For years we have been telling our wonderful clients (and any other email marketers willing to listen) that in order to be successful with your email campaigns, you need to send timely, expected, and relevant email.

While this still holds true, we are going to add a new word to our vocabulary: engaged.  Get to know it, live it, and love it.  Otherwise, you may find yourself on the short end of your email deliverability.

ISP Changes

“What?” you say.  Well, the ISPs that accept the email you send are starting to change the rules a little, and they are going to start tightening the reins on your email deliverability.  In other words, the large ISPs are starting to measure the engagement of subscribers with your emails.  (How are they doing this?  Well, for now let’s just say it’s magic.)  So if a user has opted-in to your emails – but never opens or clicks on links – your email stands a good chance of being bulked!  This can be some scary stuff.

Subscriber Engagement

It’s no longer going to be enough to send permission-based email.  It’s time to focus – even more than before – on sending to targeted, engaged subscribers.  This means you’ll also need to stop sending to those who are not interacting with your email communications.

I guess this really isn’t news if you already send timely, expected, and relevant emails because your subscribers are already interacting with you.  If this is the case, then keep doing what you’re doing.

Our Advice

To the rest of you: our best advice is to start targeting and focusing your email campaigns on those subscribers who are engaging with your messages.  Here at Blue Sky Factory we are working to help you measure a subscriber’s engagement behind the scenes in Publicaster.  Stay tuned for details!  In the meantime, contact your client services manager with questions about engagement or your email marketing strategy.

Ken Pfeiffer
Director of Deliverability, Blue Sky Factory

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When it comes to planning your email campaigns, think inside the box.  Give your subscribers what they want.  Learn more about email deliverability & subscriber engagement today.

Any sound, strategic email marketing program starts with permission – for both legal and best practice reasons. Honoring your subscribers’ preferences is critical to good email delivery and overall reputation.

At Blue Sky Factory, we were fortunate enough to have a permission-based email marketing guru, Dr. Steve Lucas, join us for our June 30th webinar in the Blue Sky Factory Webinar Series (listen to webinar). Dr. Steve is a 25-year veteran in the information technology industry (specific areas include database marketing, security, privacy, and ecommerce).

During the webinar, attendees asked many valuable questions about permission-based email marketing. Unfortunately, due to time, we were unable to answer every question. Below are the answers to a few we missed. (Note: These are short summaries. Please contact us for more detail.)

Question 1 : What defines reputation?

In reputation-based filtering, senders are graded on their practices and assigned a reputation score based on several variables, such as complaint rates, volume of mail sent, and response to unsubscribe requests. These factors are typically used by anti spam filters to determine overall email reputation:

• The number of complaints that are often generated by recipients marking the email as spam.
• The percentage of mail sent to nonexistent email addresses (bounces).
• The frequency with which mail hits spam traps (email accounts set up to monitor spam).
• Unsubscribe performance, which includes how quickly a recipient is unsubscribed. Reputation will suffer a major impact if opt-out requests are ignored.
• Volume and frequency, which can have either a positive or negative impact. Reputation can be a function of how frequently email is sent, how much mail is sent, and the resulting complaints, bounces, etc.

In addition, the privacy, security, and trust have an impact from a business perspective. For example, after the TJ Maxx data breach, many customers opted out of receiving their advertisements due to the recipients’ perception that TJ Maxx now had a poor reputation in relation to their ability to manage their data securely.

Question 2 : With our particular email marketing software, if someone opted out of one type of communication it was opting them out of all messages. Are we allowed to contact them and let them know they opted out of everything? (i.e. a state chapter executive opts out of fundraising email, but no longer receives any executive messages, weekly email, etc.)

The most effective way to address this problem is to assign a unique identifier to your opt-out link and to have separate reply-to email addresses for each unique communication or campaign. In addition, many organizations have a central opt website where the recipient is given the option of opting out of individual promotions or all promotions. This is legal under the CAN-SPAM Act. You cannot require them to provide any information regarding why they are opting out in order to have their request processed, but you can provide multiple options for opting out of your separate promotions. As far as contacting them after they request an opt-out, it is not good practice to contact them again with a call-to-action of any kind. However, if you have a system that can process individual opt-outs for unique campaigns, you can send them a confirmation email acknowledging that you have received their opt-out and remind them about what campaigns they had signed up for, acknowledge that they choose to opt-out of all of them, and provide them with a method to re-opt-in if they want to receive any of the other promotions. You still must provide the option of a global opt-out unless each promotion is sent from a separate division of the company.

Question 3 : For B2B companies that send emails to recipients at work, do the regulations change (e.g. stricter) or are they the same as sending to consumers?

The regulations do not change in terms of laws and regulations in the United States. If you have a prior business relationship with them, you can send them emails regarding products and services they have purchased from you in the past without any opt-in or prior permission. If you feel comfortable with the prior relationship you developed, it is always best to ask for permission to continue sending to them. This does not have to be a confirmed opt-in since this is considered an administrative/transactional email. By letting your potential B2B email recipients know you will be sending them email, it will allow them to take whatever steps are necessary to whitelist the email address on the mail server/spam filter and also in their own email client so you will have a better chance of delivery and less chance of a blacklisting by the recipient’s business email server. Internationally, it is more complex, so be aware of the laws in the country/region you are working in.

If you have any questions about permission-based email marketing, please contact us.  For more detailed information, I recommend listening to Dr. Steve’s webinar, “Permission-Based Email Marketing: Privacy, Preferences & Best Practices”.

Ken Pfeiffer
Director of Technology

According to renowned author and marketer Seth Godin, recipients want to receive marketing communication that is personal, relevant, and anticipated. In this era of customer relationship marketing, it’s even more important for companies to go beyond CAN-SPAM compliance and create trust-based email marketing programs.

Join Blue Sky Factory for a special webinar, “Permission-Based Email Marketing: Privacy, Preferences & Best Practices”, as Dr. Steve Lucas, Chief Compliance Officer at EDGE Web Hosting and one of the CAN-SPAM Act authors, discusses permission-based email marketing. Dr. Lucas will provide invaluable information to email marketers based on six core elements of a trust-based approach – permission, privacy, reputation, preferences, expectations, and compliance.

Attendees will learn:

- Key requirements of CAN-SPAM
- Best practices for acquiring permission from subscribers
- How to ensure and manage email compliance
- How to maintain a trust-focused reputation
- Other key knowledge and tips for email marketers, including privacy policies and managing subscribers’ expectations

This webinar is taking place Tuesday, June 30 from 3:00 to 3:45 PM.

Click here to register. Hope to see you there!

A few months ago, I wrote a blog post about the growing importance of role accounts. To recap, role accounts are abuse@ and postmaster@ email accounts that people would typically use to speak with someone who is deemed to be authoritative for a domain. To find out why it is extremely important to have role accounts set up, how people use them, and how to make the most of them once they are set up, click here.

Yesterday I talked about whitelisting and blacklisting – what they are and how to use them. Greylisting is where many of the questions from Blue Sky Factory clients are coming from, and I want to discuss greylists in more detail.

Greylists: A greylist isn’t really a list per se, but rather a method of not accepting an email the first time from a sender. Let me explain how email servers communicate. My email server talks to your email server when it wants to send you a message. In a perfect situation, my server tells your server, “I have a message for Betty.” Your email server replies, “I know Betty, we’ll take the message.” I send the message, and your server thanks me nicely. The transmission is now complete. Even in perfect situations, if your mail server is a little too busy taking in other mail, it may tell me to try again later. My mail server will then try again in about 15 minutes, and will try over and over again – for up to 23 hours – before I finally give up and stop trying to send.

When you initially send to your email server, greylisting means the server will basically say, “I don’t want your email now; try me again in 10 minutes.” This is done (on purpose) around the premise that most spammers using a zombie or a BOT will never try to resend that email, but a true mail server will resend the email (as mentioned above). After 15 minutes when I resend the email, the server that does greylisting will then add my IP addresses or return path to an internal list that will, in the future, allow email transfers for first time acceptance (usually most greylists expire the first acceptance after some small window of time).

From an email marketing perspective, there is nothing to worry about if a subscriber’s mail server greylists. Email will most likely be a little delayed in getting to them, but they will eventually receive the email (all other things being equal). Where my biggest problem with greylisting comes in is for transactional types of emails. Typically they are generated from a program that just does a straight one-time send. This is the one major drawback of greylisting that has caused organizations much pain. Another issue with greylisting is for email senders with older servers because their servers may not be capable of resending an email. Luckily not many places use greylisting – though it does rear its head from time to time.

If you have additional questions on greylisting, feel free to contact us at bsfinfo@blueskyfactory.com. If you’re already a Blue Sky Factory client, please contact your account manager.

We have recently received a lot of questions from customers on greylisting and how it affects their email campaigns. I thought I would take this opportunity to write on this topic and try my best to define the different lists and what purpose each one serves.

First, there is no formal definition of whitelisting, blacklisting, or greylisting. Everyone who receives email has their own interpretation of what they are or how to implement their usage. Therein lies our dilemma. We can give clients a general guideline, but there are no rules set in stone for what these lists are or how they work across email receivers. Over a two part series, I will do my best to break down and highlight the things that matter the most for email marketers. Today we will start with whitelisting and blacklisting, and will continue on tomorrow to discuss greylisting.

Whitelists: At the end of the day, whitelists are a good thing for email marketers. They offer a way to help ensure that your email will be accepted by the receiving mail server and ultimately delivered to the subscriber’s inbox. Whitelists come in all shapes and sizes. Some are used internally to allow certain traffic to always be accepted, and others are public – meaning an organization will “certify” that the mail is not from a spammer. An example of a public whitelist is Sender Score Certification from Return Path.

Most major ISP’s also provide whitelisting, but not in the traditional method mentioned above. Typically, an ISP will allow an ESP to be on their whitelist. This means the ISP will know to expect a heavier volume of traffic coming from the IP addresses registered, and it also allows the ISP to take any complaints and forward them back to the ESP for removal.

Blacklists: In short, you want to avoid blacklists. A blacklist is a list of domains and IPs that, if listed, your email will face a greater challenge getting delivered to your subscriber’s inbox. Blacklists can be implemented differently, and it’s up to the organization using the blacklist to either reject the mail out right or maybe apply a higher level of content filtering to the email if there is a hit on the blacklist.

There are literally thousands of blacklists in the world today. Probably the two most widely known and heavily used blacklists are SpamHaus and what is commonly referred to as the multi list.

To make the most of your email marketing campaigns, it’s important to communicate with your email service provider to ensure you are set up on a whitelist (and also to make sure you’re not blacklisted!). Contact your ESP if you’re unsure of whether you’re on a whitelist or if you want to learn more about the topic. Your ESP’s job is to help you make the most of your email marketing activities, and ensuring a high rate of deliverability for clients should be a priority for them. If you’re a Blue Sky Factory client and have additional questions contact your account manager and we’ll be happy to help!

Stay tuned for the scoop on greylisting tomorrow.

The IT Department here at Blue Sky Factory has some exciting news, and we want to share!

Blue Sky Factory clients that participate in Sender Score Certification (SSC) will now have delivery benefits when sending to Yahoo! Mail. Considering most mailing lists are comprised of a large percentage of Yahoo! subscribers, this is very welcome news. Coming in the near future, our SSC clients will also enjoy enabled image and links at Yahoo!. With all of the SSC program benefits there really isn’t any reason not to be enrolled. Contact your account manager today for details.

To add to the good news, Yahoo! has reopened their feedback loop program. This means that our clients using domain keys can now be accepted into the Yahoo! feedback loop. If you are one of these clients, we will need your help when enrolling you into the program. Upon enrolling, a notification email will be sent to one of your role accounts (abuse@ or postmaster@) that contains a link. You must click the link to verify that you have control over that domain. That’s all you need to do, and we’ll take care of the rest! If you have questions about role accounts or need a refresher, click here for more information. We encourage you to set up role accounts as a best practice.

A wise man once said, “The only constant is change.” This couldn’t be more true for the world of email. Back in the good old days, email deliverability was often determined by your subject line or spammy words used in your content. Change one or two words and “Poof!” you’re in the inbox.  Now things aren’t so simple. ISP’s no longer rely on any one single factor in determining if your email is spam or a legitimate email. 

If you put some planning into your sending patterns and communicate consistently, you will find your deliverability to be greatly improved. For more tips on building relationships with ISP’s, click here.

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Each day email marketing becomes increasingly sophisticated. From MTA throttling techniques to data marts, the email marketing space has changed tremendously over the past few years. There are still basic building blocks to email marketing that the customer controls and needs to ensure are setup. Role accounts are one of those basic items that every person who engages in email marketing needs to setup and actively monitor. A role account is nothing more than an abuse@ and postmaster@ email account for the domain you use in your “From” email addresses.

Some users will not use your unsubscribe links and just forward their unsubscribe request to one or both of the role accounts. It’s important that you setup these accounts and actively check them. Another best practice with your role accounts is to register them with Abuse.net. Many ISP’s and blacklisting organizations want to see legitimate mailers with listings in this database. It helps to show you are not trying to hide where complaints should be sent.

Adding role accounts is very easy. Make sure your domain has them and that someone is actively monitoring these accounts.

We would like to officially announce that development of the next version of Publicaster is underway. Since its development, we have received a lot of great feedback on Publicaster 6.0 from our users. We have incorporated that feedback into what we think will be the pinnacle of online marketing tools.

Publicaster 7.0 will not just be about email. This new version will also offer various other distribution channels to our clients, such as RSS, blog, TXT and podcasts. In addition to this, we are redesigning our existing infrastructure to allow for tremendous scalability and personalization. We are also tightly integrating with delivery assurance tools to help maximize our clients’ inbox placement.

There is much more to come that we know will be of remarkable value to our clients. Keep an eye out as we are planning a beta launch of Publicaster 7.0 at the beginning of 2008. If you would like to be considered to become a beta tester, please email bsfsupport@blueskyfactory.com.