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Best Practices: Tips to Improve Email Delivery
In addition to abiding by Topica’s Terms of Service, we
recommend that list owners adhere to the following best
practices. By carefully following these recommendations, you'll
avoid subscriber complaints, ensure successful email delivery,
and protect your brand’s reputation.
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Ensure informed opt-in consent:
Provide clear and explicit language for gathering
subscribers’ opt-in permission. Let subscribers
know exactly what they’ll be receiving. |
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Ask subscribers to reconfirm:
Use our system’s subscriber confirmation so subscribers
can confirm their subscriptions from their actual
email addresses. This reduces problems from typos
or forgeries that can affect lists, even though
you may have taken proper precautions. Additionally,
some ISPs give preferential routing or “white listing”
based on messages with a reconfirmed status. |
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Ask subscribers to add your “From”
address to their address book:
Many ISPs
exempt messages from filtering if the recipient
has added the sender to their address book. Tell
subscribers to add your “From” address
to their address book – this guarantees
delivery of your messages. |
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Use Topica’s remote subscription
box:
Use Topica's remote subscription
box on your web site to capture IP number/date/time
of the subscriber's opt-in request. Doing so sends
the information directly into the Topica system.
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Leverage your identity/branding:
Make sure that recipients can easily recognize
your from address, subject, and body content.
Research at AOL shows that an unrecognizable email
is less likely to be opened and more likely to
generate complaints. The reverse is true if the
recipient recognizes the content. |
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Include opt-in details:
When
possible, remind subscribers about where/when
they opted-in. This reduces the amount of complaints. |
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Include body text:
Some ISPs
(AOL9) have images and links turned off by default.
Be sure to include enough text so the reader will
know whether to view your links or images. |
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Avoid links that use IP numbers instead
of domain names:
AOL filters based on
IP numbers in links. |
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Keep your message size compact:
Use your mailings as teasers to drive traffic
to your web site. Long messages, especially those
over 25k, may annoy recipients and trigger additional
filtering. |
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Avoid using poor quality third-party
sourcing:
The stronger the connection
between the opt-in and the email required, the
fewer complaints generated and the less damage
to your brand's reputation. |
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Include your physical postal address
if sending commercial email:
The CAN-SPAM
law requires the sender's postal address for commercial
email. |
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