Premiere Global Services' director looks at the real ROI of the AOL-Goodmail partnership.
It's the latest buzz and one of the hottest topics of discussion across the industry: the AOL-Goodmail partnership.
Goodmail claims that certifying your company's email campaigns through its system will produce a 300 percent ROI. While this claim has not yet been substantiated, most email marketers agree that certifying your email campaigns will produce some type of ROI, so the real question is how much can you expect?
Before you start crunching the numbers (calculating your AOL message loss, estimating costs of sending email campaigns and estimating revenue), you must first take steps to ensure you have addressed the existing factors that could be affecting your deliverability rates. By following these steps you will not only be able to calculate an accurate ROI from a Goodmail implementation, but you will also help ensure you can qualify for the Goodmail program. Even if you are not considering using Goodmail at this time these items will help increase delivery of email to your customers.
Ensure your company is not operating an open relay.
A common misconfiguration of Sender Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) servers is that of an open relay. Malicious Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) senders will find the open relay and use it to spread UCE messages throughout the Internet. If you are currently operating an open relay, work with your network administrators to ensure this is updated. Large ESP's SMTP servers are locked down rather tight, but check with your account manager to make sure this is on their deliverability checklist.
Regularly monitor the most common real-time blacklists.
Many businesses use blacklists as a way to help fight Spam. A regularly scheduled check of the large blacklists, such as Spamhaus, MAPS and Spamcop, can help reduce the amount of time you are listed if you happen to land on one of these lists. At a minimum, check these blacklists once a month. If you are sending out one campaign a week then once a month is often enough, if you send out three to five campaigns per week, you should check these lists biweekly.
Remove Spam trap addresses from all sources.
Many times Spam trap email addresses are added to recipient lists to track activity. Spam trap email addresses are most often defined as one of two types, distribution list email addresses (also known as role accounts), such as sales@company.com or email addresses that use the word Spam in the address, such as spam@company.com. A regular review of your recipient list for any of these types of email addresses can save you from getting reported on a real-time blacklist.
Old customer data.
Successful email marketing relies on good, clean data. While you do need some critical mass to be successful with email marketing, think quality, not quantity. Verify your customer preference data every six to12 months and trim recipients who have become inactive or disinterested. Your list size may shrink, but the quality of your database will increase dramatically and so will your delivery rates.
Email authentication.
ISPs use authentication to identify a sender to more effectively protect their customers from Spam. There are two forms of authentication; IP based (SPF/Sender ID) and Cryptographic based (Domain Keys and DKIM). Either method will help improve deliverability of your emails, and combined they will work even better. If using an ESP, make sure they are using authentication when sending your messages. If hosting email in-house, check with your system administrators to determine if your company is publishing authentication records.
ISP rules.
ISP rules, contacts, departments and processes change almost daily. As a result, it takes active industry involvement every day to make sure your email is complying with the current best practices. If your company does not have a dedicated ISP liaison, find a partner or ESP that does.
Some experts may lead you to believe that Goodmail alone will improve your email deliverability, but the truth is, it takes implementing email deliverability best practices to be allowed into the program. If you don't follow these simple best practices the likelihood of passing Goodmail's certification process is reduced greatly. Stay tuned to learn four more ways to improve your deliverability and ensure an accurate understanding of Goodmail's ROI for you.
Spencer Kollas is responsible for managing and maintaining Permiere’s Deliverability Services, as well as the company’s relationships with ISPs. During his time at Permiere, Kollas has realigned the Delivery Services division, improved the company’s overall deliverability rates and works with large clients to resolve deliverability issues with various ISPs. Kollas is an active member in industry organization such as the Email Sender & Provider Coalition (ESPC), and the Anti-Phishing Work Group (APWG), as well as many other trade organizations.