Email Deliverability: 10 Basic Steps to Deal Smoothly with ISP Filters

People involved in the business of sending bulk emails to their customers, clients or prospects; often complain about encountering deliverability issues. It has become a common trend of online communication today. Most of the email marketers feel that Can-Spam law and ISP filters impede the growth of legitimate communication in their market. However, the solution to this problem does not lie in series of complaints but in following the necessary steps to optimize the process. So, let us configure the top 10 ways to get better with your bulk email deliverability.

• Verify blacklists: If even after using permission-based, opt-in lists, you are getting frequent non-deliveries then check blacklists to ensure your domain, IP address or ISP is not listed there. Inquire about the IP address your emails are being sent from your service provider and check it against blacklist databases.
• Be on a Whitelist: Today, by registering with ISP Whitelists, all the emailers can have the convenience of being proactive with their ISP reputation. Being registered on an ISPs Whitelist largely ensures accurate email delivery, or at least delivered to your recipient’s email client (clients may have their own email client filters to exclude mail from a variety of settings like Country, content, etc.). Also, note that getting on a whitelist is a time-consuming job that involves an authenticating process to ensure that only reputable addresses are regarded. To begin with the procedure, you need to contact your ISP and the ISPs of your major recipients and avail information regarding their particular process for whitelist registration.
• Maintain Opt-in records: Often it happens that your customer chose opt-in to receive your email but later forgets it and put you to a spam list. In this situation, a spam monitor, like Spamcop or Spamhaus might contact you with an alert, providing you with a chance to show that the recipient actually did opt-in. But for this accomplishment, you have to maintain a record of opt-in data. Also, it is suggested to have an opt-in reminder in your email messages. If your recipient gets his/her subscription details in the message, the possibility of reporting the message as spam reduces.
• Proper communication with your ISP: As every massive bulk send will have an ISPs antenna up, ensure to contact your ISP before sending out an email with a large number of recipients.
• List Segmentation: Big list has big problems with ISPs, hence, it is better to segment your list and send your message in targeted batches. Categorize your email lists appropriately to avoid having one massive list. Segmentation can be done in accordance with zones, so that each zone will receive the message at an optimal time in the day. Also, make use of regional segments to personalize each lists subject.
• Proper list management: Maintain a clean list and significantly reduce the amount of hard bounces. Get rid of invalid addresses and other list members who have opted-out. A clean list is more apt to assured delivery. Always keep in mind that ISPs easily pick invalid addresses in a bulk email campaign.
• Content verification: A number of content checking software are available to check your message. Get a spam score and provide suggestions. Work with the ISPs and ensure clean appearance of your message in content filters.
• Check your HTML:Html email messages are everybody’s choice. But before sending any html email message, take the pain of checking that it is completely error-free and W3C compliant by checking the code with free W3C Markup Validation Service.
• Provide consistent opt-out convenience: To prevent getting into a spam list, make sure you provide an opt-out facility. The ability to unsubscribe from an email list is very important.
  Get a Dedicated IP Address: Individuals having the need of sending bulk email quite frequently must get a dedicated IP address. In case of sharing an IP address with other users, chances of getting it flagged by an ISP spam-filter get prominent. Also, ensure to have a dedicated IP address that comes with a reverse DNS entry setup

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Summary: As ISPs are unique in their spam filtering techniques, it is mandatory to test your messages across different providers. Conduct self test by sending your message to your own email accounts and check if they are getting delivered to your inbox and not your junk folder. If they get landed in the junk folder, try modifying the content, removing paragraphs, and changing subject lines. Also, try email optimization testing service, for more serious testing across multiple ISPs.