I often get asked as I am talking to perspective customers, “What do you do to make sure our email goes into the inbox?”.  It’s a valid question and really the number one concern for the people who are coming to us looking for help.  It isn’t until they start experiencing deliverability problems that they start looking for a managed SMTP relay service like Email On-Demand.

Based on our experience here are 5 key components that are critical in providing good deliverability for bulk email and consistently getting into the Inbox:

1. Sending Rules – most if not all of the large ISPs have specific limits as to how many connections and number of messages per connection they will accept from a single IP address.  By not obeying these limits you can get into trouble quickly. These limits change periodically as well so you need to keep on top of the changes.
2. Email Authentication – having properly formatted SPF DNS records, SenderID, DomainKeys and DKIM in place so an ISP can validate your identity as a sender helps build trust with the ISP.
3. Accredited IP Addresses –  having your IP address(es) on an accredited list that is leveraged by the ISPs helps build additional trust with the ISP.  SuretyMail and ReturnPath are 2 good ones.
4. Remove Bad Email Addresses and Complainers – two things that can really hurt deliverability is passing too many bad email addresses or having too many people complain about your email and categorize it as spam.  Immediately removing these addresses from your email lists will help ensure good deliverability.
5. Only Send Email to People Who Have Opted-In to Receive Your Specific Email – sending to purchased or rented lists, old lists, borrowed lists, collected feed lists, etc… WILL harm your reputation and adversely effect your deliverability GUARANTEED!

We’ve found at SocketLabs that we can manage and control 1 thru 4 but, we need the cooperation of our customers to manage and control #5.  There are no shortcuts to good deliverability!

Running an email delivery service keeps us constantly on the alert for people trying send spam. I have been figuring out that I can pretty much tell if someone is going to be trouble with their first sentence or two.

Here are the top 10 indications that someone might be a spammer:

10. They refer to SpamCop (or even ReturnPath) as the Internet mafia – and are pretty emotional about it.

9. They refer to sending email as “blasting”.

8. They use profanity. i.e. F&*#ing yahoo is blocking my email.

7. They refuse to openly give out information about themselves or their business and use a freemail address.

6. When you ask for their web site address, they have a big explanation.

5. Any email they send you goes into YOUR spam folder.

4. They use the word “leads” or “acquisition”.

3. They are not afraid to throw wads of cash your way. (lots of money and no place to spend it)

2. They are eating (and chewing sloppily) while on the phone with you.

and finally…

1. They lead the conversation with: “I’m fixin’ to send me some email.”

This is funny and sad, but absolutely true as well. A good portion of our time is used to vet out the numerous new customers that come our way and determine who is acceptable and who is not.

By keeping only the cleanest of senders we are able to provide spectacular deliverability rates for our customers.

Gotta go, someone is on the phone who needs to send 5 million messages today. : )

Follow me on Twitter: @johnalessi