Today I'm talking about the causes that can harm the admissibility of your messages
It can be said that there are at least three destinations for your email messages.
The first is the recipient's email inbox, and this should be the normal hypothesis, when everything goes well, but this is not always the case.
The other destination is the spam inbox, and this can give rise to problems in the sense that you cannot always and continuously force recipients to check the ever-changing rules adopted by email marketing services.
The rest of the messages are lost, no one knows how or where, in cyber space due to the fluidity of electronic communications.
And this is confirmed by recent statistics which have ascertained that at least 16 % of e-mail messages are lost, in the sense that if they are not on the server, if they have not reached the recipient's inbox, if they are not in their spam box and if it hasn't been returned to the sender, it must have gone somewhere, but we don't know where...
Other reasons that can invalidate an e-mail marketing campaign are messages rejected by the sender due to hard or soft bounces, for reasons such as causes related to malfunctions of the IP number, insertion of incorrect URLs in the message, blocks due to body and text contents. the subject of the message that cause software to react, such as, for example, Spam Assassin, or sending to non-existent addresses.
The first thing you need to check for the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns is to examine the average number of emails arriving at their destination or deliverability, an English term that has no direct Italian equivalent.
Once we have finally understood what deliverability is, another topic to explore is that the messages sent do not automatically go to the spam box, but that they go directly to the recipient's email inbox.
There are many tools that can help you increase the deliverability of your messages in recipients' inboxes and test whether this actually happens.
First make sure your sending server settings are correct, for example, by setting your SPF record.
Here's how Google clarifies the need to create an SPF record
We recommend that you create a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record for your domain.
An SPF record is a type of Domain Name Service (DNS) record that identifies mail servers authorized to send email on behalf of your domain.
The purpose of an SPF record is to prevent spammers from sending messages with spoofed sender addresses to your domain.
Recipients can refer to your SPF record to determine whether a message that appears to come from your domain comes from an authorized mail server.
For example, let's say your example.com domain uses Gmail. You can create an SPF record that identifies Google Apps mail servers as authorized mail servers for your domain.
When a recipient's mail server receives a message from user@example.com, it can check the SPF record for example.com to determine whether it is a valid message.
If the message comes from a server other than the Google Apps mail servers listed in the SPF record, the recipient's mail server may consider it spam and therefore reject it.
If your domain doesn't have an SPF record, some recipient domains may reject messages from your users because they can't confirm that the messages came from an authorized mail server.
Ends report from Google
Continuing on the subject of the discussion, it could happen that you are using a third-party email marketing service (such as periodic fee service providers).
However, in the latter case you have very specific limits on the amount of data you can have access to and it can be said that you have no control over the settings to be able to increase your deliverability.
Secondly you should do some testing with Spam Assassin or similar programs.
Consider first of all that the heuristic criteria for scanning the terms used in the subject or body of a message, for the purposes of attributing the spam score, vary depending on the algorithms used by each program that operates as Spam Assassin, so you cannot have the certainty that, if a message meets the score given by that software, the same message can be considered similarly by other software.
At most you will be able to set a default estimate, compared to the Spam Assassin criteria, to have at least a minimum of peace of mind regarding your deliverability and not suffer a complete block in relation to the contents of your message, even if it could happen eventually that the message may end up in the recipient's spam box.
You will have to check your IP number, and verify that it has not ended up on any blacklist.
Naturally, if you use a third-party email service, you will not be able to test all the IPs used, but you will certainly be able to send a test email message to yourself and verify the IP number actually used, obtaining it from the information relating to the message itself.
You will also need to check that the URLs inserted in the body of the message are not on a black list.
If all these conditions are met, you will be able to effectively isolate the problem of your deliverability in the context of your message and your marketing.
So at this point you can consider other tools to test any obstacles to deliverability.
Therefore, make sure that you are taking effective action to remove the causes of complaints from your members.
Subscribers who click the “I consider this a spammer” button, or similar terms, in their email programs have clearly indicated to you that they do not want your messages, and you should remove them immediately.
You must be very thorough and clear about what your subscriber will receive once they send you their name and email address.
At all costs, do not believe that you will be taken literally when you ask the visitor to enter their details in exchange for a gift.
This may be trivial for you, but not for many surfers.
Be simple and precise about the types of emails your subscribers will receive and the frequency of your mailings.
If your frequency is subject to change, it would be much better to specify this.
Keep your list clean regularly.
When a message does not reach the recipient and is returned because the address is rejected by the recipient's server, as, for example, in the case of a non-existent user or non-existent domain (so-called hard bounce), immediately remove it from your list .
If, however, the message returns for any other reason, for example, the user has exceeded the email archive quota, or the recipient's server is temporarily unavailable (so-called soft bounce), let your system ensure that the message has been rejected at least 3 times, in a relatively short period of time in relation to your sending frequency, then remove it from the list.
Your system should be able to distinguish between soft bounces and hard bounces: ArpReach (also if I don't use it anymore, because it's owner is a shark) does this job seamlessly by keeping your list clean automatically.
Never contact those who unsubscribe again!
If you offer a gift in exchange for the navigator's registration, it is still good practice to ask for confirmation of the registration with the double opt-in.
Otherwise and that is only with the single opt-in, you will be destined to receive numerous registrations with false addresses, from people who believe that the free gift will reach them immediately after registration, instead of receiving it with a message sent to the address email entered by them in the registration form.
Not to mention that on the one hand some of those addresses could also work, while on the other you would get a greater number of non-receiving addresses, and this at any server used, with the result that you could also be considered spam by any server that hosts those fake accounts.
In fact, a high percentage of emails rejected by an internet or web space supply service can lead to the blocking of your account or your domain, damaging the reputation of your IP number with numerous services.
Make a backup of your lists at least weekly or at most bi-weekly and keep the backup copy on your hard disk and on external magnetic media.
Don't try to hide the unsubscribe link from your list by placing multiple blank lines between the body of your message and that link.
Not only could this annoy those who want to unsubscribe, but many hosting services may take this as an indication of incorrect practices, and consider it against you in the case of any spam complaints.
Make sure the server you are using has sufficient capacity, during sending, to receive bounced messages at the moment the rejection occurs, and to process cancellations right at the moment you are sending messages. email messages.
If you were to make these operations difficult, with the forced use of your sending server, you could have quite a few problems, both due to complaints from users whose cancellation was unsuccessful, and from the receiving servers who they could block your accounts, domain and IP.
Likewise, you will have to be compliant and precise regarding the expectations of your subscribers when they ask you to stop your mailings.
Use split testing tools to test copywrites that may be more successful than others.
In your email account, enter, in the field assigned to replies, an email address different from the main address: in this way you will have a greater chance of being considered positively by many online service providers.
So you have to examine multiple entries to increase your deliverability, verify that your messages end up in the recipient's email inbox and not in the spam inbox and you will have to test several elements to try to isolate the problem.