Email4Thought

The importance of a healthy domain

I originally posted this over at www.dmaemailblog.com

One factor which is often overlooked with regards to email deliverability is the health of a sending domain name. The actual 'from' domain plays a very important job when it comes to getting your emails delivered to your subscriber's inbox.

Apart from the (very important) basics, such as the power of brand recognition, there are many unseen factors to do with your domain name, which may be preventing your emails to be delivered as successfully as they could be.

The main things to be aware of are:

1: Authentication
2: Reverse DNS
3: Active sending 'from' address
4: Active Abuse@ and Postmaster@ addresses
5: Whether the domain is blacklisted

Let's take a quick look at each of these influencing factors:

1: Authentication

Authentication is a key factor to good deliverability and is growing steadily in importance and use.  The main types of authentication which need to be done on a domain are SPF, SenderID, Domain keys or DKIM. You can download a whitepaper by Return Path here which explains more about it.

2: Reverse DNS

Reverse DNS (RDNS) is a very basic, yet important factor in the health of a domain. Many ISP's will not deliver a message from a domain which doesn't have a RDNS and there are some blacklists out there that will put you on their list for this as well. You can check your RDNS at www.dnsstuff.com

3: Active sending 'from' address

Don't be fooled into thinking otherwise -the ISP's do check these, so make sure that your sending address is active and monitored. If it isn't, there's a good chance that not only will the emails not be delivered, but that you may get blacklisted.

4: Active Abuse@ and Postmaster@ addresses

Ensure both these addresses are active and monitored. ISP's, system administrators and blacklists all check to see if these are functioning addresses. It is also advisable to register the domain at www.abuse.net.                                                                                       

5: Whether the domain is blacklisted

This a very obvious thing to do, but you'd be surprised how many companies don't have it scheduled to do on a regular basis. A free service which allows you to do this is www.robtex.com.

A great authentication analogy

There's a great post on the Digital Body Language blog which compares authentication to immigration control and is a must read for anyone who hasn't as yet got their head around how authentication can help.

Here's the main concept of the post:

In many ways, this parallels the work of the fine folks who patrol our borders. They employ a variety of techniques and technologies to identify individuals who are not welcome to cross the borders, while allowing legitimate visitors into the country with minimal headache.

Let's look through a few of the approaches that are used.

Your Passport: this is key to your identity, and it is one of the main pieces of information used by the border agents to identify you. In the email world, this is best represented by your IP address. Most of today's deliverability systems use your IP address as the basis of your reputation. Don't share it, any more than you would share your Passport.

Retina Scans: There are more advanced ways of identifying who you are, often involving advanced technology, such as retina scans. Adoption varies, and there's usually a bit of setup and registration you would have to do. In the email world, similarly, there are advanced technologies for identifying who you are, such as DKIM and SPF. Certainly worth doing, however not universally adopted yet.

Criminal Record: Having a clean record is definitely a good thing when you interact with the folks at the border. The same holds true in the email world, one of the key things to look at is an email reputation score that provides the closest thing to a "criminal record" of the IP address you are using. If you are using a partner to manage your emails, be sure to have a look at this.

Police Background Checks: the border guards can obtain a lot of information on a potential visitor by doing a police background check. In the email world, you can run scans and tests of your emails in a similar vein to a background check, flagging anything suspicious or problematic. In the real world a criminal record can be tough to erase, but in the email world, if you see something flagged, there's a good chance you can fix it. Use a Return Path or Pivotal Veracity scan to see what gets flagged before a major mailing, and learn from it.

Visa Stamps: These tell the border guards a lot about where you've been and whether you have been accepted or rejected. Similarly, in the email domain, most major ISPs offer Feedback Loops to indicate whether emails have been rejected, and that there was a complaint. You can then better understand the issue and quickly resolve it. If you're not taking advantage of these, you're missing a key source of information.

Read the full post here

Hotmail flags unauthenticated email

Over at Smith-Harmons' The Retail Email Blog, Chad White writes about an alarming discovery he made with regards to a well-known US retailer's email being blocked by Hotmail due to it failing Senderid tests.

He finishes the post with some wise words: 'For those email marketers who have not authenticated their email with both Sender ID and DKIM, consider this your wake-up call. Getting your emails authenticated should be your top New Year’s resolution.'

Read Chad's post:

http://www.retailemailblog.com/2008/12/alert-hotmail-flags-unauthenticated.html

Another reason to become Authenticated

Yahoo! are doing a big push for DKIM authentication, as they will be fully supporting this at the beginning of 2009. Alongside of this is their Feedback Loop Program (FBL). Ezemail, as an ESP participates in Yahoo!'s FBL - which allows us to automatically unsubscribe any complaints instantly...meaning that they do not get a chance to complain again. This in turn, increases your deliverability, as complaints are one of the major reasons why ISP's such as Yahoo! delivers emails to the junk mail folder rather than the inbox....so the aim is to minimise complaints.

When you're authenticated with DKIM and Domainkeys you'll have a little key to the left of your from name within Yahoo!

Sounds good? Well -the snag is, for an individual sender to participate in Yahoo's FBL, you need to be Domain Key and DKIM authenticated. But - don't worry, you can leave it all to us (and we'll also authenticate you for senderid and SPF at the same time).

So, to take advantage of the benefits of both being authenticated and being included in Yahoo!'s FBL, contact us today.

Yahoo! joins Senderscore Certified

Return Path have added another reason to become Senderscore Certified. As of the first week in January 2009, Yahoo! will be joining Senderscore Certified - meaning that if, as a sender, you are Senderscore Certified, you will benefit from Senderscore's preferential treatment in Yahoo!

Ezemail is a Senderscore Certified partner of Return Path, so if you would like to find out more about becoming Sendercore Certified, please contact us.

Read More: Return Path

Successful Deliverability Lies with the Marketer

Originally Posted: Be Relevant!

Yep - you heard right. Back in 2005, George Bilbrey of Return Path wrote a blog "It's not your ESP - it's YOU!" and MarketingProf's also published an article recently "Email Deliverability is in Your Hands". This seemed to be the theme which was threaded through many of the presentations at both the London DMA's recent conferences. It appears that most marketers seem to think that they can buy deliverability - by changing ESP's or paying for accreditation. However, neither of these solutions will work unless the marketer is doing Best Practise.

From a combination of attending these conferences and with conversations with Dennis Dayman, Stephanie Miller and David Daniels, combined with my own experiences - I have come to the conclusion that deliverability is a 2 part process, both of which require due attention and ownership by the marketer:

Part 1 - Deliverability to ISP's - IP Reputation: This is a combined effort by the ESP and the marketer. The ESP needs to have everything ready and waiting for the Best Practise Marketer. Things such as the infrastructure, whitelisting, delivery monitoring, Feedback Loops, education about Authentication and enabling/assisting clients to become authenticated are all things which the ESP can do.

However, the main causes of emails not being accepted by the ISP is due to the percentage of spam complaints and bad addresses....and having a clean and up to date database is the responsibility of the marketer. This is where having a good Sender reputation is crucial and if you're on a dedicated IP address - well, hey..there's no one to blame but yourself if your reputation isn't as good as it could be.

Part 2: Deliverability to the Inbox - Brand Reputation. So, you got accepted by the ISP/mail server and they have delivered you to the recipients email client? Excellent - but will it be delivered to the inbox or the junkmail folder? This is where your brand, sender name, subject line, good clean coding, choice of copy, domain reputation, message relevance and things like image to copy ratio are taken into account - both by the spam filter and by the recipient.

ESP's can assist you with all of the above factors - but ultimately, the responsiblility of deliverability comes down to you, the marketer. Therefore, if your deliverability isn't as good as it should be  - look to implementing Best Practices rather than changing ESP's.

Yep - you heard right. Back in 2005, George Bilbrey of Return Path wrote a blog "It's not your ESP - it's YOU!" and MarketingProf's also published an article recently "Email Deliverability is in Your Hands". This seemed to be the theme which was threaded through many of the presentations at both the London DMA's recent conferences. It appears that most marketers seem to think that they can buy deliverability - by changing ESP's or paying for accreditation. However, neither of these solutions will work unless the marketer is doing Best Practise.

From a combination of attending these conferences and with conversations with Dennis Dayman, Stephanie Miller and David Daniels, combined with my own experiences - I have come to the conclusion that deliverability is a 2 part process, both of which require due attention and ownership by the marketer:

Part 1 - Deliverability to ISP's - IP Reputation: This is a combined effort by the ESP and the marketer. The ESP needs to have everything ready and waiting for the Best Practise Marketer. Things such as the infrastructure, whitelisting, delivery monitoring, Feedback Loops, education about Authentication and enabling/assisting clients to become authenticated are all things which the ESP can do.

However, the main causes of emails not being accepted by the ISP is due to the percentage of spam complaints and bad addresses....and having a clean and up to date database is the responsibility of the marketer. This is where having a good Sender reputation is crucial and if you're on a dedicated IP address - well, hey..there's no one to blame but yourself if your reputation isn't as good as it could be.

Part 2: Deliverability to the Inbox - Brand Reputation. So, you got accepted by the ISP/mail server and they have delivered you to the recipients email client? Excellent - but will it be delivered to the inbox or the junkmail folder? This is where your brand, sender name, subject line, good clean coding, choice of copy, domain reputation, message relevance and things like image to copy ratio are taken into account - both by the spam filter and by the recipient.

ESP's can assist you with all of the above factors - but ultimately, the responsiblility of deliverability comes down to you, the marketer. Therefore, if your deliverability isn't as good as it should be  - look to implementing Best Practices rather than changing ESP's.

AOTA's Call to Action for Authentication

In this month's issue of Infobox, Craig Speizele of AOTA is calling upon all brands to become authenticated before November 1st 2008. He says:"AOTA is calling on all brand owners to implement email authentication at the top level corporate domain by November to help protect consumers during the upcoming holiday season. Those brands who adopt will be taking a step forward in protecting their consumers, brands and stockholders. Those that fail will realise a competitive disadvantage and expose their brands to an unacceptable level of potential exploits." You can read the full article here. I encourage you not only to read it, but also to implement authentication within your own brand. We provide 3 ways to become authenticated, you read about them here.

Labels: AOTA, authentication

Goodmail Launches Email Proof of Delivery Service

As many of you know, we have partnered with Goodmail enabling those of who would like to use Goodmail for deliverability purposes to easily do so, as our Ezemail system allows our clients to send Goodmail certified and imprinted emails. Goodmail now have launched a new service, CertifiedEmail Paper Suppression which allows the sender to have proof that the email was actually delivered. This is particularly of interest for companies such as legal firms, Health Insurance companies and Insurance firms. If you are interested in finding out more about Goodmail, please contact us. Read More about Certified Email PS: http://www.goodmailsystems.com/news/press_releases/2008/20080318-certified-email-paper-suppression.php http://directmag.com/magilla/goodmail_proof_delivery_0318/

Labels: certified sender, Goodmail

Authentication

Authentication is becoming increasingly important in the deliverability of email campaigns.

Alongside of your reputation it is one of the key factors in deciding whether you are delivered to the inbox or the bulk mail folder. The AOTA has a detailed whitepaper which you can download here.

Below, we have included brief descriptions of the benefits for each type of authentication as well as listing the 3 ways we can support you to become authenticated. If you have any enquiries, please let us know.

Sender ID (SID)

Sender ID is a must if you send email to Hotmail, as it will definitely improve your deliverability to Hotmail. Be sure though that the authentication has been set up correctly, otherwise, incorrect Sender ID records will only cause delivery problems. It is based on SPF with a few variations and both are very similar to implement. AOL, Hotmail and MSN are the main users of Sender ID.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF)

Sender ID is backwards-compatible with SPF, and both are relevant to Hotmail. In fact for good deliverability to Hotmail you really need to be doing at least one of these authentications methods, if not both. It's very easily implemented, as it is a simple text record which is inserted into the DNS - your email hosting company should easily be able to do this for you. The benefits of implementing SPF aren't only limited to Hotmail. Other ISP's including Gmail, also call upon SPF to authenticate whether emails are legitimate or not. For example, failing an SPF check carries a heavy penalty - nearly 2.4 points from the current SpamAssassin test, on a Bayesian scale that identifies a message as spam when it reaches 3.0 points or higher. - (source: Lyris, Q2 Email Advisory Report Card (2007))

DomainKeys/DKIM

DomainKeys and DKIM is currently not as popular as Sender ID and SPF as it isn't as easy to implement and not all ESP's support DKIM (which is soon to replace DomainKeys). However, it is probably the more reliable of the three authentication measures and requires changes to be made both at the sending server end as well as to the DNS. One of the main benefits to signing your emails using DomainKeys is that you are able to participate in Yahoo's Feedback Loop.

Feedback Loops contribute greatly to good deliverability, so it is certainly recommended. Additionally, Gmail and AOL also use DKIM for authentication purposes. To view which ESP's support DKIM please view the AOTA's Directory of authenticated ESP's.

Ezemail offers 3 Alternatives to becoming Authenticated:

1: Use a subdomain of our sending domain name cmc3.com.

In this instance you would use a subdomain such as @yourcompanyname.cmc3.com (the 'yourcompanyname' part can be specified by yourselves). We then do all of the authentication for the domain name for yourselves and you send all mailings out using this domain name. This option is free. To authenticate using this option, please do the following: Please email us your preferred 'from address' i.e info@yourcompanyname.cmc3.com and we will set this up for you.

2: Use a subdomain of your own which is hosted with ourselves.

You can use a subdomain eg. news.yourdomainname.com (or whatever your choice is) and we will host it for you and authenticate the subdomain for you. There is a cost associated with this, please contact us for pricing.

To authenticate using this option, please do the following: Please contact us for pricing. Then set up your subdomain name with your domain name provider. Provide us with your new sending from email addresses e.g news.yourdomainname.com We will make the authentication to both the DNS of this subdomain name as well as our servers for Sender ID, SPF, Domain Keys and DKIM and will informa you when this has been completed.

3: Similar to #2, except that you use a subdomain of your own which you host.

This means that your tech team will need to do the authentication for this subdomain for SPF, SenderId, DomainKeys and DKIM. We will provide the necessary information to assist you with this.

To authenticate using this option, please do the following: Set up your subdomain name with your domain name provider. Provide us with your new sending from email addresses e.g news.yourdomainname.com.

We will send you a 'key' for you to use when authenticating for Domain Keys/DKIM. Once you have authenticated your domain name for Sender ID, SPF, DKIM and Domain Keys, please let us know so we can finalise the authentication upon our servers.

If you would like to be sent a list of authentication resources, please let us know and we will be happy to send it to you.

Labels: authentication

Email Standards Project Launch

The Email Standards Project has finally launched - on my birthday too I might add. This is pretty exciting news and if all goes well it may make a very difference to designers and marketers of email marketing. What are they about? In their words: "The Email Standards Project works with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email. Our goal is to help designers understand why web standards are so important for email, while working with email client developers to ensure that emails render consistently. This is a community effort to improve the email experience for both designers and readers alike." They have a heap of reports on the current state of email clients such as AOL, Yahoo, Gmail and the likes which are free to view.

Labels: Email Clients, Email Rendering, Email Standards, news