A clean list of quality, opt-in subscribers is worth its weight in gold in the email world. Keeping your list current and free of invalid email addresses will ultimately lead to improved email deliverability. Managing your bounces is one way to do this. Read on for the steps you can take to keep your list clean and up-to-date.

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In September, we featured a post about three ways to improve email deliverability. The feedback from our users regarding this article has been great and we have been able to help many people with their setup over the past month. However, in many cases, interested clients have not been able to modify their DNS, because either they could not get past the barriers presented by their networking staff or because they didn’t have access to their DNS.

I’ve thought about this problem and tested a solution with a couple of clients with very positive results. This solution was to register the client a new domain and used the very inexpensive mail and DNS services provided by today’s top registrars. In this particular example, I will use godaddy.com, but you are free to use any domain registering company you wish. Some of the other good ones are register.com and dotster.com.

In this specific situation, our client, ABC Company, needed to register a domain name for use in their Friendly From Email Address for email marketing. ABC Company decided to register the name abcCompany-news.com. Basically they just appended “-news” to the end of the existing domain. This keeps the name recognition to your subscribers and is something more friendly than the typical ESP type of domain you see in many places. After registering this name and setting up the DNS and email, they switched their Friendly From Email Address on their next campaign to use donotreply@abcCompany-news.com. They were very happy with the overall improvement in deliverability and are happy to have easy access to the account to collect bounces and challenges.

One word of warning: when you agree to use one of the large registrars, you must be able to backup the source of your subscribers. If you use that domain to send questionable emails and someone complains, you will be shut down and possibly fined. Over several hundreds of thousands of emails that went out in this case, one person complained to the registrar. The registrar contacted the client and asked for clarification. Luckily, our client kept good records and was able to respond with the detail of exactly how and when the subscriber opted into their list.

Now I’m going to walk you through step by step of registering a new domain name and setting up email and DNS. In our example, we are going to register the domain name bsffactorydirect.com.

Step 1: Go to godaddy.com, search for your domain name and register it. During the checkout process, be sure to include Email Hosting during your check process. As you see below, for a whopping investment of $22.18, I now have a new domain name and email hosting ready to go.

Step 2: Once your account is setup, log into your account with the information that godaddy.com provides. You will see a link for “Host and Email” where you can configure your email. This will launch godaddy’s email setup. Click on the “Add” email button and fill out the simple form they give you. I created an account called “donotreply”. I left everything default except for creating an auto-responder, as this is an unmonitored email account. You can use your favorite email client to send and receive email form this account. Refer to the godaddy documentation on the how-to.

Step 3: Setup your DNS with a SPF record and an A record. First step is to make your new domain name point to your corporate website. The first record in your DNS is called an A (Host). This is what controls where your name points. Click the Edit button and type in the IP address of your corporate site (this is the hardest part, I promise).

You are almost there! At this point, you’ll need to contact Blue Sky Factory support if you haven’t already to have us create a SPF record and Domain Key for you. Once you get that information from us, set up your SPF record first. Godaddy offers a “SPF Wizard” but that is actually more complicated than it needs to be. Instead, simply click on “Add New TXT Record” and in the TXT Name field enter a “@” character. Then in the TXT Value field, enter the SPF record we supplied you with, which will look something like: v=spf1 a mx ip4:69.63.151.0/24 ~all. Step 4: With the information from Blue Sky Factory, you are also now ready to set up your Domain Key. This step looks a little scary, but just follow the step-by-step instructions here and you will be fine. In the email you receive from Blue Sky Factory, you will be given the entries you need to add as TXT entries just as you did in the step above. Below are some examples of what these TXT entries will look like:

Click on “Add New TXT Record” again. For the TXT Name, enter “_domainkey” and for the value type in “o=~”.

Then, click to add another TXT record. For the value field, take the entry from your email (example from above is “factorydirect._domainkey.bsffactorydirect.com”) and copy all the text up to the “.” after “_domainkey” (factorydirect._domainkey) and use that for your TXT Name. Your TXT Value is the big long funny looking string without the “\”. Godaddy’s DNS doesn’t like the “\” so just leave it out – other ISP’s may allow its use.

And that’s it! I can now use donotreply@bsffactorydirect.com as the Friendly From in my Publicaster campaigns, and I’ve set up three new TXT entries - one for the SPF record and two for Domain Keys. Trust me, after you do this one time it will be much quicker to do the next time.

Does this sound a little daunting to you or are you having trouble finding your IP address? Feel free to contact bsfsupport@blueskyfactory.com with any questions you have about this and we will be happy to walk you through this process.

Deliverability has been a hot topic lately. There are a few things that can be done to improve your overall deliverability, specifically setting up SPF, SenderID and Domain Keys. The water has been muddied regarding these topics and an in-depth discussion is well beyond what will be discussed below. However, I would like to hit on some of the key points of why they are totally worth your time to setup. With just a few simple DNS entries, we have seen deliverability to certain ISPs improve from 10 – 20%.

As you all know, it is a constant struggle for legitimate email marketers to separate themselves from the droves of evil spammers. ISPs try their best to differentiate SPAM from email that their users want to receive (remember, ISPs view SPAM as email their users don’t want). However, given the volume of email ISPs receive and lengths spammers go through to disguise their content, it is very difficult for the ISPs to get it perfect.

I would like to tell you that all ISPs got together in a giant love fest and agreed on a way to prove a certain piece of email was actually sent by you. That would make all our lives much much easier. However, it’s not the case.

Instead, three basic methods (SPF, SenderID and Domain Keys) were adopted to help you communicate to the ISPs that the email is in fact from you. The only thing they all have in common is that they require a simple TXT entry into a DNS server. Think of a DNS as the phonebook of the internet. If you own a domain name (ex. mydomainname.com), all the information the geeks need to do stuff is contained in the DNS. If you own a domain name, then you have a DNS server.

Let’s take a quick look at how each of the different techniques tries to accomplish their task.

First, let’s go over SPF/SenderID. For the the sake of this conversation SPF and SenderID are the same, as SenderID is merely Microsoft’s verison of SPF.

When you send an email from Publicaster, you specify in your campaign the Friendly From Address, which is the email address recipients will see the email came from. Publicaster then takes this information, puts it into the raw email message and sends it off to the ISP. Once your email comes into the mail server for an ISP, four things occur:

1. The ISP looks at the email which is sent from our email server and determines that it came from Publicaster. This information is stored in the inner workings of how email is transferred from server to server.

2. The ISP determines that the email is supposed to be from the Friendly From Address.

3. Next, the ISP looks to your DNS server and basically asks the question, “Is Publicaster allowed to send email on your behalf?”

4. Then your DNS server responds back with a Yes, No or Maybe. What you want is to make sure of is that the answer is Yes!

The third method, Domain Keys, tries to do the same thing as SPF, but it requires that your email have an electronic signature. No need to worry, Publicaster handles all that for you. With Domain Keys, rather than just looking at the Friendly From Address on which to base its decision, the ISP takes the signature contained in the email and pulls from your DNS another special entry. Some mathematical hocus pocus is performed and the ISP can tell if this message is from a legitimate source.

Now I have painted some really broad strokes here, but the common theme is that two simple entries need to be made into the DNS server for the domain you are using to send mail. Once made, the deliverability should improve dramatically.

Blue Sky Factory can help you through this process as one of the services we perform for you. Email bsfsupport@blueskyfactory.com or contact your account manager and we will get you all setup and walk you through any DNS modifications.

Over the next few months, I will talk some more about the technical why and how of Domain Keys and SPF. I will also try to start some discussions on IP reputation and why it’s as important as content.

Earlier this week Bulldog Solutions hosted a great webinar on email deliverability for lead generation. Expert panelists for the event included Stephanie Miller from Return Path, Michelle Eichner of Pivotal Veracity, and Ryan Rutan from National Instruments. The presentation included questions from the audience, pre-submitted and live, about all facets of email deliverability, including:

• The email marketing landscape
• Mobile viewing of emails
• Strategies for getting into the Inbox
• Standard metrics
• Creative message considerations

You can check out the webcast of this event with the original slides and recording by clicking here.

We are happy to announce the release of our latest white paper: “Understanding and Maximizing Deliverability.” The paper is an educational overview of the key issues surrounding email deliverability today. The document is written in an digestable, easy to read format, and designed to be a resourceful tool for all marketers. Below, is a brief excerpt of the executive summary, to get a copy of the full white paper please contact us by clicking here.