Top 5 Ways To Kill Your Small Business’s Email Delivery 
Posted by Udegbunam Chukwudi on August - 25 - 2011
For online businesses, simply delivering a message is the number one priority. With so many factors that affect campaign delivery rates, “email deliverability” has become a time worthy topic of discussion and analysis.
Avoid these 5 ways to kill your email delivery to successfully manage your online business endeavors.
Quick Tip: If you need a free top quality mailing list, pitch your tent with Mail Chimp and read How To Setup A Free Mailing List With MailChimp (Guide).
HOW TO AVOID KILLING YOUR EMAIL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
1. Complaints
Remove addresses associated with spam complaints as soon as you receive them. ISPs use the number of complaints a sender receives about unwanted messages as the number one factor to judge the character of the sender.
Spam reports directly reflect how your email is received. A common misconception is that CAN SPAM and Bill C-28 are the gatekeepers when in actuality, the ISP is, and the ISP listens to your recipients.
Make your signup process crystal clear, explaining what subscribers sign up for, when they will start receiving emails, and how often they can expect to hear from you. Ensure that every person on your list knows who you are and is expecting your email by sending a confirmation email to all new signups.
In addition, identify how addresses associated with spam complaints get on your list and determine the commonly shared elements to track down the problems, drive complaints down, and improve your program.
2. Spam traps
Spam traps are email addresses used to catch spam. Typically, spam traps will opt not to receive email but by filing complaints when you misstep, can affect your delivery and reputation. Spammers have devised methods to get around complaint/bounce rates but interestingly, do not have ways to get around spam traps.
Never, ever, purchase, borrow, steal or harvest an email list unless you are interested in being cast out as a spammer. Always confirm new signups to ensure the person signing up owns the address in question and make an effort to send on a regular basis.
3. Dirty Lists
Bad list hygiene can be the deciding factor in whether a message is delivered or blocked. Remove invalid addresses immediately and regularly filter through your list to detract the nonresponses. Process unsubscribes and spam complaints immediately.
When an email is sent to an address that does not exist, a ‘hard’ bounce is generated. Sending to invalid addresses repeatedly will seriously damage your delivery. ISPs monitor the number of hard bounces you generate and too many will affect your delivery and cause blocks.
4. Irrelevant content
Reach out to subscribers and ask how they liked the content they’ve already received and whether there is a better way for you to cater to their preferences. Put yourself in the position of your subscribers and ask, “what’s in it for me?”, whenever you consider sending an offer.
Permission and interests tend to change over time. Create a preference page to help subscribers control the type of content they want. Be careful about sending any messages that promote selfish needs and preferences.
5. Ignoring requests
Never ignore unsubscribe requests. Federal law requires that you honor them but more importantly, you need to develop a reliable unsubscribe process to build your credibility. If your audience tried to unsubscribe but have already failed once, they will likely go right for the “report spam” button and drastically hinder your email delivery.
Email marketing is a partnership between you and your service provider. Avoid these 5 inhibitors to maintain high delivery rates and a successful business endeavor.
Yo Noguchi is an experienced freelancer, guest blogger, and frequent contributor to a blog hosted by Benchmark Email, one of the world’s global email marketing company.
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One point I would add is that if you are sending html emails, then they should be tested on as many email clients as possible. If not, they may not display correctly to all your subscribers.
That’s true and that’s why some folks offer TEXT and HTML subscriptions
Thanks a ton for the five steps mentioned in this article. I can say that this works, really. without these three, success is closer.
I will put them into practice as of now.
This is a good list of what and what not to do. Having a confirmation email on signups is the best way to avoid being branded as spam. Unsubscribe request should also be made easier. There are online marketers that just make it too difficult to unsubscribe which is why people brand their emails as spam.
Spot on, babes. Difficult un-subscriptions are the reason why in annoyance I’m quick to brand emails from useless internet marketers as SPAM. If I can’t leave your list with just 2 clicks, I’m sorry but I’m tagging you as spam.
What I’ve found is that people really, really don’t enjoy getting an email each and every day even if there’s great, new information on the site – people need time to recharge so you need to set something up more like a monthly newsletter than an everyday thing.
Great points and very much relevant. With the rise of spam its becoming even more crucial and complicated to handle spam mails. Also, content is king so a feedback about what we delivered can be very helpful.
Hi Yo Noguchi,
I haven’t been much aware of these e-mail marketing tips on online businesses. Thanks for sharing!