Pardot Elevate 2011: The Ultimate Email Deliverability Checklist
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Your email may look good on the surface, but your deliverability will suffer if you don’t avoid being caught in spam filters. We’ll walk you through the steps necessary to maximize readability by starting with real-world example of a great looking email that, without proper back-end formatting, nobody will get to read.
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Pardot Elevate 2011: The Ultimate Email Deliverability Checklist
- 1. THE ULTIMATE EMAIL DELIVERABILITY CHECKLIST Presented by Rob Dyson and Michael Westphal
- 2. INTRODUCTIONS Rob Dyson and Michael Westphal Product Team
- 5. EMAIL DELIVERABILITY IS A PAIN. PARDOT MAKES IT EASY. • Easy list maintenance • Bounce and spam complaint reporting • Multi-part emails (text and HTML) • Throttling • Security • Automatic opt-outs • Helps you stay CAN-SPAM compliant
- 6. WHAT ELSE SHOULD YOU DO? • Concise and poignant messages • Authentication • Monitor bounce and spam complaint rates • Know about CAN-SPAM • Never purchase lists • Optimize your content to avoid spam filters
- 7. WHAT WE’RE STARTING WITH Average B-to-B deliverability rates
- 8. WHAT WE’RE STARTING WITH 75% Average B-to-B deliverability rates
- 9. WE’RE WORKING TOWARDS Average B-to-B deliverability rates
- 10. WE’RE WORKING TOWARDS 100% Average B-to-B deliverability rates
- 11. BEAUTY IN BREVITY • Get to the point and stay on topic • People do not read long emails • Coincidentally, concise, poignant emails are people- friendly and less likely to get marked as spam • Don’t waste the recipient’s time!
- 12. CONTENT IS KING • Crafting good content usually yields high deliverability • Concentrate on your content – make sure you’re giving your subscribers well-written, valuable content • Many readers are not aware of the difference between ‘spam’ and email they forgot they signed up for • Marking a message as ‘spam’ hurts your deliverability rates, unsubscribes do not
- 13. WHAT IS AUTHENTICATION? • Confirms your identity as a sender - email providers check your domain or IP against a database of trusted senders • Helps prevent phishing and spoofing • Protocols differ by ISP, see our knowledge base for instructions on setting up authentication with your ISP
- 14. MONITORING BOUNCE AND COMPLAINT RATES • Keep your hard bounces under 3% • and spam complaint rate under 0.1% • Hard bounces can occur when an email address is invalid, or the ISP/mail provider has blocked you. • Soft bounces, which can occur when a user’s mailbox is full or when the mail server is backed up, can be converted to a hard bounce depending on provider rules.
- 15. CAN-SPAM • Law that sets basic rules for commercial email • Common sense, including: • Don’t use misleading header info • Don’t use deceptive subject lines • Honor opt-out requests promptly • Penalty for violating
- 16. REDUCE SPAM COMPLAINTS • Use confirmed opt-in • Don’t take permission for granted • Set expectations, stay consistent • Remove inactive subscribers
- 17. DO NOT PURCHASE LISTS! • Spam traps • Non-existent email addresses • Unsuspecting recipients
- 18. SPAM TRAPS • Spam traps, also known as ‘honey pots’ are dummy email addresses set up by ISPs to detect spammers. The only way you can run into issues with spam traps is by buying a list. • According to Return Path The presence of just one spam trap can drop your deliverability rating by up to 53%
- 19. NON-EXISTENT EMAIL ADDRESSES • Campaigns with high numbers of non- existent email addresses have an average deliverability rate of 44%, according to Return Path • Over 10% is considered high
- 20. UNSUSPECTING RECIPIENTS • Unsolicited emails lead to higher spam complaint rates, because users click “Report as Spam” • Applies to inactive prospects. Use automation rules to keep your prospect lists fresh.
- 21. SPAM FILTERS • Spam filters on the recipient’s end automatically check your email for suspicious content • Server-side: Barracuda, MessageLabs, Postini, SpamAssassin • ISP filters: Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Lycos, Fastmail, Mobile Me
- 22. CONTENT TO AVOID • Forms • Javascript • Flash
- 23. OPTIMIZING YOUR CONTENT Typical email newsletter. Or spammy spam spam?
- 24. SPAM RULES ARE A PAIN. • Dear xyz • Click here • Toll-free number • ...for only $199 • Click below
- 25. BASIC SPAM RULES • Subject line needs to reflect message • DON’T SHOUT! • High text to image ratio • Avoid generic sales terms (Free! No commitment!) • Include contact information
- 26. ARGH!
- 27. FEAR NOT. • Pardot runs spam tests on your emails • Most spam rules are easy to comply with • Compliance is not all or nothing
- 28. MOBILE • In the first half of 2011, email opens in mobile email clients increased 150%! • Same spam rules apply.
- 29. RESOURCES • The Ultimate Email Deliverability Checklist • This presentation, available online • Presentation by VP of Sales Derek Grant titled “Email Deliverability 101” on the Pardot blog
- 30. QUESTIONS! AND, THANK YOU. Rob Dyson and Michael Westphal robert.dyson@pardot.com michael.westphal@pardot.com
Editor's Notes
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- - Rob, Michael, recently got Scuba certified with Reid from the Engineering team, scuba jokes\n- Along with Zach our VP of Products and Stuart our designer, we are the Product team\n\n
- - Following Derek’s lead, can you spot the winner?\n- Always been fairly ambitious\n
- - Email deliverability is a real pain. It’s enough of a challenge to send out fresh content on a regular basis.\n- You don’t want to worry about whether your recipients will ever receive your content.\n- Pardot handles most of the details for you, so you can focus on content.\n
- - There are a few other things you should know about to increase your deliverability.\n- We’ll go into each of these in a bit more detail\n
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- - goal of spam rules is to reduce unwanted solicitation\n- example of unwanted email that isn’t spam: newsletter user signed up for but is no longer interested in receiving, or perhaps they forgot they signed up for a mailing list\n- story\n
- * add info about auth, domain keys, DNS records\n- For that reason, it’s a good idea to keep your sender reputation as clean as possible. How can you do that?\n
- - Return Path recommends keeping your hard bounces under 3% of all messages sent, and your spam complaint rate under 0.1%.\n- What’s a hard bounce?\n- What’s a spam complaint rate? When a user marks a message as spam.\n
- - most rules overlap general spam rules\n
- - Let users know what they’ve signed up for, and stick to it. They’ve given you permission to send them messages, so don’t abuse it.\n- Don’t stray from the content a user has signed up for. If they signed up for your monthly newsletter, don’t start sending them weekly emails or daily deals.\n- Clean up your lists periodically, removing subscribers that haven’t interacted with your system in a while. You can do this using Pardot, we’ll talk more about that shortly.\n- Best way to keep your spam complaints low and your email reputation squeaky clean?\n
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- - The only way you can run into issues with spam traps is by buying a list.\n- By emailing a spam trap email address, you’re acknowledging your purchase of a bad list.\n
- - Lists can contain non-existent email addresses, which can affect your deliverability rates to valid email addresses because your sender reputation is negatively impacted\n- Even if you haven’t purchased a list, you should be aware that non-existent email addresses affect deliverability\n- Pardot marks prospects with non-existent email addresses so they aren’t emailed again \n
- - It goes without saying that purchasing a list will lead to higher spam complaint rates, because nobody on your list will be expecting any communication from you\n- This also applies to inactive prospects. Make sure you remove prospects that haven’t interacted with your system in a while.\n
- - How else to improve your deliverability rates? Optimize your content so that it doesn’t get caught in spam filters or go to a junk email folder.\n- Spam filters can be dedicated hardware units like the Barracuda Spam Firewall, they can be self-hosted like SpamAssasin which is an open-source Apache project, or they can be hosted like Postini, which is a Google service.\n- The rules that each spam filter uses are not readily available, with the exception of SpamAssassin’s. They publish all the rules they check, which can be helpful in improving your deliverability rates.\n
- Marketers sometimes copy and paste webpages to send as emails, including forms, javascript, and flash. On top of rendering issues, your messages are more likely to be marked as spam. Currently there are no email clients that render forms, javascript, or flash, for security reasons.\n
- - This looks like a typical newsletter. Nothing should stand out as looking ‘spammy’. However, there are a few items in this content that could prevent it from being delivered to a recipient’s inbox.\n
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- - These content rules can be frustrating. It’s difficult enough to craft valuable content on a recurring basis without having to worry about filters getting in your way.\n- Spam filters must be especially infuriating for Homer, because he only has eight fingers to type with.\n
- - You can run your content through spam tests from all the major spam filter software from within Pardot. Our software will help you pass all spam tests.\n- If you do run into spam-related issues, most are quick fixes. Change a salutation, fix up a link, remove blink tags and comic sans, that sort of thing. Just kidding, our designer Stuart recommends comic sans over all other fonts.\n- Complying with spam filters is not an all or nothing problem. Your sender reputation is based on usage over time, similar to a credit score. Hopefully not as confusing.\n
- - People are checking email on their mobile devices, whether Blackberries, iPhones, or Apple Newtons.\n- In addition to previewing your email in all of the major desktop email clients, you can see what your email will look like in all of the major mobile email clients from within Pardot too. We currently allow you to view your emails in iOS, Android, Blackberry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile email clients\n
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