Deliverability 101

transcript

Deliverability 101

Presented by:Andrew Barrett

Sr. Director ISP Relations & Deliverability

Deliverability Topics

• Sender Reputation

• Spam and Block Lists

• Bounce Management

• Best Practices

• Q&A

Getting Started: Provisioning

• Real Magnet provides best-in-class platform for managing high-volume e-mail

• Dedicated IP vs. IP Pools

• E-mail Authentication Protocols

• Automatic throttling for each individual ISP

• Provisioning is only a part of the deliverability equation. Next, we examine what the sender can do to complete the puzzle.

Reputation

• Sender reputation is a simple but important concept to understand.

• Think of sender reputation like a credit score.• Keep your score high by sending relevant, engaging mail to willing

recipients.

Good Reputation! Not so good.

Reputation

What you can do to get (and keep!) a good sender reputation:

1. Get permission to minimize complaints.

2. Practice good list hygiene.

3. Manage bounces.

4. Send relevant, engaging mail to willing recipients.

RelevanceIrrelevant Mail Perpetuates Disengagement

•Send mail to the right recipients: Permission•At the right time: Promised frequency, when they are receptive•With the right content: Dynamic content, not just a sales pitch•In the right format: Renders well, even on mobile:

Recipient Engagement

• ISPs measure how recipients interact with your mail

• The more your recipients interact with your mail, the better placement it gets in their inboxes.

• Unengaged recipients create a drag on your deliverability performance.

• What can you do to increase recipient engagement?

• How to re-engage recipients who never seem to open your mail?

Recipient Engagement•Track engagement with the reports module

•See who is and isn’t opening your mail

•Find out which subject lines perform well

•See which “Friendly From” addresses work best

•Build custom reports in the application

Testing subject lines for relevance

Bounce Definition We will … You should …

Generic Soft Deferred or deprioritized … automatically attempt to resend several times.

… manually resend after 24 hours.

User Not Found The account doesn’t exist. … suppress the user automatically after two failed sends in a row within 30 days.

… double check the user name for errors.

Bad Domain The domain doesn’t exist. … continue to send as directed in case it is a temporary problem.

… check for typos; remove the recipient if it’s uncorrectable.

Generic Hard Undeliverable for unspecified reason.

… continue to send as directed in case it is a temporary problem.

… check for others from the same domain to see if they are filtering.

Generic Hard Undeliverable for unspecified reason.

… continue to send as directed in case it is a temporary problem.

… check for others from the same domain to see if they are filtering.

Mailbox Full The account is over quota for storage.

… continue to send as directed, in case the user makes room.

… consider the possibility that this is or will soon be an abandoned inbox.

•Select bounces to resend using the checkboxes to the left•We do not resend the User Not Found bounces, even if selected.

Spam, Blocklists and Whitelists• For ISPs, spam is never about content; it's about recipient

permission.

• There's no way to measure permission, so ISPs measure all sorts of metrics (like volume, reputation and engagement) as a proxy.

• At some point in your e-mail sending career, you will probably be listed on a block list. Don't Panic! We work with block lists.

• The best way to avoid it is to send only to willing, receptive recipients (and keep them that way).

Spam, Blocklists and Whitelists• Some - but not all - ISPs maintain whitelists.

• We can work with ISPs to get you whitelisted.

• Whitelisting will require some effort to make it stick!

• Ask your recipients to whitelist you by adding you to Contacts, or by sending a request to their IT folk.

Unsubscribe Management• Ignored unsubscribe requests hurt deliverability, so we manage

this for you automatically.

• Unsubscribe from one group or from all of your groups.

• Link groups so that an unsubscribe from one will unsubscribe the recipient from all linked groups.

• E-mailed unsubscribe requests are managed manually.

• Unsubscribe vs. Suppressed – suppressed users will never hear from you again, even if they re-subscribe.

• Upload your custom suppression list.

Deliverability Testing

• Real Magnet comes with Deliverability Testing module to identify deliverability and usability issues before you send.

• Usability—It looks at a variety of elements that could degrade the user experience, such as broken links and images.

• Spam—It runs messages through popular Spam filtering software (Spam Assassin, Postini, and Brightmail) and returns data on how the message scored.

• Display—It provides a preview of how messages will render in nine of the top web-based email clients, such as Yahoo!, AOL, Gmail, and more.

•See your content the way the ISPs see it.•Test the message against widely deployed spam checkers.

•See your content the way the ISPs see it.•Test the message against widely deployed spam checkers

Adding it All Up• The key to deliverability is to send relevant mail to permission-

based recipients that contains the content they want to see.

• Track how they appear to be interacting with your e-mail, and test content with an eye toward improving engagement.

• The more willing, engaged recipients you have, the better your reputation will be, and the better your deliverability becomes. The cycle feeds itself.

• If you have questions, Real Magnet Support and Deliverability are available to answer. I'll be happy to answer any you may have right now.

Deliverability 101

Documents