De tien best practices in email vanaf 2005

‘Our resident email guru looks back at email best practices from 2005 and finds that many still hold—with some tweaks.’ Die ‘resident email guru’ heet Spencer Kollas, het artikel waarin hij vanaf 2005 terugkijkt op de best practices in email staat op iMediaconnection en heet treffend ‘Email best practices: from 2005 to today’.

Kollas is erachter gekomen dat veel van de zaken rondom emailmarketing die in 2005 ‘hot’ waren, nu nog steeds hot zijn. Het gaf hem te denken: ‘How is it that an entire industry has sprung up to counsel marketers on deliverability and still not much has changed? Are people actually listening to the advice that those in my profession are offering up?’

Dus wat heeft Kollas gedaan? Hij legde 10 deliverability tips uit 2005 langs de meetlat van 2008. Samen met Kollas’ gedachten en terzijdes over de ‘houdbaarheid’ (ik heb het meeste niet vertaald, het barst van het jargon, heb het iets ingekort).

Tip 1: Ensure you are not operating an open relay

‘This item is still a hot button for many ISPs as they try to get the upper hand in the fight against spam.’

Tip 2: Check to make sure that reverse DNS is working

‘It amazes me that this is still needed—if your reverse DNS is not set up and working correctly, you are bound to run into some serious delivery issues. Today, clients are picking up on this, but it’s still an issue that comes up on a regular basis.’

Tip 3: Inventory all “From” names and addresses used by your organization for outbound email

‘This issue has not gone away, and it’s particularly problematic for companies with numerous divisions that do their own thing in regards to email.’

Tip 4: Perform an assessment of all your domains AND sub-domains

‘This item is closely related to the previous tip on “From” addresses. It’s still very important to know everything that is going out from your company—whether it’s from a different division or class of mail—such as transactional, event-triggered or other service-based message.’

Tip 5: Determine your organization’s top 10 domains

‘This tip remains evergreen. Without knowing who is getting your emails, how can you know where to focus your time if deliverability issues arise? Fortunately, I’m encountering fewer clients who haven’t done their homework in that department.’

Tip 6: If you don’t already publish authentication methods—start

‘Authentication is a way for the ISPs to know who you are and verify that the mail coming from you is valid. The number of companies that are still not authenticating their mail surprises me. There is no excuse not to. Authentication is easy and has a big impact on deliverability.’

Tip 7: Begin preparing to implement Domain Keys/DKIM

‘This is in direct relation to tip 6. When I first wrote these tips, Domain Keys were just starting to make headway in the industry, and the DKIM specs were not yet complete. Today, senders should be publishing both Domain Keys and DKIM, as the number of ISPs that are checking for these authentication methods continues to increase.’

Tip 8: Implement deliverability monitoring tools

‘Those of you who know me know how strongly I believe in testing. There are so many good tools out there, why wouldn’t you use them?’

Tip 9: Determine if you need to establish message-throttling rules

‘Many ISPs use throttling rates to help reduce the amount of spam that comes through their system, so understanding these are very important.’

Tip 10: Regularly monitor most common real-time blacklists

‘Many smaller ISPs and corporations still use blacklists as a way to fight spam. While this has become less important than sender reputation, making sure to check the major blacklists is still a smart move for senders.’

Kollas concludeert, dat de best practices die drie jaar geleden belangrijk waren, nog steeds niet aan importantie hebben ingeboet. ‘If you make sure to follow through with them, you should continue to improve your deliverability.’

Zijn er nog zaken die ontbreken, zit Kollas er wellicht naast en zijn er toch tips en best practices onder deze tien hopeloos verouderd?