Optimize Email Deliverability with Best Practice Strategies

As an email marketer you may face email deliverability issues every day. Whether you're sending a personal email or bulk customer communication, electronic messages are frequently intercepted, filtered, erroneously labeled as spam, bounced or returned to the sender as undeliverable. For routine non-business correspondence, this is simply a minor annoyance and inconvenience. But when your message broadcasts a crisis or emergency, or if it includes time-sensitive account, billing or service information, you could face serious consequences. If you're a marketer, every undelivered message translates into lost revenue. Luckily, there are ways to improve the odds of delivery and decrease the chance of running into problems in the first place.

The key to email deliverability lies in earning the trust of Internet Service Providers, or ISPs. Because these companies need to provide quality service to their subscribers, they devise standard protocols and policies regarding unsolicited bulk email. To communicate with your subscribers and customers, without interference, focus on four key criteria proven to optimize deliverability rates.

1. Mind Your Lists.
How relevant is your list? You should only add recipients via responsible opt-in practices, removing bounced accounts and unsubscribe requests immediately. Never use distribution lists that are severely outdated or purchased. Many purchased lists include spam trap or HoneyPot addresses, intended to lure and catch spammers.

2. Maintain Low Complaint Levels.
Do recipients want your messages? Every time a subscriber reports you to their ISP, deliverability plummets. Several popular ISPs, including AOL, Yahoo and Hotmail, make this extremely easy with one-click spam reporting features. It's important to know how many complaints are coming in. Complaint processing can be automated, with email marketing service providers removing complainers from your distribution lists and integrating this data into real-time reports. However, you should strive to avoid complaints altogether. To minimize complaints, let recipients' know who you are by identifying your company in the 'from' field, use a clear and relevant subject line and distribute messages on a routine and predictable schedule.

3. Be Professional.
What does your message say about your company? Advance your brand and professional reputation by sending well-designed, organized and relevant email communications. Segment distribution lists and customize messages whenever possible. You should also make sure that domain names for landing pages have a public Whois record and a clearly linked Privacy Policy.

3. Use Email Authentication.
Take advantage of email authentication technologies. One such solution is Sender Policy Framework (SPF), providing an open-standard, technical method for preventing address forgery.

4. Understand Reputation.
What do your past actions say about you? ISPs filter spam based on your company, domain name and private IP address reputation. Building a solid reputation in these areas takes time, and the only way to build it is by sending legitimate emails and following practices. Send legitimate emails, clean your lists and avoid complaints. Make sure that your email service provider or email servers are setup with private IP addresses so that you reputation is only impacted by your email marketing practices.

Once you've taken all proactive email delivery strategies, use the reporting tools in your email marketing software to measure overall delivery. If you find specific ISPs are blocking your blast communications even though you've followed best practices, contact them right away to resolve the matter and apply for whitelist status.

Email marketing benefits are undeniable. With diligent efforts, marketers can dramatically increase business-critical email communication deliverability and improve their bottom line.

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About the Author: Dan Forootan is the President of EZ Publishing, Inc., the creator of the StreamSend Email Marketing service.

Why is Search Engine Marketing So Popular?

The key to marketing has always been getting one's product recognized by as large a group of people as possible. Advertising has always been the key to any marketing effort. Companies spend millions on ad placements in trimedia campaigns that encompass print, radio and television.

Print, radio and television have traditionally been the main medium for marketing. However, in the past decades, another form of paid advertising has found itself on the rise, and this utilizes the internet.

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of internet marketing. It uses the web as a medium to spread awareness of its target product. Internet marketing has emerged as a cheap yet dynamic way to distribute information in the global market.

SEM seeks to promote websites - and the products being sold on those websites - by increasing their visibility through search engine results pages.

The development of SEM is an off-shoot of the success of the Internet in the global arena. As more and more people started using the web, more and more sites on a variety of topics started being created. In the mid-to-late 90s, search engines were developed to help people find the information they wanted quickly.

Soon search engines developed business models to finance their services such as pay per click programs.

A pay per click program is a small text ad that appears next to results from an on-line search. A marketer buys the rights for their ads to appear on a web page or a search engine. The ads are tied up to key words. When a searcher types in a particular query to a search engine, the engine not only offers up a listing of relevant websites but also the marketers "ad".

The first pay per click programs were offered by Open Text in 1996 and Goto.com in 1998. Goto.com changed its name to Overture and was purchased by Yahoo in 2003 and is now Yahoo! Search Marketing.

SEM methods include: Search Engine Optimization (or SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion.

Search Engine Optimization is a strategy by which you attempt to improve the volume and quality of traffic to a website by "marketing" it to a web site. Using key words and content to ensure your site shows up many times during searches.

Paid placement is the pay per click program. Advertisers pay when a user clicks on to the links to visit their web site. These are also known as sponsored links or sponsored ads. Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and MSN adCenter are the largest network operators of the pay per click program as of 2007. Minimum prices per click start at US$.01 to .50.

Paid inclusion is when a search engine company charges fees for the inclusion of a website in their search index. This fee structure is ment to ask as a filter against superfluous submissions - websites that try to "trick" the engine by using popular key words that are unrelated to actual content of site - and a revenue generator for the search engine company. The fee is typically an annual subscription rate.

SEM is a relatively cheap and inexpensive way to create traffic on you web site and cultivate brand recognition. A pay-per-click program is cheaper then a trimedia campaign and yet can reach a large number of people globally day and night. As a result, many companies are now taking advantage of the internet to let consumers know what they have.

According to a recent report by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, advertisers in North America alone spend $9.4 billion in SEM in 2006. In 2006, the majority of search marketers (62%) said branding was the primary objective of search marketing campaigns. Nearly as many, however (60%) said that selling products was a key objective. This year, direct sales were the top choice, at 58%, followed by brand awareness at 57%. For more companies, SEM spending is increasing and actually earning a bigger budget then other marketing techniques. It is estimated that by 2011, companies will be spending $ 18.6 billion on SEM.

This growth will be driven by strong advertiser demand, rising keyword pricing and more small and midsized business discovering the effectiveness of SEM.

Currently, SEM is an alternative marketing tool with many possibilities. It's increase in popularity will eventually result in more businesses utilizing SEM techniques and a possible rise in rates for web space. The faith major businesses are placing in SEM - as denoted by the money they are willing to spend on it - makes this fast growing advertising technique that should be utilized by any business seeking to make a name for it's globally.

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About the Author: Mikhail Tuknov, a Search Engine Optimization Specialist, can improve search engine ranking of your online business. SEO specialist providing search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC) management, web site design or development and web analytics services.

Points to Ponder for Successful Web Advertising

You would think that everyone in business would be able to tell you what they do and why you should be doing business with them; unfortunately the sad truth is many business executives can't. In fact one of the biggest problems in designing websites has always been getting appropriate raw material that can be turned into meaningful presentations: a handful of badly written brochures and a few out-of-date photographs are not going to make much of an impression.

And now that the Web has involved into a sophisticated communication platform, able to deliver audio and video content, the problem has become even worse; not only do websites need to deliver appropriate copy and image content, they need to present audio dialog and video performances that demonstrate how products and services improve the business or personal lives of website visitors.

As a company we are good at what we do, we can turn the mundane into the memorable but we can't do it if clients don't know or can't express their own marketing story, or are unwilling to allow their multimedia advisor to develop that story for them.

At the heart of the problem is fear, fear of making a definitive statement, declaring loud and clear what you do, and why anyone should care. It's no longer good enough to apply technical solutions to marketing problems: you are not going to engage your audience with SEO, XML, CSS, or PHP. You must have a story to tell and you can't be afraid to tell it as boldly as you can.

Do You Know Who You Are and What You Really Do?

We know who we are and what we do: we deliver our message knowing that some people are just not going to buy into what we have to say, but those that do get it, really get it, and they are our potential clients. As far as the others are concerned, well, there's lots of business for everybody, and nobody is going to get it all.

You can't be afraid to loose a customer you never had in the first place. In our case our job is clear: we deliver marketing stories using Web-video and audio in memorable Web-presentations. We are not afraid to tell clients that they need multimedia, and that an over dependence on search engine optimization or any other technical answer is a mistake - a big mistake.

Are You Doing All You Can To Attract Business?

There are many methods that can be employed to drive appropriate traffic to your site: search engine optimization is only one. Have you written and published articles and advice on what you do, have you created a blog or a MySpace page to create a community of interest, or have you issued press releases on new developments and product releases? If you're relying solely on search engine optimization as a substitute for marketing, you are not doing everything you can to attract new business.

Even if your search engine tactics are attracting large numbers of visitors to your site, what is your conversion rate, how long are people staying on your site, and do you have enough compelling content to get them to come back?

If you're in the business of selling banner and text ads on your site, if that is how you make your living, then lots of random traffic may serve your purpose; but if you are in the business of providing something useful to people, then you better pay more attention to what your visitors see once they arrive on your site. After all, all the traffic in the world is useless if those visitors don't get your message. It all starts with the message, so what's your message?

What's Your Story?

Crafting your marketing story is not as easy as it sounds, and you may have to let go of some outdated thinking in order to bring your story to life.

Web-videos are not feature films or even viral videos intended to show how clever you are. You are making a commercial: special effects may be cool but they are not a substitute for a finely crafted script delivered by a professional performer.

Websites Don't Close Sales, People Close Sales

Web-videos are designed to make a statement: "this is who we are, and this is what we do, so contact us to find out how we can change your life." Websites create leads, not sales; so don't expect your Web-video to make the sale, that's your job.

Now you know the purpose of your website presentation, it is time to figure out what you want to say.

For more detailed article, check out this article, titled,
Six Questions That Produce Successful Web Advertising

About the Author: Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info(a)mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.