Introduction

There are many steps you can take to improve your sending reputation and your overall account health. While some steps can be completed quickly, others require additional planning and implementation.

Please review the different sections below and implement the appropriate actions.

Quick Immediate Actions

Remove Role Accounts

Role accounts (info@, contact@, admin@) are email addresses that are not used by a single person but rather by a team, group, or department. Typically role accounts are distribution lists where many people will receive the emails, and this group of people will change over time.

Why is sending to role accounts a problem?

Sending to a role account is problematic as most of the recipients probably never gave their permission to receive your email as it is often set up to send and monitor emails associated with a specific purpose or program. Therefore, there is a high likelihood that your emails will be marked as SPAM.

✓ Clean your contact lists by removing all role accounts.

Discontinue the Use of 3rd Party or Purchased Lists

Esendex does not allow the use of any types of 3rd party or purchased lists. Such lists will result in high unsubscribes, bounces and spam complaints as they are not permission-based and most often contain spamtraps. Additionally, the use of 3rd Party or Purchased Lists is prohibited by law in most countries.

✓ Do not use any 3rd party or purchased lists.

Remove Unused Email Addresses

If you have not sent any communication to a contact list after many months, you run the risk of:

• Higher Bounce rates due to invalid email addresses (people change jobs, delete email accounts, etc)
• SPAM complaints as people may have forgotten signing up for your mailing list
• Hitting SPAM Traps (A spam trap is an email address – typically monitored by ISPs and anti-spam organizations – that is not used for communication, should never receive emails and would never get marketing campaigns. If it does receive email, then it is considered to be unsolicited email, which can result in your email landing in the spam folder, being blacklisted, or your Esendex account being suspended.)

✓ Remove all unused contact lists that are older than 6 months. If you wish to re-engage with these subscribers, plan to send a quick re-confirmation email and start a fresh contact list.

Additional Actions

Implement a Confirmed Opt-in Process

When someone signs-up or opts-in to your mailing list online, do you send a confirmation email? Or do you automatically add the email address to your contact list?

It is strongly recommended to send a confirmation email with a verification link to all subscribers. Once the subscriber confirms by clicking on that link, you can then add their email address to your contact list and send a welcome message. This is known as a ‘confirmed’ or ‘double opt-in’ process.

Why is a confirmed opt-in important?

It will ensure that the owner of the email address actually wants to receive email communication from your. Also, it will stop fake, stale or mistyped email addresses from getting onto your list.

✓ Implement a confirmed opt-in list-building process.

Offline List Collection and Consent

Sometimes you may build your contact list through offline methods. For example, people may give you their business card, or may write their name on a signup sheet at a trade show or at your store.

Before adding these email addresses to your contact lists, you need to be able to provide proof of consent. This proof of permission is best accomplished by obtaining an email confirmation from the recipient that shows explicit consent, just as you would in the ‘Confirmed Opt-in Process’.

✓ Agree to obtain consent via a confirmation email for all contacts gathered offline.

✓ Where possible, ask potential subscribers to opt-in directly at your website.

Manage Inactive Subscribers

Your contact lists should contain people who want to receive your marketing campaigns. To maintain a high quality contact list, it is important to regularly review your open & click rates and take action on inactive subscribers.

What is an inactive subscriber?

Inactive subscribers are contacts who have not opened or clicked on your messages in the last few months or last several campaigns.

Several reasons could lead to an inactive subscriber:

• Your content is not appealing or relevant anymore
• The subscriber does not check his/her email inbox regularly
• The email address has been abandoned

Whatever the reason, inactive subscribers are a part of email marketing life and need regular attention.

How to identify inactive subscribers?

Go to your stats page, select the desired timeframe, sender address and use the “Delivered” status filter. The resulting list of recipients are those who did not open, click, bounce, or unsubscribe from your mailings.

Once you have identified the inactive contacts, you can choose to remove them from all your contact lists, or separate them into a new contact list and send a re-engagement email.

For detailed instructions on filtering and downloading by email status, please read the “List Cleaning” FAQ.

✓ Identify inactive subscribers regularly and identify your plan of action: remove or re-engagement.

Recommended Best Practices to Improve your Sending Reputation

Have an active Website and use Custom Email Addresses

Sending your marketing campaigns from free webmail addresses like Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail may be convenient, but it is not recommended. Emails sent from free webmail addresses cannot be authenticated and run the risk of being marked as SPAM by the receiving servers. Read more on why you should avoid using free webmail as a sender address.

Instead, use custom email addresses that are linked to your website as your sender addresses. Custom email addresses can be authenticated by receiving servers, and your recipients are more likely to recognize and trust your credibility as a sender.

Need a website? There are many web hosting providers that offer easy and affordable solutions to set up a website: 1&1, OVH, InMotion Hosting, GoDaddy are just a few examples. Search ‘web hosting companies’ online to find the company that offers a hosting package that includes custom email addresses.

✓ Pick a website host company that you like. Create a website and at least one custom email address. Ensure your website clearly states the nature of your business, your contact information and your privacy policy page.

Setup your SPF & DKIM records

Set-up the SPF & DKIM records for your custom domain to enhance the legitimacy of your sender credential and help your email land in the inbox of your recipients. It only takes a few minutes to configure these parameters and these records will authenticate the sending source of your email as well as preventing spammers from stealing your identity.

Send Relevant Content to Your Contacts Regularly

Do you send newsletters to your contact lists on a regular basis from the same sender address? Is the content always new and relevant, or are you recycling older content?

Nowadays people receive dozens of emails every day and are pressed for time to read them all. It’s important to curate interesting and relevant email that your customers look forward to reading.

✓ Set a regular schedule so your customers can anticipate your emails.
✓ Send campaigns from the same sender address and use a sender address that is linked to your domain.
✓ Use fresh, relevant and engaging content every time.
✓ Always always always have a clear visible unsubscribe link. Allow your subscribers to unsubscribe easily from your newsletters; otherwise they may mark them as SPAM to unsubscribe.
✓ To make your emails more personal and customized, you may wish to use segmentation and personalization.

Clean your contact lists regularly

Esendex automatically handles the critical email statuses (bounce, unsubs, spam). However, you should be regularly removing these email addresses from your contact lists. Clean lists will help your deliverability and open rates.

✓ Step-by-Step Guide: How to maintain a list of responsive contacts
✓ Document: Email Statuses