogether.

Ensure you have good record keeping practices and avoid AMPs (administrative monetary penalties), legal fees, and reputation damage by not using misleading header information, deceptive subject lines, and complying to all laws. 

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Driving high inbox placement rates is a process that takes time to figure out. You might get lost the first time but all business are capable of avoiding the roadblocks in your way.

What practices has your company engaged in to ensure good deliverability? Leave a comment in the section below. 

Jonathon Mahon is a content marketer, writer and designer based in Boston. He writes for various digital publications and blogs specializing in the cloud, email automation, software, and technology.​