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How to send better emails: engagement

Today Direct Marketing News hosted a webinar: ISP Mythbusters: How to Send Better Emails. The speakers were Matt Moleski, the Executive Director of Compliance Operations from Comcast and Autumn Tyr-Salvia, the Director Of Standards And Best Practices from Message Systems.
The webinar went through a series of myths. After Autumn introduced the myth, Matt commented on it and explained why the statement was, or was not, a myth. Throughout the webinar, Matt clearly explained what does, and does not, get mail delivered. Don’t let the Comcast after Matt’s name fool you. He is very active in different fora and discusses filtering strategies with experts across the ISP industry. His insight and knowledge is broadly applicable. In fact, many of the things Matt said today were things I’ve heard other ISPs say over and over again.
One of the very first things he said was that ISPs want to deliver mail their customers want. They want to give customers the best inbox experience possible and that means delivering mails customers want and keeping out mails customers don’t. He also pointed out that recipients complain to the ISPs when they lose wanted mail, perhaps even more than they complain about spam.
He also touched on the topic of engagement. His message was that absolutely engagement does matter for inbox delivery and that engagement is going to matter more and more as filtering continues to evolve. There has been some discussion recently about whether or not engagement is an issue, with some people claiming that some ISP representatives said engagement doesn’t matter. The reality is, that engagement does matter and Matt’s words today only reinforce and clarify that message.
Matt did say is that ISPs and senders have a bit of a disconnect when they are speaking about engagement. ISPs look at engagement on the “macro” level. They’re looking to see if users delete a mail without reading it, file it into a folder, mark it spam or mark it not spam. Senders and marketers look at engagement on a much more finite level and look at interactions with the specific emails and links in the email.
When discussing the relationship between senders and ISPs, he pointed out that both senders and ISPs have the same goal: to personalize the customer experience and to give customers a great experience. As part of this, ISPs are mostly aligned when it comes to blocking principles, but each ISP responds slightly differently. ISPs do adhere to best practices for handling incoming email, but those practices are implemented based on the individual company  and handles incoming mail in ways that better supports their company specifically.
Matt talked about Comcast’s Postmaster pages and says they try to give feedback to senders before putting a block in place. He mentions that invalid recipients and poor list hygiene as the fastest way to be blocked or throttled when sending to Comcast. He also said that the core filtering rules at Comcast are static. Changes are mostly “tweaks around the edges.”
During the Q&A portion, Matt took a number of questions from the audience.

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Deliverability, Return Path, List-Unsubscribe Header

Here are a few blog posts covering the email industry from Constant Contact, Return Path, and SpamResource.
Constant Contact posted a blog post about how they measure email deliverability on January 10th.  They started with just tracking bounce backs and using that metric to calculate deliverability but then moved to using seed list through a third-party and report that they get 97% deliverability.  Read more at Constant Contact
On January 6th, Return Path recapped their most read blog posts which includes covering Yahoo’s DMARC Reject Policy, Blacklist Basics, and GMails new FBL and Unsubscribe button. Read more at Return Path
Return Path and SpamResource both have an excellent write-ups about the preference change at Outlook.com/Hotmail regarding the List-Unsubscribe header.  Microsoft, like Google, prefers to use mailto instead of http or other URI protocols for the List-Unsubscribe header.
 

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Updated M3AAWG Best Practices for Senders

M3AAWG has published a new version of the Senders Best Common Practices document and the contains a lot of new information since the original publication in 2008. The new document covers how to vet ESP customers, considerations when selecting a dedicated or share IP to send mail, and includes best practices on a number of technical processes.
The Senders Best Common Practices document is targeted at deliverability teams and email marketers. Any company that is sending marketing emails, using an Email Service Provider, or provides an email enabled platform, it’s always good to go back and periodically review your system to ensure nothing was missed and to stay up-to-date on all new recommendations.
A few of the recommendations include the use of the List-Unsubscribe header, publishing a clear WHOIS for domains used for sending mail, and how to process non-delivery report messages.
The List-Unsubscribe header provides an additional way for users to opt-out of email messages. Gmail and Outlook.com both use the presence of the list-unsubscribe header to provide a one-click button to allow the user to unsubscribe from the mailing list. Often enough, if a user cannot find an opt-out link, they’re marking the message as spam. Allowing a recipient to unsubscribe easily is critical to maintaining good delivery reputation.
A WHOIS is query to determine who is the registered user or assignee of a domain name. During a session at the most recent M3AAWG meeting, it was announced that spammers throw away 19 million domains per year. When a postmaster or abuse desk receive a complaint, they’ll often query to see who owns the domain the email was sent from or who owns the domains used in the hyperlinks. If the WHOIS record is out of date or set to private, this limits the ability for the postmaster or abuse desk to reach out to the owner of the domain.
Processing non-deliver reports is critical to maintaining a high delivery reputation. Many ESPs have an acceptable-use-policy that includes a bounce rate. Mailjet recommends a bounce rate of less than 8% and Mandrill recommends less than 5%. If a system is not in place to remove the hard bounces from your mailing list, the sender’s reputation will quickly deteriorate.
The Senders Best Common Practices document can be downloaded at M3AAWG.org.
 

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