Once you’ve decided to integrate email marketing into your overall advertising campaign, you certainly want to get your money’s worth.
While it’s tempting to buy email lists to supplement the list you’re generating from your opt-in collection efforts, buying an email list is the best single way to blow deliverability rates all to smithereens.
But success in delivering email content is no guarantee that your emails will land in your recipients’ inbox. Why? What’s the difference between delivery and deliverability and why should you care all that much?
Delivery versus Deliverability
Delivery = your email finding its way from your mailing service to a recipient’s email provider. From there, it can be headed off at the pass and blocked, sent automatically to the spam folder or sent to the inbox, which you earnestly desire.
Deliverability = dodging the automated or user-directed gauntlet and making a solid landing in the inbox where, you hope, your recipient will be delighted to see it.
Spam Kills Reputations Even if You Didn’t Mean to Do It
In an effort to provide a great user experience, most of the major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo!, etc. —track where their subscriber’s emails come from and what actions befall them once the user receives them.
Using clever algorithms and spam traps, ISPs can determine if your recipient really, personally and with deliberate opted into your email list or if you’re a known serial spammer.
A spam trap is an email address that is monitored but never used, which is to say, emails are never sent from it and there is no live person managing it, therefore it can’t have ever opted in to your list.
So, if it receives mail from you, you’ll be flagged as a definite spammer and possibly blocked from successful delivery to your receiver’s inbox and this ISP altogether.
When you’ve cultivated an email following, your recipients already expressed their desire to hear from you, and you want to move heaven and earth to fulfill that. The best way to realize that mutually-beneficial goal is to never be labeled as a spammer by any ISPs.
Put Your Best Foot Forward from the Beginning
Back to those purchased lists. You may get plentiful deliveries off these lists, but odds are there will be email addresses in there that will be spam traps. Those emails that are sent to a spam trap will smear your domain, IP addresses, return address and sender name with a thick layer of suspicion.
Additionally, since theoretically, none of those outside addresses ever opted in to your invitation, many, if not most, will be tossed in the user’s spam folder. The ISP is quite likely to notice this activity and flag your domain, IP addresses, return address and sender name as spam.
While it’s possible, but not easy or quick, to extricate your domain from this quagmire, why create the problem it in the first place? You should launch your email marketing campaign properly from the outset by avoiding dirty lists and using only those addresses are acquired legitimately.
Maintaining list health
As you enjoy increased revenues from your email marketing and your list grows, be sure to clean your email list regularly that no longer open your messages so the ISPs never have to peer at your domain with a cocked eyebrow.
That’s where an email marketing agency can jump in, capes flapping in the winds of success. They’ll lavish our personal attention upon your business and goals, helping you to navigate the details. Finding that ESP or agency that partners with your company to execute the perfect customized email marketing plan for you.
