Whether you are sending marketing information or a newsletter, your email is only worthwhile if the end user gets to see it.  Here are our top 10 suggestions for effective email campaigns:

1. Don’t send spam. Really.  Put processes and procedures in place to make sure you and your servers are not sending spam.  If a client wants to use your system to send spam, make sure your end user license agreement says that you can cancel them – and then do it!  If you send spam the email administrators of your recipients will eventually figure it out and blacklist you from sending any email to them at all!
2. Have a database to track and send your emails. If you manage a list of any significant size, it takes too much time and effort to implement the other things on this page with just a spreadsheet.
3. Have a one-click unsubscribe link. In each email, there should be a link that the recipient can click on that automatically removes them from your mailing list.  To save you time, it should just update your email database so that the person is not selected the next time you do a mailing. Don’t send these people another email!
4. Monitor blacklisting. If an ISP or corporate email server thinks you are sending spam, they often “blacklist” your servers, which means they won’t ever accept email from them again.  A lot of times they will put you on their blacklist as a precaution, but if you explain why you shouldn’t be, they will usually remove you.  Watch the email sending logs and keep an eye for who might have blacklisted you, and then contact them and ask to be removed.
5. Monitor your email server’s reputation. Several companies online keep track of each server that is sending significant quantities of email and assign them a reputation score based on a number of criteria.  The better your score, the more likely it is that ISP’s will accept your email.  Things that hurt your score:  sending email to bad addresses, people complaining your email is spam, high volume.
6. Remove email bounces. If an email bounces, don’t keep sending emails to that address.  It is not going to start working on the 40th email!  Use a technology such as Variable Envelope Return Path (VERP) to automatically disable the user in your database.  TrackVia accomplishes this through Email Flags.  One flag is for “opt-in”, meaning the user hasn’t unsubscribed like in #3 above, and another is “valid address” meaning that it didn’t bounce the last time you sent it to them.  Using flags lets you report on what percent of your list bounced or unsubscribed after each email blast.
7. Email authentication. Since greater than 90% of all email is spam and goes undelivered, ISP’s look for these email authentication techniques to show that your message is coming from a server and in a format that is likely not spam.  Sender Policy Framework (SPF) tells the ISP which servers are allowed to send emails on behalf of this domain.  DomainKeys/DKIM proves that the message wasn’t modified in transit and that the content of the email is what was intended to be sent.
8. Volume. Spammers stereotypically send a huge amount of email.  If you are sending hundreds of thousands of emails, you’d better have a good reason or they’ll think you are a spammer too.
9. Respond to email filters. Some companies have systems that don’t let the first email from anyone through to its intended recipient.  Instead it first sends a reply asking you to click a link to ensure that a person really sent the email.  Once you click the link, it will deliver this message, as well as future ones, without hassle.  If you want your email to get through, you have to click the link.
10. Spam filters. If it looks like spam, it probably is.  Certain words, phrases, or the structure of your email can cause the ISP to put your email in the recipient’s spam folder.  Each suspicious item has a score associated with it, and if your score exceeds a threshold (usually 5 points), it is considered spam.  Avoid things like:

- links to an IP address instead of a domain name
- broken links/images
- vertical words
- lots of blank lines
- gappy text like t h i s or t.h.i.s
- the words “As Seen” in the subject
- and all the catch phrases you see in the spam you get!

Sound like a lot of work?  It can be, or you can use a better database that does all of the server side work for you when it comes time to begin an email campaign.

Additional Posts with Email Campaign Topics:

Put your professional network to work in a database

The Web Email-Enabled Database

No Longer Dread the Holiday Card Process