The great white-listing lie: Part 2
In part one of this series I covered reputation and content as part of the overall deliverability mix and hopefully really made you question how much of a part white-listing plays. Here is the next area that can dramatically affect deliverability of your email campaigns: gaining the trust of your recipients.
Building Trust
This is possibly one of the most interesting areas in deliverability and is fast becoming a critical part, particularly if your lists have a high number of email addresses for ISPs like Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo! etc which have a 'report spam' feature.
The theory behind this is that you simply need to keep reminding the end recipient that they actually did sign-up to your great email communication and while you are doing it, it's worth reminding them which email address you are sending the communication to, just in case they have signed-up a few times under different addresses.
'But why?' I hear you ask. 'They signed up legitimately and we even used double opt-in.'
Ok, but are you aware of exactly how recipients manage the ever-increasing torrent of emails flying into their inbox?
A recent survey conducted by the Email Sender Provider Coalition (ESPC), across a fairly small sample of 2,200 people, was intended to gauge consumer behaviour towards spam. The recipients involved used some of the top American ISPs: AOL, MSN/Hotmail, Yahoo!, Lycos, Excite, Gmail, Netscape and Compuserve, and some startling results were uncovered.
The survey found that 80% of the email-savvy users in the sample were particularly familiar with the 'report spam' button as a way of managing their email inbox.
What is the direct result of people clicking on the 'report spam' button? Yes, you've guessed it – it directly affects the reputation of your delivery servers.
To give you an idea, a complaint rate of over 0.13% from a delivery IP address into AOL, during a 24 hour period, leads to a number of warning notification emails being sent through to the ESP's white-listing team or your internal IT team.
If these are ignored (which would be madness), a block is placed so no emails get through. Depending on the state of the IP address's reputation at this point, as the deliveries are stopped, with luck the reputation slowly rises and eventually lifts.
If this is the case then we need to continue to build that trust and remind end recipients again and again: 'You signed up to us!'
The question is: how do we do this? All that's required is a simple line at the top, before the creative, that spells it out:
'You signed up to www.your_brand_website.com and we are sending this email to: johnjones@companyX.com'
Will it stop them clicking on the 'report spam' button? Possibly, but combined with the other following tips, it will almost undoubtedly make a difference.
Looking further into the ESPC survey, the following statistics were revealed:
- 73% based their decision on the 'from' field.
- 69% based their decision on the 'subject' line.
- 79% used the report spam button when they didn't recognise the sender
- 20% admitted to using the report spam button as a quick way to un-subscribe.
The importance of the 'from' field…
If the majority of decisions are based on the sending address or 'from' field, it really needs to be clear.
Using an ESP's system that simply provides a cover address over their broadcasting address could mean that it doesn't comply with Sender ID regulations on spam filters and you go straight to the junk folder.
If you use a system that broadcasts using the ESP's domain instead of your own, the end recipient won't recognise it as the brand they signed up to. So why shouldn't they move immediately and click the dreaded button?
The ultimate method is email masking, where a sub-domain is set up for your brand URL pointing back to the ESP. This enables you to send an email campaign so it's easily recognisable as you, without the issues of getting caught by Sender–ID- equipped spam filters.
Here's an example. From: Brand area description [brand@email.brandurl.com]
If the ESP operates properly, your send and reply addresses will be instantly recognisable. Every link in your plain text and HTML should reflect your brand instead of the ESP's domain, which will always cause suspicion especially with phishing attacks still in abundance.
As a last note on this sub-area, if your ‘sent' or ‘reply' address has the longest line of alphanumeric digits you've ever seen, please don't think this is standard in the industry. It's not. If anything, many people will believe this is spam as it's so unclear who the sender really is.
Here's an example to feast your eyes on:
support-b0rqmjhazetadyak1t3csbr9k4dcz6@brand.esp.com
Here's a final suggestion – taking all elements of the above into account, the following provides the ultimate set of details that should be used to create trust.
Many will raise an eyebrow at my suggestion to put the ‘un-subscribe' option at the top of an email, but the question I'd pose is: do you trust your communication? If you do not think it is fantastic material and wouldn't want to receive it yourself then you have your answer.
It's far better to offer your recipients the opportunity to click ‘un-subscribe' at the top of your email than risk them clicking the spam button which, as we know, directly affects your sending reputation
Here's an example of the copy necessary to go at the top of the email, before the creative:
You signed up at www.pure360.com and we are sending this email to: darren.fell@pure360.com
If you cannot view the images within the email click here for the web based version.
If you no longer wish to receive this please click here and we will immediately stop sending you further communication from www.pure360.com
Next month, Darren discusses the final key areas to ensuring your emails reach their intended recipients: the importance of timing, good data management and the essentials of a great creative.
