I have been doing some Email deliverability testing on a newly configured server/IP.

All good email marketeers know that the key to good Deliverability includes.

- A properly configured mail server
- Reverse DNS correctly configured
- Correct MX records setup
- an SPF record/SenderID record
- Correct To and From: records in the mail that match the lookup that the receiving server will inevitably check
- structuring the content and headers in accordance with WC3 and email RFC standards

As well as the usual best practice
- removing bounces regularly - keeping a clean list
- acknowledging unsubscribe requests promptly
- Whitelisting with as many ISPs as possible

So when I did some testing on a newly configured IP/server... the delivery rates relative to historic ones I have experienced (on other servers) was appalling. As much as 35% less in some cases.
Interestingly when i did switch to another IP (offered to me temporarilly by a friend at an ESP) the delivery rate increased up again 35%.
What makes things interesting is that the latter IP I used did not resolve correctly to my domain..... so technically it was not configured correctly... but gave me almost perfect delivery rates..

In other words an incorrectly configured ..."long established" IP address gives better delivery rates than a properly configured "new" IP.

So it would seem that Mailing IP's need a "history" in order to get accepted by some ISP's. Technical configuration, content and ethical practices are important... but not as important as having a solid mailing history associated with a specific IP address...

This will pose challenges for anyone starting a new business no?

jon

Hi Jon

Interesting post - a topic that we discussed at the most recent E-mail Marketing roundtable actually.

Our collective view was that you can/should think of your e-mail IP range in the same way as you do about your website domain/IP range for search engine optimisation.

Essentially both have a credibility / authority / reputation / trust 'ranking' which external, automated, systems, applications and tools (like search spiders) try to measure and score in order to decide how to treat you (for rankings, deliverability etc.).

Have you had a look at the excellent Page Strength Tool? This is a nifty little app which is interesting for SEO reasons. It measures the following criteria to gauge the "strength" of your web pages for search engines:

• Links pointing to full URL
• Links pointing to domain
• Position at Google for first four words of title tag on target URL
• Age of Domain
• Links from domains with .edu TLDs
• Links from domains with .gov TLDs
• Alexa Rank
• Domain name visibility
• Internal Link Percent
• Number of links according to Technorati
• Number of search results for URL search at del.icio.us
• Listings in DMOZ (ODP)
• Links found in Wikipedia
• Google Pagerank of full URL and Domain

The above are Google search ranking criteria. (For more details on all the ranking criteria and their importance, as far as know them, download our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Best Practice Guide).

One of the criteria, as you will see, is "Age of Domain". It is widely acknowledged in SEO that the age of a domain plays some part in search rankings ("Sand Box" effect etc.)

I think we could create (fancy a go?) a similar list (and, indeed, online app) for e-mail. There are all sorts of indicators (some public, some not - have a look at SenderScore's quantitative criteria for example) which you could use to 'measure' how reputable an IP range is. In large part, that's what the likes of SenderScore do.

But if this is all true (as seems) then it does have some significant implications for one's e-mail marketing approach / strategy and how you would / would not outsource e-mail marketing. For example:

- If you need IP age / heritage to get deliverability then this plays into the hands of the Email Service Providers (ESPs) if you are new to the game because they can give you instant 'credibility'.

- However, the above would concern me as a buyer/client UNLESS I owned the IP range contractually. Otherwise, am I not tied in to the ESP? They effectively own my e-mail reputation. I could build trust and reputation only to have it all vanish if I moved IP range. They could then effectively trade/sell that reputation equity I'd built up?

Overall the above should be a good thing in the long term as it should help make it harder to spam and should reward responsible e-mail marketers - in a similar way to best practice SEO actually encourages site owners to have better websites.

Ashley Friedlein
CEO
E-consultancy.com

Hi Dave

Thanks for pointing out that "diagnostic" tool - didn't know about that and apparently we have no Sender ID record set up... must get that sorted!

Ashley

Well, that *was* easy to set up! Thanks for that Jon.

Ashley