The challenges of a successful email campaign hinge on the sender's ability to outsmart the obstacles.
What if every time you sent out 100 letters through the post office to eager customers and prospects, 25 were never delivered? Instead, they were stuffed into a box in the corner and remained there until the box overflowed and someone tossed them out.
The consequences in terms of lost goodwill and business would be huge. Yet, that's exactly the situation many B2B email marketers face today.
According to industry estimates, about one-in-four B2B email messages is mistakenly filtered as spam, compared with one-in-five B2B consumer messages.
In a world riveted by the ISP spam wars, B2B email marketers must grapple with deliverability challenges every bit as tough as their B2C counterparts. Not only must they get messages through the spam filters of major internet service providers, they must also contend with thousands of corporate domains and anti-spam firewalls, and the widespread use of email blacklists.
But there are steps B2B marketers can take to ensure more of their messages get through to the people who have asked for them. As long as you are already sending permission-based, well-branded messages, promptly honoring unsubscribe requests and scrubbing bounces from your lists, these six tips can help improve your B2B email deliverability.
Check blacklists
Blacklists are lists of IP addresses suspected of sending spam. Most ISPs maintain their own blacklists, but many companies rely on third-party blacklists in deciding whether to block senders, which results in a significant impact on B2B email deliverability.
According to MarketingSherpa's "Email Marketing Benchmark Guide, 2007," most email marketers check whether they are on a blacklist less than once a month, and yet more than a third of the corporations use them in their anti-spam efforts.
If you land on a major blacklists like Spamhaus or SpamCop, follow their directions for contacting them and requesting removal, or ask your email service providers to intercede on your behalf.
Look into an email reputation service
Email reputation services such as Sender Score and Habeas compile detailed information in order to categorize senders based on their email reputation, and then they vouch for companies with the best reputations. Such endorsements may help you get through some corporate firewalls.
Use a deliverability provider
Companies like Pivotal Veracity or Return Path can help you get a handle on your reputation by auditing your emails to determine why they aren't being delivered. These audits uncover causes and fixes for content and coding errors, rendering problems, "black-holing" (messages that are discarded by ISPs without notice), and other factors affecting your reputation and deliverability.
Get authenticated
Authentication enables ISPs and network operators to verify that messages actually originate from the internet domain associated with the message. It is used in conjunction with reputation data to determine if a message should be delivered, and if it should be delivered to the junk folder or the inbox. The three major authentication standards are Sender Policy Framework, Sender ID and DomainKeys. They have all been adopted by virtually every major ISP, so if you haven't already done so, be sure to implement all three schemes in your email program.
Consider a double opt-in
One way to ensure better deliverability is by using a process called double opt-in, which requires registrants to confirm their desire to receive your messages by clicking a link in an email. If they don't respond, they are not added to your list, and you can assume your message either got caught in a spam filter or that the person is no longer interested. However, this technique has a high drop-off rate; as many as half of all those who originally register fail to follow through with a confirmation.
Tell recipients to expect your message
Whether you use a double opt-in or simply follow up registration with a confirmation or welcome message, be sure to let recipients know with the opt-in that your message will arrive shortly, and then send it right away while they are thinking about you. In your message, ask recipients to add you to their email address book to ensure that they continue to receive your emails.
As you focus on these areas, don't forget to measure the results of any changes you make in order to understand what changes work best for deliverability to your B2B email list. Taking steps to protect your email deliverability will pay huge dividends in the future.
Bill Nussey is the president and CEO of Silverpop, a provider of permission-based email marketing solutions, strategy and services. Read full bio.