20% of legitimate messages are either blocked or filtered, but delivery and spam reports can be vague and less than helpful. Deliverability expert Al Iverson breaks down industry jargon and demystifies the art of getting to the inbox.

1. All About Deliverability
Al Iverson, ExactTarget
June 25, 2013

2. Agenda
I. Introduction
II. Deliverability Landscape
III. Recommendations
IV. What to do if…?
V. Q & A

3. Deliverability Landscape

4. Deliverability: An Evolution
1990s Late ‘90s -Early 2000s Mid-to-Late 2000s 2010 - Present

5. Deliverability: ISP Challenges
• Postmaster teams can only do so much
• Automation is the way to go
• “Big data” drives most decisions
• No one gets a free pass to the inbox
• Whitelists only augment reputation results
• Senders who follow best practices don’t
necessarily need to be whitelisted

6. Deliverability: Sender Challenges
• Blocks
– Messages from a sender are not accepted by ISPs
– Typically enforced on senders with very bad practices
• Deferrals
– Rate limits are placed on connections from a sender
– Applied to sources with unknown or little reputation
• Spam-filtered
– Most or all messages are delivered to recipients’ spam folder
– Applied to “gray mail,” i.e., legitimate messages with low recipient
appeal

7. Recommendations
Best practices for thriving in this environment

8. What Should Senders Do?
1)Permission is key
2)Build and manage reputation
3)Focus on engagement

9. Permission: Opt-in or Go Home
• No list purchases, co-registrations, or
email appends
• No implicit subscriptions
• Improve online and offline collection
of email addresses
• Set expectations, reiterate value proposition
• Consider a confirmed (aka double) opt-in
process or real-time/post validation

10. Permission: Benefits
• Minimizes possibility of being blocked or
blacklisted
• Reduces likelihood of increased complaints or
spamtrap hits
• Easier to resolve if deliverability issues do arise

11. Reputation Management: Key Drivers
Complaints List Hygiene Authentication
Permanence Content Engagement
Spamtrap Hits

12. Reputation Management: The Equation

13. Reputation Management: Email Authentication
• Utilize SPF and DKIM
– Lets receivers know that email from a brand’s domain come from
authorized sources
• Fights against spoofing, aka phishing
– Look into DMARC if you’re facing spoofing issues
• Domain identity also ties to sender reputation
– Prepares senders for the developing area of domain-based
reputation tracking and certification solutions

14. Reputation Management: Feedback Loops
spam complaint

15. Engagement: The New Black
• The latest reputation data point
• Tracks message telemetry on a per-user level
• If your reputation and content are good, user
engagement (or lack thereof) can still trip you
• Correct cadence and compelling content should be
the cornerstones of your campaigns

16. Engagement: Recommendations
• Encourage interactivity: Clicks & Replies
• Develop a Subscriber Lifecycle Management
strategy
• Yahoo! & Gmail can tell who open and click, so
focus your sending efforts on those who are
opening and clicking
– More engagement = Better chance of inbox placement
• Send less often or stop sending to subscribers
who never open or click

17. What do I do if…?

18. SpamAssassin
• SpamAssassin is free and open source
• Widely used, but not by tier 1 ISPs (but even so…)
• Scoring system: 5+ = spam
• See http://spamassassin.apache.org/
• Some rules “fairly obvious” as to why triggered;
others nearly inscrutable
• Google is your best friend when trying to decipher
rules

19. SpamAssassin

20. Microsoft Outlook

21. Microsoft Outlook
• Be careful about link wrapping.
<a href="http://www.cnn.com">www.yahoo.com</a>
^^^ This would cause an issue, note domains not matching.
• Test the subject line. Avoid <brackets>, gappy
S.P.E.L.L.I.N.G, email@addresses, excessive
punctuation.
• Test body content: Break into chunks, test separately.
Which ones pass, which ones fail?
• Check for delivery issues at Hotmail/Live/Outlook.com

22. Others

23. Questions?