Poor delivery can't be fixed with technical perfection

There are a number of different things delivery experts can do help senders improve their own delivery. Yes, I said it: senders are responsible for their delivery. ESPs, delivery consultants and deliverability experts can’t fix delivery for senders, they can only advise.
In my own work with clients, I usually start with making sure all the technical issues are correct. As almost all spam filtering is score based, and the minor scores given to things like broken authentication and header issues and formatting issues can make the difference between an email that lands in the inbox and one that doesn’t get delivered.
I don’t think I’m alone in this approach, as many of my clients come to me for help with their technical settings. In some cases, though, fixing the technical problems doesn’t fix the delivery issues. No matter how much my clients tweak their settings and attempt to avoid spamfilters by avoiding FREE!! in the subject line, or changing the background, they still can’t get mail in the inbox.
Why not? Because they’re sending mail that the recipients don’t really want, for whatever reason. There are so many ways a sender can collect an email address without actually collecting consent to send mail to that recipient. Many of the “list building” strategies mentioned by a number of experts involve getting a fig leaf of permission from recipients without actually having the recipient agree to receive mail.
Is there really any difference in permission between purchasing a list of “qualified leads” and automatically adding anyone who makes a purchase at a website to marketing lists? From the recipient’s perspective they’re still getting mail they don’t want, and all the technical perfection in the world can’t overcome the negative reputation associated with spamming.
The secret to inbox delivery: don’t send mail that looks like spam. That includes not sending mail to people who have not expressly consented to receive mail.

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Check your assumptions

One of the things that prompted yesterday’s post was watching a group of marketers discuss how to get subscribers to give them their “real” or “high value” email addresses. Addresses at free email providers are seen as less valuable than addresses at a place of employment or at a cable company or dialup ISP. The discussion centered around how to incentivize recipients to give up their “actual” email addresses.
The underlying belief is that users don’t use free mail accounts for their important mail, and if a recipient gives a marketer a free mail account as a signup that they will not be reading the mail regularly. Better to get an email address that the recipient checks frequently so there is a better chance at a conversion and sale.
Perfectly acceptable marketing goals, but makes a number of assumptions that I am not sure are valid.
Assumption 1: An email address at a freemail provider is less important to the recipient than a different email address.
Wrong! A sender has no idea if a recipient uses a freemail account exclusively or has another real email address. Many people these days use gmail as their primary account and they don’t check the email account associated with their dialup or broadband provider. For instance I have an email account at AT&T associated with our UVerse TV and internet service, but have never logged in to do anything with email.
Assumption 2: A non freemail address gives better response rates.
Really? I haven’t seen data one way or another saying that different classes of email addresses give better responses. It may be true, but it may not.  Some users do have separate accounts for friends and family and marketing mail. In that case, are senders better off in the marketing account? Or in the F&F account where the user may hit the “this is spam” button just because that mail is in the wrong place?
Assumption 3: I’ve been invited in, I get free run of the place
Wrong! Just because you’ve been invited onto the front porch for a glass of lemonade, doesn’t mean you’re welcome in the bedroom. Marketing is all about pushing limits and getting more and more from recipients, but in email marketing the recipients get to hit the “this is spam” filter and stop delivery of that email. Limit pushing in email may result in all out blocks and zero inbox delivery, rather than causing a massive increase in sales.
Assumption 4: Incentivized permission is the same as real permission
Wrong! Just because a subscriber hits the “give me a coupon” or “enter me in the drawing” link does not mean they want mail from that sender. What it really means is the recipient wants a chance to win something or get $5 off their next purchase. Just because they closed the loop to get an incentive does not mean the sender gets a free pass through spam filters or is exempt from having their mail marked as spam.
The marketing relationship between sender and recipient is a lot more balanced than any other direct marketing relationship. The sender can’t ignore the recipients’ preferences over the long term without suffering delivery problems. Many email marketers, particularly those that didn’t start in email, forget that the relationship is different and marketers have to respect the recipient.

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The secret to fixing delivery problems

There is a persistent belief among some senders that the technical part of sending email is the most important part of delivery. They think that by tweaking things around the edges, like changing their rate limiting and refining bounce handling, their email will magically end up in the inbox.
This is a gross misunderstanding of the reasons for bulk foldering and blocking by the ISPs. Yes, technical behaviour does count and senders will find it harder to deliver mail if they are doing something grossly wrong. In my experience, though, most technical issues are not sufficient to cause major delivery problems.
On the other hand, senders can do everything technically perfect, from rate limiting to bounce handling to handling feedback loops through authentication and offer wording and still have delivery problems. Why? Sending unwanted mail trumps technical perfection. If no one wants the email mail then there will be delivery problems.
Now, I’ve certainly dealt with clients who had some minor engagement issues and the bulk of their delivery problems were technical in nature. Fix the technical problems and make some adjustments to the email and mail gets to the inbox. But with senders who are sending unwanted email the only way to fix delivery problems is to figure out what recipients want and then send mail meeting those needs.
Persistent delivery problems cannot be fixed by tweaking technical settings.

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How to disable a domain

Sometimes you might want to make it clear that a domain isn’t valid for email.
Perhaps it’s a domain or subdomain that’s just used for infrastructure, perhaps it’s a brand-specific domain you’re only using for a website. Or perhaps you’re a target for phishing and you’ve acquired some lookalike domains, either pre-emptively or after enforcement action against a phisher, and you want to make clear that the domain isn’t legitimate for email.
There are several things to check before disabling email.
1. Are you receiving email at the domain? Is anyone else?
Check the MX records for the domain, using “host -t mx example.com” from a unix commandline, or using an online DNS tool such as xnnd.com.
If they’re pointing at a mailserver you control, check to see where that mail goes. Has anything been sent there recently?
If they’re pointing at a mailserver that isn’t yours, try and find out why.
If there are no MX records, but there is an A record for the domain then mail will be delivered there instead. Check whether that machine receives email for the domain and, if so, what it does with it.
Try sending mail to postmaster@ the domain, for instance postmaster@example.com. If you don’t get a bounce within a few minutes then that mail may be being delivered somewhere.
2. Are you sending email from the domain? Is anyone else?
You’re more likely to know whether you’re sending mail using the domain, but there’s a special case that many people forget. If there’s a server that has as it’s hostname the domain you’re trying to shut down then any system software running no that server – monitoring software, security alerts, output from cron and so on – is probably using that hostname to send mail. If so, fix that before you go any further.
3. Will you need mail sent to that domain for retrieving passwords?
If there are any services that might have been set up using an email address at the domain then you might need a working email address there to retrieve lost passwords. Having to set email back up for the domain in the future to recover a password is time consuming and annoying.
The domain registration for the domain itself is a common case, but if there’s any dns or web hosting being used for the domain, check the contact information being used there.
4. How will people contact you about the domain?
Even if you’re not using the domain for email it’s quite possible that someone may need to contact you about the domain, and odds are good they’ll want to use email. Make sure that the domain registration includes valid contact information that identifies you as the owner and allows people to contact you easily.
If you’re hosting web content using the domain, make sure there’s some way to contact you listed there. If you’re not, consider putting a minimal webpage there explaining the ownership, with a link to your main corporate website.
5. Disabling email
The easiest way to disable email for a domain is to add three DNS records for the domain. In bind format, they look like:

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