#reputationcheck

Email marketing is not only the most cost-effective way of marketing but it also provides maximum ROI (Return on Investment). Businesses including brands using email marketing in one way or another to reach out to their customers. Since the biggest advantage of email marketing is cost-effectiveness, it is a boon for small and medium size industries. Today everyone has started using email marketing for communication with clients and this has created problems for the end recipients that get hundreds of emails in their inboxes regularly. How do recipients react to bulk mails? Emails are deleted after reading the subject line Recipients start unsubscribe from the mailing service The worst thing is to report the mailers as spammers To solve the issue, Internet Service Providers (ISP) don’t allow the emails to directly hit an inbox. Different levels are created for emails. Gmail has social and promotional for marketing mails and Yahoo has Spam/Junk folders for such messages. But most recipients are unaware of such folders hence they check their inboxes only. Others check Spam folder but only to delete the messages. It is for this reason that email deliverability is the first step towards a successful email marketing campaign. All other factors like content, design and offer come after the deliverability. There could be many factors that determine deliverability of an email but there are only 4 major factors that have major impact on deliverability of emails Bounce – soft bounce and hard bounce It is a term used at server level and it denotes rejection of emails by server. It is further divided into soft bounce and hard bounce. Soft bounce: When a mail is rejected due to its size or the mailbox, where the mail is directed to, is full or server issue which happens in rare cases, it is called soft bounce. The sender SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) resends the bounced mail three times before giving up with failed delivery message. Hard bounce: When a mailing address or the domain name is wrong, the mail bounces back and it is called a hard bounce. Here SMTP doesn’t resending the mail. Reputation check Mails that pass through SMTP successfully have to undergo more checks before they are finally delivered to their respective mail addresses Track record: IP addresses are tracked to check their record of sending bulk mails Spam complaints: How many emails are marked spams by recipients? Blacklist history: What is the bouncing rate of the emails and whether the IP address is blacklisted in past? Unsubscribed list: How many recipients have unsubscribed from the mailing list of the sender? Spam traps: Here emails are just monitored and not used Email analytics: IP addresses are tracked not only for the number of mails sent but also to check how many of the mails got response like mails are opened and the mails replied etc. Authentication check/ID proof check Next check emails have to pass through is authentication of IP addresses. IP addresses of senders are verified to determine whether the senders really want to present their products/services. This check prevents professional hackers from modifying the content before mails are delivered. IP check help determine whether the sender is an Email Villain. A sender is called a villain, if he tries to get personal details of the recipient by phishing or spoofing with a forged address. ISPs are continuously working towards creating more checks to establish reliability of senders and authenticity of emails. Is the message safe to be delivered – checking the content? Authenticity of emails is established from their content. ISPs allow mail delivery only after checking its content Malicious embeds: Legitimate looking mails could carry viruses implanted by hackers. These mails, if allowed to get delivered, could take control of the computers and draw sensitive data including passwords. Hackers use this technique by modifying email content. Check spam words and phrases: ISPs read all the content to check spam words and phrases. Link to word ratio: Email content could carry links considered spam by ISPs. There has to be a right mix of content and words in the email content. Text to image ratio: The content shouldn’t be all images. The acceptable ration of text to image is 70:30. Value of deliverability in email marketing has been discussed in detail in the article and now it is for marketers to make sure that they don’t jeopardize the success of their campaigns by taking the discussed points lightly. These are technical points that guarantee successful delivery but the recipient reserves the right to simply delete a mail or mark it spam. But these factors can also be taken care of with the help of writing and designing. Conclusion To make an email marketing campaign a success, the marketers should keep all the technical and non-technical factors in mind. First step is successful delivery that is purely technical and the second step is convincing that is purely human. Read the full article

Ever wondered how an email is sent and also gets delivered to the right recipient within a couple of seconds. One should know how email works and it becomes important for email marketers so that they can prevent their mails from bouncing back or reaching spam folders. 5 steps of an email reaching its destination that is inbox of the recipient Email starts with composing the message and concludes with sending the mail using a mail client. It is software that allows a computer to send and receive mails. Mails received are stored in the software and they can be accessed even without broadband connectivity. Web browsers like Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo Mail are examples of this software. Apps like Outlook, Thunderbird and Mail also stores emails in the similar manner. The software sends the mail to the router whose job is to direct the query from server to server and send the query back to the recipient. The router sends the mail to Simple Mail Transfer Protocol Server from where the email is directed towards the mail server of the recipient. In between, the email passes through some barriers that ensure that no malicious content enters the server. Most barriers are put at server level because it is the gateway to the system that manages emails. Malicious content can affect functionality of a server. Barriers of mail server are: Firewall: It protects the server from viruses Spam Filter: It filters emails for malicious content and checks whether the sender is a spammer The mail reaches the server where it encounters more barriers before reaching router of the recipient Reputation Check: Every sender has a reputation and every email has a set pattern. This check confirms whether the sender has a history of sending spam mails Authentication Check: This check verifies credentials of the sender to determine behavior of the sender After passing these checks, the mail reaches the router where it passes through yet another check to reach the mailbox Spam Filter: This filter checks content for spam. It is managed by mailbox setting where user can mark senders as spammers After clearing the spam filter the mail lands in the mailbox according to the settings made by the user. There are three different mailbox settings Web Mail like Gmail and Yahoo Mail Mail Client according to user’s preference Mail Application for phones and tablets The mail will land in any of the three platforms according to the email protocol called Post Office Protocol or POP 3. But most mail servers are using new protocol IMAP 4. The new protocol is much advanced and beneficial than the existing POP 3. It allows synchronization of actions that POP 3 can’t perform. IMAP 4 synchronizes unread, read and deleted Web Mails with the app. Problems with emailing What if an email doesn’t pass any of the checks on server, router or mailbox? An email is rejected for a specific reason like: When an email is rejected by server it bounces back to the sender. Depending on the barrier, the bounce can be classified into: Soft Bounce: It happens when the mail server is down, mailbox is full or the message is too large to be downloaded Hard Bounce: It happens when the mailing address or domain name is invalid or the mail hits a firewall or filter In case an IP address continues bouncing mails from a sender, the sender can be put into blacklist. This action discourages bulk emailing Email with a lengthy message or with too many links always lands in spam folder Bulk mailing is the biggest reason for recipients marking mails as spams Cold Calling is another reason for mails landing in spam folders. Bulk mailers send mails without taking permission of the recipients These are the common mistakes marketers make when trying to communicate with targeted audiences through emails Conclusion Email as a mode of online communication plays an important role in personal as well as business communication. According to http://internetlivestats.com, email marketing will become the most preferred way of business promotion in future. Therefore it becomes mandatory for online marketers to understand the email process so that they can take advantage of it. The process of successful emailing is described in 5 simple steps for Internet marketers. Read the full article

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