Latest Buzz on Online Marketing: Best Principles For Mailer Delivery

Since mailers are still an important part of marketing campaigns, to achieve the highest response rate you’d like to ensure the highest delivery rate. The principles and rules listed below might help you to increase the delivery rate of your mailers.

Send mailers regularly.
Let your subscribers know when your emails are coming. If you offer a subscription to your mailer from your web site then tell each and every subscriber exactly when to expect your mailer.
Tuesday / Wednesday 2-3pm = Increased Response.
Your subscribers will come to “expect” your email to arrive in their inbox on the same day at the same time every week, meaning that they want to read your content and are generally more receptive to any special offers or promotions you may include. This means that they are less likely to misunderstand your mailer and report it as spam.
Slow down your mailer delivery.
Instead of using tools which boost your mailer through mail servers to achieve “instant delivery” prefer “slow” delivery tools. Avoid sending mails to multiple (dozens or even hundreds) recipients using CC:-attribute. Use professional mailer software or professional e-mail-delivery services. “When ISPs detect a flood of email, it looks like the work of a virus or a spammer.”
Use a tag line at the beginning of the subject line.
Mark your mailers as such. Make it easier for your readers to recognize your mailer. E.g. ‘[SM Mailer] Nr. 297, 16.10.2007 — Usability Glossary — Splash Pages — Big Typography’. Remain consistent. Otherwise your readers might consider your e-mails as spam and report it.
Always insert the current date in the content.
A correct date which indicates when the mailer was sent is more important than you probably think it is. If the date isn’t mentioned or is provided incorrectly, the mailer is given spam score points.
HTML is OK, but only if MIME-Multipart is used.
When sending mailers as HTML make sure that also the plain text version is attached. Messages sent in MIME-Multipart-Format are automatically sent in a way that subscribers without active HTML-Viewer still get a decently formatted e-mail. It is important that both plain text and the HTML-version have the same or very similar content. The percentage of text should be higher than the percentage of HTML or images. Keep your message size between 20 and 40 Kb.
Use CSS sparingly.
In most cases it is better to use inline CSS-styling in HTML instead of referring to CSS-file in HTML. However, referring to external CSS-files is better than sending them with mailer.
Avoid graphics and complex HTML-elements.
Spam-filters consider a number issues related to HTML. For instance, if the mailer has too many closed tags, too many graphic (images) or structural (tables) elements it gets just as many spam score points. Besides, many readers use software (e.g. Outlook) which automatically blocks images; if users don’t understand what the mail is about they’ll report is as spam. Complex HTML (particularly if more than 50% of HTML-code are HTML-tags) is generously awarded with many spam score points — keep it simple. Colorful backgrounds, tables, JavaScripts and web forms shouldn’t be in mailers.
Motivate your users to add you to their whitelists.
To ensure the bulletproof e-mail-delivery ask your readers to add you to whitelists. You can create Email whitelist instructions in seconds — for a number of e-mail applications.
Screen your advertisers and partners.
If your mailer includes a link to a blacklisted web site you might get a whole bunch of spam score points. Verify the sites and e-mails you are linking to; check if they are already blacklisted or were reported as spam (or spam sources) before placing their advertisements in your mailer. Even if the company is legitimate, it is possible that spammers have used their accounts for sending out spam mails.
Monitor new subscribers.
Monitor new subscribers in your lists. Set suspicious “spamflag” addresses such as “abuse@”, “nospam@”, “postmaster@”, “marketerspam@” as inactive subscribers.
Verify your subscribers with signup confirmation.
Always make your mailing lists double opt-in. This means that when a user subscribes to your mailing list, they will be sent an email with a link that they must click on to confirm their subscription. This is very important because many people can accidentally enter an incorrect email address, or even the email address of someone else on purpose. When that person receives a mailer they did not subscribe to, they will assume they have been spammed, and your mailer (and possibly your web server) will be reported as spam.

It also keeps invalid email addresses off of your list, which reduces the volume and percentage of undeliverable messages that you send. Since undeliverable rates also factor into filtering rules, keeping invalid email addresses from being subscribed to your list will help you to avoid content filtering.

Test your mailers before sending them out.
Always check the “spam score” of your mailers with Free Content Checker, SpamCheck, Contactology and further tools (most of them are listed below).