Email Deliverability Best Practices for Email Studio

Marketing Cloud Engagement works with you to optimize the deliverability of your campaigns by helping with key elements of email optimization, such as:

• Email list capture process and recommendations on opt-in method
• Email From address branding
• Email subject line branding and optimization
• Email content consulting to avoid common words and phrases targeted by spam filters
• List hygiene
• ISP compliance
• Volume filter avoidance via Domain Monitoring
• SMTP log filtering to proactively detect blocking

CAN-SPAM Act

CAN-SPAM is the popular name for the U.S. law regulating commercial email that went into effect on January 1, 2004, the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003.

Per CAN-SPAM legislation, all commercial emails must include a viable Internet-based opt-out mechanism, which must be active for a minimum of 30 days after you send the email. Second, you must display your company's physical mailing address within the body of your email. The application automatically checks for both the return email address and unsubscribe link before the system can send the email.

In addition, per CAN-SPAM legislation, marketers can’t do the following:

• Use a false or misleading from name
• Use a subject line that masks the purpose of the email
• Harvest email addresses off the Internet
• Launch dictionary attacks
• Use open relays to send email

We recommend the following steps for compliance:

• Manage unsubscribes within 10 days of a send and enforce them across your entire enterprise.
• Always capture opt-in or affirmative consent to remove labeling requirements.
• Ensure that subject lines aren’t deceptive or misleading.

For transactional or relationship messages, ensure that the subject line is non-promotional and that the transactional content is placed above any commercial content.

Because of the growing awareness of CAN-SPAM legislation and the diminishing tolerance of consumers for unsolicited mail in their inboxes, sending unsolicited email puts your brand and company at risk. Even though a recipient can open an email and not complain the first time, that recipient still has not given permission until they’ve opted in to your correspondence. Repeated unsolicited emails can lead to complaints, and this is the leading cause of email blocking at ISPs.

Your contract with us requires opt-in for sends through our system. If your list isn’t opt-in, send an opt-in email outside of the application. After you complete your opt-in campaign, you can then upload those lists into the Engagement.

For information on CAN-SPAM compliance, see CAN-SPAM Compliance System Guide.

Spam Filters

Most ISPs use filters to sort the legitimate email from junk or spam for their users. More than 300 spam-filtering companies exist and vary significantly in their filter logic. Most common spam filters attempt to filter those sending unwanted email based on sending reputation and deliverability statistics, meaning that it’s important that your mail is easily identifiable as being wanted and not being unsolicited. Elevated bounce rates, elevated complaint rates, or low open rates are all indicators that recipients may find your mail to be unwanted, and ISP spam folders are more likely to consider your mail as spam as a result.

Address Book Strategy

Implementing an address book strategy helps you optimize deliverability on your email campaigns. To maximize the number of subscribers who add you to their address book, and minimize the number of sends that end up in a bulk or spam folder, add address book instructions to your email. The easiest way to provide these instructions is to use the Add to Address Book tool. The Add to Address Book tool is a hyperlink to address book instructions for all of the major email providers. To use this tool, simply add the following link to your email, along with appropriate instructions to your subscribers: Address Book and Safe Senders List.

When a subscriber clicks this link, a web page with instructions opens. The subscriber can then click the applicable View Instructions link on the web page to see the steps necessary to add your sending address to the subscriber's address book to ensure delivery of your future emails.

Ensure That All Subscribers on Your Lists Have Given You Permission

High complaint rates are possible if your subscribers have not given you explicit permission to send them email. All of the names on your subscriber lists must have given you permission in order for you to send them email via the application.

Deal with Bounce Rates Greater Than 10%

Proactively remove your bounced addresses before your next send. Though the application automatically holds undeliverable emails after the third bounce, a bounce rate over 10% can dramatically harm your deliverability and ISP reputation.

Subject Line Recognition

Ensure that your subscribers recognize your email is from you by adding the name of your organization to the subject line. Make sure this is a name with which they’re familiar. Because the subscriber can easily click the "report spam" button without even opening the email, subject line recognition is critical to reducing complaints at AOL and elsewhere.

From Name and Address

Ensure that your 'from name' and 'from email address' are recognizable by subscribers. Some email providers, for example, show only the 'from address', not the 'from name', in the inbox, so make sure it’s a name and not a number or an indecipherable address. Also, the 'from name' is the first item that most individuals look at when determining what mail to open and which to ignore or complain about. Talk to your relationship manager about options for optimizing your From address.

Name Capture Language

It can be a good idea to add language at the top of your emails stating how the subscriber opted in to receiving your email communications. A reminder can help increase results and reduce complaints. You can also include an unsubscribe link at the top of your emails. If you have an elevated unsubscribe or complaint rate, this is likely to help reduce that rate.

Purge Old or Inactive Addresses

Do you have names that you haven't mailed to in six months? How about customers that haven't opened an email or clicked a link in that same time period? These are indications to purge these old or inactive addresses. These customers cost money to mail, reduce your ROI, and are more likely to complain.

Run the Unengaged Subscribers for a List Report to view which subscribers haven't opened or clicked through your emails during a certain time period.

You can also run the Subscriber Engagement Report to pull information into a third-party program, like Microsoft Access, to query emails not clicked or opened.

Manage Frequency and Content

Are you sending your emails more often than you promised? Less often? Is the content different from what you promised? Remember that permission communications are to be anticipated, personal, and relevant. If your users don’t anticipate your email or your content, reevaluate why you’re sending them email in the first place

Authenticate Your Email to Avoid Bulk Folder Delivery

Sender Authentication doesn’t exist in today's standard SMTP logic for email, so spammers can try to disguise their identity and locale. Spammers using these tactics are targeted by ISPs. Authenticating your email helps differentiate your email from spam, protects your brand, and bolsters your ROI. Try the a Sender Authentication Package to handle authentication for your email sends.

Email authentication alone isn’t going to guarantee that your mail will never be perceived as spam, but it’s a necessary step to help ensure that an ISP is best able to tell good senders apart from bad senders.