1. Navigating the Murky
Waters of Email
Deliverability

2. Agenda
1. The Deliverability Challenge
2. The Causes
3. The Solution
4. The New New Wrinkle
5. Monitoring Your Deliverability

3. The Spam Folder

4. Old New Rule
Measure byThe Spam Folder
Avoid Campaign/Program
NEW New Rule
Measure by Subscriber Lifespan
Even The Inbox Has Layers

5. Images Defaulting Off

6. Prioritization & Sweep

7. What’s Going On?

8. ISPs Make Decisions
Spam/Junk
Bulk Folders
Inbox
Rejected
Not Delivered
nor Rejected

9. …And They May Change Over Time
Message Result
1st Inbox
2nd Inbox
3rd Spam folder
4th Spam folder
5th Spam folder
6th Rejected
7th Rejected
8th Rejected
9th Twilight Zone
10th and on Twilight Zone

10. The Delivery Challenge
• ISPs are constantly evaluating all incoming messages
• They make decisions and deliver (or not!) to the inbox
• Their decisions may change at any time
ISPs’ #1 goal is to keep their
customers happy

11. Agenda
1. The Deliverability Challenge
2. The Causes
3. The Solution
4. The Scary Part
5. Monitoring Your Deliverability

12. Causes of Deliverability Problems
• Content
• Configuration
• Complaints
• Undeliverables
• Spam Traps

13. CAUSE: Your Content
Junk E-mail Filter Adult Content Filter
First 8 characters of From are digits Subject contains " xxx"
Subject contains "advertisement" Subject contains "over 18"
Body contains "money back " Subject contains "over 21"
Body contains "cards accepted" Subject contains "adult s"
Body contains "removal instructions" Subject contains "adults only"
Body contains "extra income" Subject contains "be 18"
Subject contains "!" AND Subject contains "$" Subject contains "18+"
Subject contains "!" AND Subject contains "free" Body contains "over 18"
Body contains ",000" AND Body contains "!!" Body contains "over 21"
AND Body contains "$" Body contains "must be 18"
Body contains "Dear friend" Body contains "adults only"
Body contains "for free?" Body contains "adult web"
Body contains "for free!" Body contains "must be 21"
Body contains "SPECIAL PROMOTION" Body contains "adult en"
Body contains "one-time mail" Body contains "18+"
Subject contains "$$" Subject contains "erotic"
Body contains " Subject contains "adult en"
Body contains "order today" Subject contains " sex"
Body contains "order now!" Body contains " xxx "
Body contains "money-back guarantee" Body contains " xxx!"
Body contains "100% satisfied" Subject contains "free" AND Subject contains
To contains "friend@" "adult"
To contains "public@" Subject contains "free" AND Subject contains
etc! "sex"

14. Old New Rule
Measure by Campaign/Program
Watch Your Content
NEW New Rule
Measure by Subscriber Lifespan
Content Isn‟t The Problem

15. CAUSE: Your Configuration
• valid, meaningful, non-generic reverse
DNS records.
• DKIM Sender ID
• No insecure relays
• No more than 500 simultaneous
connections
• No retransmit after certain SMTP
response codes

16. CAUSE: Complaints
Complaint rates are watched very closely!

18. CAUSE: Undeliverables
• Over 30% of your
customers will change their
email address this year.
• Repeated sends to an
undeliverable address is the
behavior of a spammer

19. CAUSE: Spam Traps
• Seemingly valid email addresses used to
identify unsolicited email
• Didn‟t recently opt in to your offer nor click
any links
If you send mail to a spam trap,
you look like a spammer and may
be treated as one!

20. Two Types of Spam Traps
• Created
– Brand new email address
– Invented solely for the purpose of being a spamtrap
– Seeded in a list or posted on a website so it can be „scraped‟
• Recycled
– Former email address of a real person, now abandoned
– Held in quarantine for 1+ yrs, during that time it bounces
– Reactivated as spamtrap

21. Spam Trap Operators
• ISPs
• For-profit co‟s selling spam-filtering services
• Nonprofits and volunteer projects
• Individual anti-spam vigilantes

22. How Many Spam Traps Are There?

23. Spam Traps
Specific Addresses
psbltrap@kernelnewbies.nl
kevinn822@aol.com
foceisahnienoowo@oucs.ox.ac.uk
james.napier@gte.net
Entire Domains
@ebt1.com
@mediaone.net
@matthewremovemcdonald.com

24. Agenda
1. The Deliverability Challenge
2. The Causes
3. The Solution
4. The Scary Part
5. Monitoring Your Deliverability

25. Old New Rule
Measure by Campaign/Program
Get Whitelisted and Stop Worrying
NEW New Rule
Measure by Subscriber Lifespan
Keep Worrying

27. Your Content
Just watch the basics:
– Use a consistent look / feel
– Avoid typos & sloppy grammar
– Avoid forms / invasive questions / excessive
urgency
– Avoid attachments, especially .exe
– Properly format your HTML

28. Your Configuration
Should be OK if:
– You use a reputable ESP or
– Your internal tech team
does their homework

29. Your Configuration
http://postmaster.aol.com/
http://postmaster.msn.com/
http://postmaster.yahoo.com

30. Causes of Deliverability Problems
• Content (easy to fix)
• Configuration (easy to fix)
• Complaints
• Undeliverables
Current &
• Spam Traps Historical
“Reputation”

31. Avoid Complaints
Understand complaint triggers:
– Unexpected content
– Unexpected frequency
– Sloppy list management
• Difficult (or nonexistent) unsubscribe
• Not honoring unsubscribes
– Unexpected changes

32. Avoid Undeliverables
Get Serious About
List Cleanup!

33. • Clean Up Your List
– Define “undeliverable”
– Define “inactive”
– Remove undeliverables & inactives routinely
• Manually review your list
• Do quarterly list audits
• Re-engage or re-opt-in your entire list

34. List Audit

36. Avoid Spam Traps
• No scraping
• No list purchases
Make sure 100% of your list
volunteered their email address
to you!

37. Agenda
1. The Deliverability Challenge
2. The Causes
3. The Solution
4. The New New Wrinkle
5. Monitoring Your Deliverability

39. Spam Traps are a Spammers Problem
Spam Traps are Everyone‟s Problem

40. Remember This Slide?
They all operate blacklists

41. What’s A Blacklist?

42. Blacklist

43. Blacklist
• Might List Your…
– Sending IP
– Sending domain
– Domain in links
– Domain hosting images
• Why?
– You send spam or
– You accidentally messaged a spamtrap

45. How Did It Happen?

46. How Did It Happen?
1) Bad List Source or Bad Luck
• Bought/traded lists
• Scraped the web
• Came in through a vendor (bad append, bad lead gen, etc.)
• Customer made typo
2) Bad List Management
• Didn‟t pull out bouncing email addresses

47. How Did It Happen?
3) Poisioned
a. Spammer figures out a real spam trap
b. Spammer deliberately registers that address everywhere
c. Legit marketers now have spam trap on their list & message it
d. Marketer, ESP and spam trap provider argue over what happened
• Trust in spam trap provider undermined
• Spammer wins

48. Remember
• Spam traps & spam trap
providers aren‟t „evil‟
• We all benefit from the
filtering services they
provide

50. When You Hit A Spam Trap
Alternatives…
• Dump your entire list and start again
• Re-opt in every address
• Segment, test, segment, test, segment, test, segment,
test, segment, test, segment, test…
• Hire a vendor to scrub
• Ignore It

51. Agenda
1. The Deliverability Challenge
2. The Causes
3. The Solution
4. The New New Wrinkle
5. Monitoring Your Deliverability

52. Seeding
• Add additional addresses to your mailing list
representing your top domains
• Sign into these „seed‟ accounts to confirm
successful receipt of your messages

53. Seeding
Useful as indicator, but small sample size

54. Seeding
Full Deployment Observation

55. You can do it yourself!

56. The Process
• ID your top domains
• Observe activity by domain
– Bounce rates
– Click through rates
– Unsubscribe rates
– Open rates
• Look for outliers

57. Observing Bounces
Domain Messaged Bounces Bounce %
AOL.COM 438,356 2,972 0.68%
YAHOO.COM 395,417 2,145 0.54%
HOTMAIL.COM 264,228 1,725 0.65%
MSN.COM 64,037 384 0.60%
COMCAST.NET 44,195 43,497 98.42%
SBCGLOBAL.NET 37,901 89 0.23%
BELLSOUTH.NET 28,988 57 0.20%
EARTHLINK.NET 26,078 2 0.01%
JUNO.COM 25,921 127 0.49%
VERIZON.NET 21,750 91 0.42%
• Comcast.net refusing your emails
• Earthlink.net throwing out your emails

58. Observing Clicks
Domain Delivered Clicks Click %
AOL.COM 408,636 16,942 4.1%
YAHOO.COM 373,959 469 0.1%
HOTMAIL.COM 246,974 12,851 5.2%
MSN.COM 60,196 4,691 7.8%
SBCGLOBAL.NET 37,002 1,478 4.0%
BELLSOUTH.NET 28,410 1,032 3.6%
EARTHLINK.NET 26,059 897 3.4%
JUNO.COM 24,643 1,929 7.8%
VERIZON.NET 20,838 794 3.8%
COMCAST.NET 697 48 6.9%
You are landing in Yahoo.com’s Bulk Folder!

59. Full Deployment Observation
Domain Has A… Conclusion
High Bounce Rate Rejected
Low Bounce Rate “Twilight Zone”
Low Click/Unsub Rate Spam Folder
Low Open Rate Spam Folder or Image Suppression
Spam/Junk
Bulk
Folders Rejected
Not Delivered nor Rejected

61. Takeaways…
• Causes of Deliverability Problems
– Content
– Configuration
– Complaints
– Undeliverables
– Spam Traps
• It Might Happen To You
– Stay Calm
– Have a Plan
• Establish Monitoring

62. QUESTIONS?

63. Contact Information
• Karen Talavera
• Synchronicity Marketing (www.synchronicitymarketing.com)
• Email: karen@synchronicitymarketing.com
• Phone: (561) 967-9665
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/SynchronicityMarketing
• Twitter: @SyncMarketing
• Austin Bliss
• FreshAddress (www.freshaddress.com)
• Email: austin@freshaddress.com
• Phone: (617) 965-4500
• Twitter: @FreshAddress