1. Jo Thornley Silver

    Head of Communications at Dynamis

    05 February 2008 12:47pm

    Jo Thornley

    Hi,

    I had a very interesting talk with Return Path about sender score and their other services. They say our score is low and that only 33% of our emails are being delivered.

    Are there other companies who can help, like return path? Particularly any based in the UK?

    What else can we do to improve deliverability? I try and check our mails in as many ISPs as I can. Spam filter tests suggest the content is ok... I am trying to set up feedback loops with isps...

    Please help and advise where you can.

    Thanks,

    Jo

  2. Simon Turnham

    Web Consultant at RSA

    05 February 2008 15:11pm

    Simon Turnham

    Matthew Ridgway
    Epsilon International
    0208 834 1967

    This company is UK based and use Return Path as one of thier suppliers. It may be worth dropping Matthew a line.

    Simon

    On 12:47:26 5 February 2008 JoDalton wrote:

    Hi,

    I had a very interesting talk with Return Path about sender score and their other services. They say our score is low and that only 33% of our emails are being delivered.

    Are there other companies who can help, like return path? Particularly any based in the UK?

    What else can we do to improve deliverability? I try and check our mails in as many ISPs as I can. Spam filter tests suggest the content is ok... I am trying to set up feedback loops with isps...

    Please help and advise where you can.

    Thanks,

    Jo

  3. Sita Patel

    Data Marketing Manager at Associated Northcliffe Digital

    05 February 2008 15:16pm

    Avatar-blank-50x50

    Hi Jo

    I don't think there are any companies that can address this issue here in the UK - Return Path whilst US based is the authority on this and i;ve never come across a better UK alternative.

    But there is much you can do in-house to address your email deliverability.

    You can get a free senderscore account (www.senderscrore.org) but you won't see deliverability for each ISP (only available with the paid Return Path account)  and you need to know your IP address. You will be able to see your overall deliverability score and what the ISP's report on your reputation scoring.

    Also setup seed accounts (free email accounts with Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail etc etc) to specifically test run htmls before you send. Also add these seeds to each dispatch. Each ISP has its on rules regarding deliverability (e.g. Yahoo is based on reputation scoring + html spam scoring etc) so you need to learn each of the ISP's rules.

    Also remember the way you collect data and clean it also affects deliverability.
    Get the spam trap emails removed, and be ruthless when suppressing  soft-bounces as well as hard bounces.

    Lastly - a little advice from one Marketer to another........many email broadcast suppliers will say they can resolve this issue. They can't. I would say you need to learn to do this client-side as there are many factors involved.

    Regards
    S

    On 12:47:26 5 February 2008 JoDalton wrote:

    Hi,

    I had a very interesting talk with Return Path about sender score and their other services. They say our score is low and that only 33% of our emails are being delivered.

    Are there other companies who can help, like return path? Particularly any based in the UK?

    What else can we do to improve deliverability? I try and check our mails in as many ISPs as I can. Spam filter tests suggest the content is ok... I am trying to set up feedback loops with isps...

    Please help and advise where you can.

    Thanks,

    Jo

  4. Jo Thornley Silver

    Head of Communications at Dynamis

    05 February 2008 15:30pm

    Jo Thornley

    Thanks for both replies!

    I've already got the free sender score account (score 60, deliverability 33%:o() and I already have seed accounts and test in Aol, Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail and Outlook before I send. I know there are a couple more I need to add here as we send email to customers all over the world.

    You mention ISP spam rules - where can i find out this kind of information  - as most of it isnt published in help sections. I am in the process of setting up feedback loops - but thats obviously when people mark you as spam rather than the ISP.

    We are about to launch a clean up of our data. Are there outside agencies who do this? Its on our list to do this in house. We currenlty dont monitor or remove hard or soft bounces and I would guess that the only people we dont email are the people who have opted out or unsubscribed - this cant be doing us favours. when you say be ruthless - do you mean remove soft bounces? or just remove them after a certain number of soft bounces?

    Thanks again for your help.

    Jo

  5. Kieran Cooper

    Director at Facultas

    06 February 2008 08:14am

    Kieran Cooper

    Hi Jo,

    In summary, the key things are authentication and reputation. You don't say how you're sending your emails, but there are various things that are now essential to have in your DNS (SPF, Sender ID, accurate reverse DNS). Depending on which mailing software you are using you may also be able to implement Domain Keys / DKIM. Repuation is down to factors such as mailing volume, bad addresses and complaints. You do need to stop sending to addresses which fail - so having access to this level of detail is important - and you also need to set up feedback loops with the major ISPs (for Yahoo you need to have domain keys set up) so that you can remove people who report your mail as spam.

    Our company Facultas offers deliverability consulting to help companies in the UK get to grips with the requirements of ISPs. Our deliverability guru has spent 6 years working with Lyris (email software and service provider) in the USA and we're members of MAAWG, the grouping of senders and ISPs that work together to fight spam and abuse. We've found that just half a day's work can generally highlight the areas that need to be sorted out and we'd be happy to talk further if that would be useful. kieran@facultas.co.uk or 020 7739 9000.

    Best wishes
    Kieran

  6. Simon Magee

    Social Media Consultant at SiM Media Ltd

    06 February 2008 08:48am

    Simon Magee

    Hi Guys,

    We, IPT, are SenderScore certfied and can help.  Recent campaigns are achieveing 95.75% delivery rate across the major ISPs.

    simon.magee@ipt-ltd.co.uk
    IPT - Powered by MailPerformance.

    On 12:47:26 5 February 2008 JoDalton wrote:

    Hi,

    I had a very interesting talk with Return Path about sender score and their other services. They say our score is low and that only 33% of our emails are being delivered.

    Are there other companies who can help, like return path? Particularly any based in the UK?

    What else can we do to improve deliverability? I try and check our mails in as many ISPs as I can. Spam filter tests suggest the content is ok... I am trying to set up feedback loops with isps...

    Please help and advise where you can.

    Thanks,

    Jo

  7. craig sullivan

    Usability consultant at personal

    06 February 2008 09:19am

    craig sullivan

    Hi,

    There is an alternative to ReturnPath and the product is called Email Advisor from Lyris.

    Regards,

    Craig.

    On 12:47:26 5 February 2008 JoDalton wrote:

    Hi,

    I had a very interesting talk with Return Path about sender score and their other services. They say our score is low and that only 33% of our emails are being delivered.

    Are there other companies who can help, like return path? Particularly any based in the UK?

    What else can we do to improve deliverability? I try and check our mails in as many ISPs as I can. Spam filter tests suggest the content is ok... I am trying to set up feedback loops with isps...

    Please help and advise where you can.

    Thanks,

    Jo

  8. Chris Nixon

    Delivery Assurance Executive at The Communicator Corporation

    06 February 2008 12:05pm

    Chris Nixon

    Hi Jo,

    One of the key considerations when it comes to improving your email deliverability is to send relevant messages to customers who actually want your messages. Although message content can play a role in improving your delivery, nowadays it is more about having a healthy sending reputation. As in life, reputation and more specifically good reputation is earned by doing something well. In email marketing terms and as purported above this essentially means sending relevant, targeted messages to a hygeinic dataset. By following these simple rules, your messages are much less likely to generate recipient complaints (the process of flagging messages as Spam in the email client). To clarify, the higher the number of complaints an ISP 'sees' on your sending IP(s), the poorer your reputation. The poorer your reputation, the more likely your messages will be subjected to messages being throttled back by ISP's resulting in high bounce rates. Ultimately, It's all about proving yourself as a decent, reutable sender.

    In the event that recipients do complain about your messages (and to answer the 2nd part of your question) you need Feedback Loops in place with all of the ISP's that offer this service. At present, the following ISP's have FBL systems freely available:

    * AOL
    * Excite
    * Hotmail / MSN (Junk Mail Reporting)
    * OutBlaze
    * RoadRunner
    * Yahoo!
    * United
    * USA.net

    More importantly you need a process in place, whether this is manual or automated to deal with the FBL complaint messages being sent back to you which unsubscribes such complaining parties from your databases. By unsubscribing these addresses, you will no longer send messages to these individuals moving forward.

    I hope this helps Jo.

    Kind Regards,

    Chris Nixon.

    --------------------------------------------------------------

    On 12:47:26 5 February 2008 JoDalton wrote:

    Hi,

    I had a very interesting talk with Return Path about sender score and their other services. They say our score is low and that only 33% of our emails are being delivered.

    Are there other companies who can help, like return path? Particularly any based in the UK?

    What else can we do to improve deliverability? I try and check our mails in as many ISPs as I can. Spam filter tests suggest the content is ok... I am trying to set up feedback loops with isps...

    Please help and advise where you can.

    Thanks,

    Jo

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