Improving Your Email Delivery Rates

By Author: Mel Bryson
Total Articles: 223
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Sending emails should not be an exercise in futility. After all, the point of email is to communicate with others. If your communications do not end up being read by the recipients, then you've wasted your time. Your company's mailing list is likely composed of both past, current, and potential clients. You want to inspire your past customers to continue to support you, keep your current customers happy, and entice those on the fence to become customers. Clearly, this is not a task to be taken lightly, which is why you want to be so conscious of aspects such as email delivery. Your message won't be heard if it bounces back to you, ends up in the spam box, or is deleted without having been opened. There are several avenues that you want to inspect to determine that you're on the right track with your email list.

First things first- you want to know that your email delivery system is placing emails where you want them: in the inbox of your recipients. By running a spam check, you can determine where your emails are ending up, and why they are being marked as spam. Informing your customers how to whitelist you ...
... for their personal filters is a good idea, as is asking major ISPs to whitelist you, especially if you send large volumes of email. Managing your list well, including removing emails addresses that bounce, can help you avoid being blacklisted. If you notice that your emails are being bounced back or marked as spam by certain ISPs, you will want to run an email blacklist check to determine if you have been blacklisted for any reason. If you have, negotiate with that list provider to have yourself removed from that list.

Secondly, but no less importantly, you want to be sure that everyone who is receiving emails from you actually wants them. The best, and safest, way to do this is to have a confirmed opt-in for your email list. This usually takes the form of sending an email to subscribers, detailing that they have signed up to get your emails and asking them to confirm that choice. This ensures that your list is populated by those who are actively interested in receiving your emails and decreases the likelihood they will mark your emails as spam. To be safe, have your unsubscribe and contact information clearly visible, allowing people to contact you or leave the list easily.

Lastly, deliver what you promised. If your recipients signed up for a monthly newsletter informing them of special promotions, that's what you should send them. Having separate lists for other newsletters is going to be the better route than assuming that all of your email list wants weekly emails from you.