Deliverability Wisdom from ClickZ Specifics Conference

October 3, 2007

Based on what I saw at the ClickZ Specifics: Email Marketing conference yesterday, deliverability remains the hot topic. They had a packed session dedicated to the topic and it also came up during the closing 5 Experts/5 Minutes session, where five experts were given 60 seconds each to answer a question from the audience. Here is some of the wisdom that I jotted down:

Regarding first steps…
Stefan Pollard of EmailLabs said to start by knowing your metrics—your delivery rate, bounce management, spam complaints, etc. You can make improvements if you don’t know where your program stands currently.

Deidre Baird of Pivotal Veracity said that you should get on ISPs’ whitelists (which is free) and take advantage of spam compliant feedback loops.

Regarding list rental/buying…
Baird also said to avoid spamtraps by not buying lists and harvesting addresses from the web. Only use opt ins, she said.

Jordan Ayan of SubscriberMail said flatly, “Don’t ever buy a list.”

Rebecca Lieb of ClickZ said that they were very close to advising readers to never rent or buy lists, but that they hadn’t quite reached that point yet.

Regarding offline sign-ups with incentives…
If you’re offering incentives in order to collect email addresses offline, be sure to “deliver the incentive to the email address,” said Austin Bliss of FreshAddress. The customer is more likely to give you their real address and to write legibly if the incentive is being delivered this way.

Lieb told a story of a major apparel retailer that gave in-store customers a 20% off coupon in exchange for their email address. Well, people wrote down bogus addresses in order to get the discount and those addresses lead to the retailer being blacklisted. Ouch!

Pollard recommended using double opt-in for offline sources of acquisition.

Regarding B2B filtering…
“B2B filtering is more whimsical than B2C,” said Bliss.

Baird said that companies rely much more on spam lists like Spamhaus and SpamCop.

Regarding authentication…
People were universally proponents of authentication (DKIM and Sender ID), which makes it clear that you are who you say you are, thereby fighting spoofing. But they also all said that it currently doesn’t lead to better deliverability, as very few ISPs give authentication serious weigh yet when deciding which emails to filter. However, some of the experts thought this would be given more weight in the future.

Regarding cleaning up old, dirty lists…
Pollard told marketers to look at the date of subscription—the older the date, the more likely you should just cut them. He also advised people to remove role addresses like sales@domain.com.

Al DiGuido of Zustek said you should cut people who haven’t opened an email in the past 6-12 months.

But Ayan said not to assume that your emails are going unread because the subscriber could have images turned off. He said it’s best if you send a series of emails asking if they want to continue receiving email.

—Chad White

Comments (0) | Posted on October 3, 2007 8:23 PM

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the voices of email

The Email Experience Council's membership includes many of the brightest and most committed email marketing experts. We're pleased to have some of them share their insights here on these pages. Our blog contributors include:

Elie Ashery is the president and CEO of Gold Lasso, and is responsible for the company’s vision and strategy execution. Before joining Gold Lasso, he co-founded Newsletters.com in 1997, selling it to The Tribune Cos. in 2000. He then worked for IncenSoft, focusing on email marketing while there. Read more.

Amy Bills is the senior manager of field marketing at lead optimization company Bulldog Solutions. She is responsible for lead generation and the go-to-market execution of Bulldog's new products and initiatives. Amy was previously the editorial team leader of Freescale Semiconductor’s internal creative agency and a senior editor at Hoover’s Online. Read more.

Nicholas Einstein is director of strategic and analytic services at Datran Media. Specializing in email and CRM strategy, he helps some of America’s top brands leverage online channels to communicate more effectively with their customers and prospects.

Lisa Harmon is a principal at Smith-Harmon, a creative services consultancy dedicated to email marketing strategy and production. She works with marketers to increase clickthrough, maximize revenue, and infuse delight into their email creative. Lisa is also the blogger behind edm.smith-harmon.com, an ongoing commentary on the best (and worst!) in email marketing creative. Read more.

Chip House is ExactTarget's VP of marketing services, leading the teams responsible for client success. He was named to BtoB Magazine’s 2005 “Who’s Who in B-To-B,” for being a vocal proponent of legitimate commercial email and an active lobbyist regarding spam and privacy issues. Read more.

Stephanie Miller is VP of strategic services for Return Path, the leading email performance company. She works with marketers to earn a higher ROI and response from their acquisition and retention email programs—developing content, contact and segmentation strategies, along with testing, measurement and production programs. Read more.

Jeanniey Mullen is the eec’s founder and the global EVP and CMO of global online publishing company Zinio. She is a thought leader and visionary in the email and digital marketing field. A columnist for ClickZ, she has published numerous papers and is a frequent speaker. Read more.

Charles Stiles is the VP of worldwide business development at Goodmail Systems. In his role, Charles is focused on helping generate a better understanding of the email environment and potential solutions for a better consumer experience. He currently serves as the chairman for the Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group. Read more.

DJ Waldow is an account manager at Bronto Software. He works with Bronto’s largest clients to help them achieve and surpass their marketing goals. An active member of the email marketing community, DJ posts regularly on the Email Marketer’s Club, publishes a bi-weekly email marketing best practices newsletter, and films BrontoFire. Read more.

Chad White is the EEC’s director of retail insights and editor-at-large. He founded and is the author of RetailEmail.Blogspot, a blog dedicated to tracking the email marketing practices of the largest online retailers. Chad regularly writes major research reports on email marketing and is an Email Insider columnist for MediaPost. Read more.