Email Delivery: It's All About Reputation
More than 20 percent of permission-based commercial email gets blocked or filtered before it reaches the inbox. Largely, this happens because the email looks like spam to the receiver. Receivers decide how to vet email based on the reputation of the email sender. Do you know what your reputation is?
Let's face it-- whether you know it or not, you have an email reputation that dictates if your messages reach the inbox, get junked or go missing. Your reputation is critical to monitor, yet there is so much noise in the market today surrounding reputation that it can be difficult to figure out what is truly important to consider for your email program. This article will help point you toward the things that really matter so that you can quickly get your reputation in check and get more of your email to the inbox.
Through it all, you control your email reputation. Think of it as your credit score for email-- your past and present behaviors factor into your credit rating, and your future behaviors can make it better or worse. The same is true with email. Following the best practices that build your reputation isn't hard, and it's likely what you want to be doing anyway to improve response rates and grow your file with active subscribers.
Read on to find out how to have the strongest email reputation possible, starting today.
Author Notes:George Bilbrey, vice president and GM of deliverability services at Return Path, pioneered the email deliverability space to help companies combat spam, launching the first set of deliverability tools when founding Assurance Systems in 2002. Assurance Systems merged with Return Path in June 2003. Bilbrey also co-founded Return Path and helped build its industry-standard Email Change of Address (ECOA) service. Prior to Return Path, Bilbrey was director of product management at Worldprints.com where he managed the development of the Image Catcher screensaver application and supporting web site, which acquired more than two million users in six months. He was formerly a partner at Mercer Management Consulting in the high tech and telecommunications group, where he developed operational experience in computer manufacturing and telecommunications. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Duke University, and an MBA from the Kenan-Flagler School of Business, University of North Carolina.
