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Email
Deliverability
Best Practices for
Getting to the Inbox
About Real Magnet
Real Magnet develops digital marketing technologies with a focus on Email and
Marketing Automation. Its full-featured platform also includes easy-to-use tools for
creating content and automated campaigns, in-depth and meaningful analytics, fully
integrated social marketing, top-shelf deliverability, and more.
Real Magnet is a privately held company based in Bethesda, MD with a presence
throughout the United States. Real Magnet has over 1200 customers worldwide,
including the National Association of Home Builders, Viacom (MTV/BET Networks),
Accor Hotels, the American Hospital Association and ComScore.
Email Deliverability –
Best Practices for Getting to the Inbox
As Marketers, we’re all laser-focused on improving the quality of our email campaigns,
working hard to provide relevant and timely content to ever-more-carefully segmented
constituencies.
But all of this effort is for naught whenever one of our perfectly-timed and highlytailored emails ends up in our intended recipient’s junk folder.
Sometimes it is the invisible things that matter — one can’t see deliverability, but if it’s
neglected it will dramatically impact the effectiveness of our campaigns at every level.
“If it Goes in the
SPAM Folder,
it Never Happened”
Email Deliverability - Best Practices for Getting to the Inbox
A) LIST MANAGEMENT:
Job One is to understand your lists – maintaining high standards of “list health” is an
integral part of any successful email marketing campaign. Do you acquire new lists
from a list vendor? Have you been sending to the same list for an extended period of
time? Are you dusting off an old list that you haven’t used in a while?
Following these tips will help you get rid of bad email addresses and disengaged
recipients, helping you improve both your engagement rates and your sender
reputation.
1. Send to Your Most Engaged First. Separate out your most engaged recipients and
schedule a send to those groups first. These individuals will provide you with high
open and click through rates. High performance on an initial send will “prime” your
campaigns and often results in improved overall delivery and inbox rates.
2. Honor Unsubscribes Quickly. When an unsubscribe request is received for a
recipient, that recipient must be suppressed within 10 business days. Neglecting this
dramatically reduces your chances of winning the recipient back, and is a violation
of CAN-SPAM, CASL and other state Spam laws, and can result in lawsuits and fines.
3. Clean-up Non-Engaged Recipients. Regularly (e.g. monthly) separate out 12-month
non-engaged recipients. As an example, if you send one message per week to a
recipient for 12 months, that recipient would have received a total of 48 messages.
If he/she didn’t open or click in any of them, that would be a non-engaged recipient
who is very unlikely to open or click in the future. That email address could even be
a spam trap.Non-engaged recipients can be placed in a special list group that can
be used for future re-engagement campaigns. We can help with rolling out these
types of campaigns in a way that will minimize sender/IP reputation damage.
4. Set up bounce suppression campaigns that automatically remove addresses that
bounce consistently for the same reason (e.g. bad domain, mailbox full, generic
hard/soft). This can help to improve and maintain your overall list health, sender
reputation, ROI, and keep delivery and inbox rates high, all while reducing your
overall email costs.
realmagnet.com | [email protected] | (240) 743-2941
Email Deliverability - Best Practices for Getting to the Inbox
5. Use List Hygiene Services. If you need to send to an “old” list, say one that you
haven’t emailed in over six months, or a purchased/rented list, it’s best to have
that list cleaned by a list hygiene service like Fresh Address to remove as many
addresses as possible that are:
• Undeliverable
• Spam Traps, or addresses that are deliverable but potentially damaging to your
reputation
• Individuals who often loudly complain about Spam email
With enough volume, these types of addresses can seriously damage your sender
reputation and the reputation of your IPs, and potentially cause serious blacklistings
on your IPs or sending domain.
B) EMAIL PROTOCOLS AND TECHNICAL BEST PRACTICES
Best practices in email marketing constantly evolve to reflect ever-changing online
behavior. It’s important to stay current with the latest email protocols in order to
optimize campaign effectiveness and maintain the most positive relationship with
your campaign recipients.
The following is an updated list of things that you might consider avoiding when
creating and sending your email messages. Staying away from these “Don’ts” will help
you make a more positive impact in your recipients’ inboxes.
realmagnet.com | [email protected] | (240) 743-2941
Email Deliverability - Best Practices for Getting to the Inbox
DON’T:
• Link to “executable” files like .exe,
.zip, .swf, etc. This is likely to cause
your messages to get marked as a
“phishing” email by spam filters, and
placed in the Spam folder or even
quarantined.
• Use JavaScript in your content. Most
email clients will block JavaScript
or strip out that code entirely. As a
result, your email may not display as
intended and could even be placed
in the Spam folder or quarantined.
• Use
excessive symbols – use
descriptive words instead. When
you use dollar signs, make sure you
don’t overdo it ($$$).
• Use the word “test” in the subject
line, or “dummy” text, like Lorem
Ipsum, in the body of the message,
even when sending a preliminary
version of your message for review.
Both could cause your message to
go to the Spam folder.
• Use spammy words or phrases
• Link to external stylesheets – most
email clients will block them.
unnecessarily, like “mortgage”, “act
now!”, “click here!”, “limited time”,
and “guaranteed”.
• Use loud colors in the email body
text, such as pure red or green. This
can come across as “yelling” at your
recipients, trying to attract their
attention to an area of your message,
which is something spammers tend
to do.
• Get “creative” with your spelling,
• Use all capital letters in the subject
• Use “corporate” or “official” phrases
line or overuse them in the body
of the message (same reason as
above).
in your unsubscribe links, like “…
to stop further distribution”, or “To
prevent future messages from being
sent…”. That type of phrase could end
up triggering Spam filters. And an
unsubscribe link that says anything
like “…you registered with a partner”
• Use exclamation signs or other
punctuation marks more than once
(same reason as above).
like “FR33”, “m0rtgage”, “MON3Y”,
etc., especially in the subject line.
Spammers do this to try and trick
Spam filters, so they’re programmed
to look for them.
realmagnet.com | [email protected] | (240) 743-2941
Email Deliverability - Best Practices for Getting to the Inbox
DON’T:
will greatly increase your chances of
going into the Spam folder because
it’s an indication that your list isn’t
permission based.
NOTE: Using a misleading subject
line is a violation of CAN-SPAM and
other Spam laws.
• Offer misleading or unsubstantiated
• Use the word “Dear” when addressing
claims in the subject line or message.
your recipients, as in “Dear Reader”
or “Dear Mary”. This will increase
your Spam score.
• Use bad/broken HTML coding in
email. You can validate your code
online: validator.w3.org/.
• Display full URLs in the body of
the HTML version of the message.
Instead, use a text string like “visit
our website” that includes the HTML
link underneath it in an anchor tag.
• Link to “executable” files like .exe,
.zip, .swf, etc. This is likely to cause
your messages to get marked as a
“phishing” email by spam filters, and
placed in the Spam folder or even
quarantined.
• Use a domain in your message
content that’s blacklisted. You can
use a site like http://mxtoolbox.
com/supertool.aspx
to
check
whether a domain is on a blacklist.
• Use ‘Re’ or ‘Fwd’ in the subject line
to trick recipients into thinking
that your mail is a continuation
of a previous conversation. • Convert Microsoft Word files to
HTML – even the best conversion
tools could miss some of Microsoft’s
proprietary or hidden tags, which
could cause your messages to
be displayed incorrectly, or even
get them mistaken as a phishing
message or placed in the Spam
folder.
• Use a single, large image in your
message. This practice is used by
spammers to hide their content
from Spam filters. Aim for 60% or
more text and 40% or less images,
and break larger images up into at
least two smaller images.Use all
capital letters in the subject line or
overuse them in the body of the
message (same reason as above).
realmagnet.com | [email protected] | (240) 743-2941
Email Deliverability - Best Practices for Getting to the Inbox
DO:
• Include a “Friendly From’ label along
with your ‘From’ address. For example
“Jim’s Online Hardware” <email@
jimshardware.com>. Messages from
unknown/unrecognized senders are
more likely to be reported as spam.
NOTE: Failure to include an
unsubscribe link and/or honor
unsubscribe requests within 10
business days is a violation of CANSPAM, CASL and other Spam laws.
• Use
• Use your company’s domain in your
‘From’ address, and authenticate
your messages (SPF/DKIM/DMARC)
with your company’s domain as well.
This will make your messages more
recognizable to Spam filters and
your recipients, give your messages
legitimacy, and greatly reduce the
chance that they will be seen as a
phishing attempt.
• Include
your physical mailing
address and phone number in every
message.
• Provide an unsubscribe link within
every message that’s relatively easy
for your recipients to find. This could
help to reduce Spam complaints,
and is required by most Spam laws.
The unsubscribe link must be active
within at least 60 days of sending
the email.
opt-in / permission-based
marketing techniques to avoid
sending to unknown / invalid
addresses, and getting excessive
spam complaints and unsubscribes.
If you feel like you must rent or
purchase addresses, be sure to use
a legitimate and reputable source,
and have the list cleaned by a list
hygiene service to remove invalid/
undeliverable addresses, spam trap
addresses, throw-away addresses,
etc.
• Keep your message size under
100kb, especially for recipients who
read messages on a mobile device.
That’s not a hard and fast size limit,
just a reasonable target to shoot for.
• Use the same/similar text in both
the HTML and Text versions of your
messages. Spam filters look for this.
realmagnet.com | [email protected] | (240) 743-2941
Email Deliverability - Best Practices for Getting to the Inbox
DO:
• Ensure that the design of your email
templates clearly identifies your
brand and/or website. Prominently
display your logo/brand and/
or company name, and use your
website’s color scheme so that your
recipients immediately recognize
who they’re from.
• Use
inline styles as much as
possible, e.g. style=”font-size: 18px;
font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color:
#333333;”. Some email clients,
like Gmail, will strip the head, body
andstyle tags from your messages.
Using inline styles ensures that the
styling in your messages is displayed
as you intend in these clients.
• Use a ‘Friendly From’ label, ‘From’
address, and subject line that clearly
and immediately identify you as the
sender. This will help improve your
open, read, and click-through rates,
and reduce spam complaints and
unsubscribes.
• NOTE: Failure to clearly identify the
sender of a message is a violation of
CAN-SPAM, CASL and other Spam
laws.
Implementing these tips is not only
critical in terms of getting your
messages through Spam filters, but
it will organically help improve your
relationship with your recipients, as
well.
• Ensure that all the images in your
message have alternative (alt) text
in the image tag so that something
descriptive is displayed in their place
when they’re not rendered.
realmagnet.com | [email protected] | (240) 743-2941
To further discuss the ways in
which your organization might
improve deliverability statistics,
email [email protected]
or speak to one of our subject
matter experts at 240-743-2941.