Deliverability is the first step to e-mail marketing success. If your e-mail never hits the inbox, all those subject line and content tactics are useless. So why do the top e-mail marketers get a 90% inbox placement rate, while others languish below 50%? A deciding factor is reputation, as measured by a "sender score," according to Return Path's annual "Sender Score Benchmark Report." A sender’s reputation score is a number, calculated from 0–100, that mailbox providers use to evaluate whether or not e-mail sent by a particular IP address is likely to be legitimate and wanted or should be filtered out of inboxes. Return Path's analysis finds that e-mail senders with a reputation score above 90 saw an average of 92% of their e-mails reach the intended recipient, but e-mail deliverability drops to 72% for senders scoring between 81-90 and just 45% for senders with a score between 71 and 80. So how do you get and keep a strong reputation score? A recent post by Krista Barrack, for the sendinblue blog, cites six ways you could be damaging your sender score, starting with e-mail list issues. One common error is collecting invalid e-mail addresses in your house list (often caused by typos, especially from mobile users). These create hard bounces to erode your sender score. A second mistake is using purchased e-mail data where people have no opt-in relationship with your brand and so don't engage or mark your message as spam, hurting your score. That's why, as responsible data brokers, we don't sell e-mail data and instead broker list rentals so messages are sent by the list owner with valid recipient opt-ins. A third house list problem is allowing outdated, unmailed addresses to accumulate and become invalid. To deal with the problem, set up a program of regular communication and hygiene to prune your list frequently. Poor content quality affects sender scores, too. If your e-mail message is not mobile-optimized, is loaded with spam words, is plagued by faulty links, and/or is not relevant or honest, recipients are either not going to open it, will label it as spam or will opt-out. Timing matters, too, and the most common sin is embrace of a spammer's excess frequency. Note that studies show read rates drop with increased weekly frequency--and opt-outs and complaints rise. Finally, watch for spam traps hiding in your e-mail list. These can get you blacklisted! For more detail, go to http://www.acculistusa.com/whats-the-secret-to-better-e-mail-deliverability-your-reputation/
