3 Tips to Maximize E-mail Delivery Rates

September 24, 2008 By Joe Boland, Assistant Editor, Target Marketing

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In today's marketing environment, e-mail campaigns are more important than ever. With more consumers relying on e-mail for communications, and more messages hitting their inboxes, it's crucial for marketers to make sure their e-mails are delivered.

In a recent whitepaper, Email Delivery Rates Above 95%: 16 "Must Dos" to Make It Happen,  e-mail marketing company Silverpop touches on ways to improve delivery rates.

1. Minimize spam complaints. According to the whitepaper, minimizing your spam complaint rate is the top priority for any e-mail communication. To stay out of the spam folder and in the good graces of recipients, follow these best practices:

• Only send to a permission-based list.
• Use a confirmed opt-in if spam complaints are high.
• Encourage new subscribers to add your e-mail address to their address books.
• Don't over-e-mail.
• Don't send unexpected e-mail.
• Use your most recognizable and expected brand name as part of your sender/from name.
• Avoid exclamation points and aggressive subject lines.
• Make it easy to unsubscribe.

2. Manage expectations at the beginning of the subscriber relationship. State your intentions and privacy level at the opt-in stage, and stick to it. Subscribers don't like unexpected (and unwanted) surprises cluttering their inboxes. Make sure you tell subscribers what kind of messages you send and how often you send them. And link to your privacy policy to gain the invaluable trust of recipients.

3. Validate e-mail addresses at opt-in. Make people confirm their e-mail addresses on opt-in pages, and add validation code that detects domain misspellings, incomplete addresses and common mistakes that alert users to correct the problem immediately.

For more tips from the whitepaper, register to receive it for free  http://silverpop.com/landing/08TargetSite/Deliverability.html

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