Email Deliverability: How a marketing vendor with 99 percent delivery rates treats single opt-in lists vs. double opt-in lists Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, AOL and similar providers track senders’ reputations by IP address. This is partly why sending emails from dedicated IPs (instead of IPs you share with others) is the most effective tactic for improving deliverability, according to the MarketingSherpa 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report. Many smaller companies, though, cannot manage a dedicated IP well enough to build a strong reputation and are better off using shared IPs, says James Thompson, Email Systems Manager, Infusionsoft. “What we found is that most small businesses really don’t have the resources to be able to dedicate the kind of attention and maintenance required to maintain a good status on a dedicated IP,†he says. Thompson oversees the sending of about 40 million emails each week for clients at Infusionsoft, a marketing automation software provider that caters to small businesses. He is tasked with maintaining the email architecture and deliverability for clients across the system. Thompson has been through the trenches of email deliverability and helped to pull the company’s average delivery rate from the mid-90-percent range two years ago to consistently above 99 percent today. Thompson shared several stories on how his company handles deliverability. His examples can help email marketers of all sizes understand how their reputations can extend beyond webmail providers and ISPs and begin to affect their relationships with agencies and vendors. Three tiers of email IPs One of many changes Thompson’s team made to improve deliverability was to shift its email architecture onto a message management platform. The new platform allowed the team to establish three groups of IP addresses to send from: Group #1. Transactional emails This first group of IP addresses was used to send invoices, order confirmations and other transaction-based emails for Infusionsoft’s clients. Thompson’s team wanted to isolate these emails because they had some of the best performance metrics of any email type, and because getting them delivered was critical to Infusionsoft’s clients. Group #2. Single opt-in lists This group of IP addresses was reserved for client lists that were built using unconfirmed- or single-opt-in tactics. The team isolated this group because its lists generated a higher number of spam complaints. Grouping them would prevent the complaints from hurting the reputations of IP addresses that sent emails to more qualified lists. Group #3. Double-opt-in lists This final group of IP addresses was reserved for email lists that were generated with confirmed- or double-opt-in tactics. These lists generated fewer problems than single-opt-in lists, and therefore benefitted by being associated with each other rather than with lists of lower quality. Why this matters: Thompson noted that the delivery rates between Group 2 and Group 3 originally differed by as much as 5 percent, but is now down to about 1 percent. “However,†he says, “we are talking about averages here on millions of emails, so that does add up.†So even if your company is relying on a shared IP address from a provider, it can still be in the best interest of your deliverability to build high-quality lists with confirmed opt-ins.Baseball batter Three strikes and you’re out Thompson’s team realized it had a few bad apples in the barrel when it began work to improve delivery rates. The team reached out to clients who were hurting the sender reputation of Infusionsoft’s IPs and tried to enlighten them on the issue. “What we have come to find is that most of our customers who generate these spam complaints don’t necessarily understand or aren’t aware that their practices are abusive,†he says. “So essentially what the solution has been is to work with them, give them a set of criteria to meet, and then the problem is usually resolved.†Unfortunately, not every situation was resolved. Some clients were unable to make the necessary changes and the team had to let them go to protect the reputations of other senders who used the system responsibly, Thompson says. Now the team has a three-strikes system for handling clients that generate a high number of complaints. “AOL, Yahoo!, MSN and those types of companies want to see average complaint rates of about 0.1 percent,†Thompson says. “So that means for every 1,000 emails we send, they only want to see one person complaining.†Thompson’s team uses this same guideline when monitoring its system. Senders who regularly generate two or three complaints per 1,000 emails sent (0.2% or 0.3%) are given suggestions to improve their practices. Clients who fail to respond or make changes can be asked to leave (though this is rare). So if you’re using a shared IP address to send email, the impact of a complaint can extend beyond your email program and even begin to impact your relationship with your marketing vendor — so keep those rates down! Source: http://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.c...d:+MarketingSherpaBlog+(MarketingSherpa+Blog)
many good points in this article Round. We have done many of the same things on our ESP - segregating IPs for transactional, single opt and COI and it definitely helps to improve delivery on shared IPs but I HIGHLY doubt confusionsofts delivery is 99%. Anyone can look up their rep on this IP: 208.76.24.51 on multirbl.valli.org or reputation-email.com there is no way that having that many blacklists would give you 99% delivery. As a matter of fact, even being the CLEANEST of mailers your delivery would be dependent upon each client and as we all know filtering would also come into play. Jedi
Infusion soft does a pretty good job but in the long haul I would just pick up a robo mail lite version license. It will be cheaper in the long run and does the same exact job but better. The new features that have been added to it make it stand out above the rest. But be prepared to shell out 6 grand for the lite version per license. Worth every penny
How big was his list? I get 100% delivery on my test emails all the time 10 emails ==> 10 delivered Now, get 99% delivery with a list of 1-3 million emails and we'll talk. Pepe
Looking for an html script for an opt-in box I need an opt-in box for my website. They are strangely hard to find. Anyone know where to find some?
Google is your friend. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=opt+in+pop+up Here are a couple in case you're lazy. http://popupmaster.com/ http://www.fasterinternetmarketing....popup-opt-in-form-plug-in-for-wordpress-free/
Anytime you get to inbox more than 80% you are doing something right. Specially if we are talking about a file size of over 1 Million.... If you are not converting well with this numbers something is wrong on your marketing strategy.
