BEST DELIVERABILITY GUIDE (PART 1)

“…or how to be not bounced…!” This guide will teach you how to obtain the best deliverability of your direct email campaigns.For good deliverability you have to pay your attention to the following: Sending fields' adjustingrnWorking with your HTML & your contentrnWorking with your mailing listrnWorking with abuses and complaints

Sending fields' adjusting.

1. Use only real from- , reply-to and subject lines.rn2. Don’t use generic email addresses in the reply-to and sender fields ( info@yourdomain.com, marketing@yourdomain.com, contact@yourdomain.com, etc.)rn3. Email marketing is a professional way of communication; Be serious and use a recognizable business email address, not a webmail ESP.Use the following email structure your.name@yourdomain.com instead of yourname.yourdomain@gmail.com.rn4. Avoid using the following spam words in your content and in your subject line: free, win, Viagra, click here, congratulations, limited time, etc. Also be careful of multiple exclamation points and CAPS turned ON.rn5. Avoid using the “test” keyword in your subject line.

Email Body and HTML 1. Avoid unusual font color, styles and formattingrn2. Avoid spam like words: make money, click here, sex etc. rn3. Be careful to ensure that your HTML coding for your emails is clean. If you are using a good quality Email Service Provider then the WYSIWYG editor should ensure your message is well coded.rn4. Spammers have a habit of creating really bad HTML. Missing table tags, content below the closing tag, or empty tags will get your message thrown into the junk folder.rn5. Avoid CSS, as many email clients strip it out or over-write it. If your designers insist on using it, keep it to a minimum and only use simple attributes, such as text style and color, and be sure they use inline styles.rn6. Use only the real content for your test email campaigns: don't duplicate it and don't make it "non-human".rn7. Use both HTML text and images in the message, not all images. In this way, recipients are still able to read the message if the images are turned off.rn8. Keep your HTML clean. Don't overuse the links.Too many links in the message can make your email look spammy.rn9. Make sure that blacklists have no impact on your deliverability - monitor all the URLs major blacklists.The use of blacklisted URLs will ban the sending domain for a pretty long time.rn10. The message should include both text and images - it is not just one big image.rn11. Including the following text: “This message is sent to you as a subscriber to our newsletter” will be an advance. Note1: The ISPs are scanning and fixing blacklists for URLs and domain names.If they find your company’s domain name in a blacklist, they’ll block any future emails they receive with that domain name in it (no matter how qualitative are your sending resources).
Note 2: Recently, Orange (orange.fr & wanadoo.fr) has change its privacy policy and implemented a highly aggressive anti-spam filter, that allows delivery only of those emails whose senders are whitelisted, or on the recipients’ contact list.Not white listed emails are delivered with a big delay and often to junk folder.