Wow, all of these things re a great start but in reality they are on the very tippy top of the email marketing mountain.
Deliverability isn't really the same thing as spam filtering. Deliverability really refers to whether or not your email actually makes it to a person. Not all email will be delivered to even a spam folder. It'll just get left out on the side of the road to die.
Because most email is sent out using a shared IP a single bad apple on that server can turn things into a nightmare for the rest of the folks on that server. For example Dealersocket uses a shared IP which is why in some cases you may see the sender name "
emailservices@dealersocket.com" versus the from name that you've chosen. Because of this I think it is important to segment out the types of email you send and utilize other platforms for different messages.
Mass email campaigns should not be sent from the same platform you use as your CRM. The possibilities of multiple dealerships doing the same thing with the same amount negative reputation mean that your email for an appt confirmation is subject to that same scrutiny.
Here is some more reading from
Mailchimp on the topic
How Spam Filters Work
Spam filters consider a long list of criteria when judging the “spamminess” of an email. They’ll weigh each factor and add them up to determine a spam score, which then determines whether a campaign will pass through the filter. They might look for spammy phrases like “CLICK HERE!” or “FREE! BUY NOW!” Then they'll assign points every time they see one of those phrases. Certain criteria get more points than others. Here’s a sample of criteria from
SpamAssassin:
- Talks about lots of money (.193 points)
- Describes some sort of breakthrough (.232 points)
- Looks like mortgage pitch (.297 points)
- Contains urgent matter (.288 points)
- Money back guarantee (2.051 points)
If your campaign’s total “spam score” exceeds a certain threshold, then your email goes to the junk folder. Passing scores are determined by individual server administrators, so unfortunately, what passes some filters doesn't pass all of them. As for that list of spammy criteria, it’s constantly growing and adapting, based on—at least in part—what people identify as spam with the "Mark as spam” or “This is junk” button in their inbox. Spam filters even sync up with each other to share what they’ve learned.
Spam filters don’t publish their filtering practices, as doing so would give spammers the knowledge needed to bypass filters and harm their users. But even though there's no magic formula, we can still help you avoid common mistakes that result in emails landing in junk folders.
Avoid these common mistakes
MailChimp has been helping email marketers create and send email campaigns since 2001. During that time, we’ve found that there are a few common mistakes frequently made by email marketers that can result in accidental spam filtering:
- Using phrases like “Click here!” or “Once in a lifetime opportunity!”
- Excessive use of exclamation points!!!!!!!!!
- USING ALL CAPS, WHICH IS LIKE SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS VIA EMAIL (especially in the subject line).
- Using bright red or green colored fonts.
- Using bad content. This one’s broad, but important. Email delivery expert Laura Atkins details content-based filtering in this article.
- Coding sloppy HTML, usually from converting a Microsoft Word file to HTML.
- Creating an HTML email that’s nothing but one big image, with little or no text. Spam filters can’t read images, so they assume you’re a spammer trying to trick them.
- Using the word “test” in the subject line. Agencies can run into this issue when sending drafts to clients for approval.
- Sending a test to multiple recipients within the same company. That company’s email firewall often assumes it’s a spam attack.
- Sending to inactive lists. These are lists which have not engaged in the campaigns through opens and clicks. Because subscriber engagement is a huge part of getting emails into the inbox, when an ISP sees low engagement rates they will often begin to bulk the campaigns to the spam folder. Then they will block the domain and IP addresses used to deliver the campaigns.
- Sending to stale lists. Permission generally goes stale within about 6 months, so if your subscribers haven’t heard from you within that timeframe, you’ll need tor reconfirm your list.
Email Firewalls
By now, most email marketers know that spammy phrases like “FREE! CLICK NOW!” will trigger spam filters to flag their message. But before an email even gets to that filter, it first has to pass through a gatekeeper or "firewall." (Yep, spam is now such a problem that spam filters now need filters of their own.) Firewalls are used by ISPs, large corporations, and small businesses alike, and they all communicate with each other to help identify spam and spammers.
If
IronPort’s Email Security Appliance thinks your email is spam, it’ll gobble it up and shoot its remains into cyberspace before your recipient’s spam filter even has a chance to look for the word "V1AGRA." It won’t even waste the energy to tell anybody about it (which means it won't appear on a bounce report).
But how does this server know what spam is? Your own recipients teach it. When you send an email to your list, and someone on your list thinks it’s spam—or doesn’t remember opting-in to your list, or if you never had permission in the first place—that recipient can report you to
SenderBase, the world’s largest email monitoring network. If you get enough complaints, SenderBase will propagate your data to all the IronPort servers around the world, letting everyone know you’re a spammer.
Your ESP should be registered at SenderBase, so they can properly investigate every complaint generated in response to their users’ campaigns. MailChimp’s staff receives copies of any complaints that come in, so we can disable the sender’s account and investigate immediately.
IronPort is only one of many email firewalls, gateways and security appliances. There's also:
All of these gatekeepers rely on reputation scores to block emails before they even get to the content-based spam filters. They all calculate sending reputation differently. You can make sure your reputation is good by sending clean emails to clean lists.
If you think you can send junk, get reported, then just switch to a new email server, you’re sadly mistaken. Once you get reported, your company’s name and domain name are on the lists. Gatekeepers will know to block
all emails with your name in it from now on, no matter who sends it or where it comes from. This is why affiliate-marketing programs can be so risky. Imagine thousands of sloppy email senders (your affiliates) buying lists and sending emails with your company’s domain name in them.
I know it's a lot of reading but just think. This is all before we even get to the Design of Email and the way that should be done.
