One of the most frustrating things for commercial and volume email senders is that different ISPs have different standards for what they require in order to ensure that your email gets delivered. On top of that, many ISPs don't seem to adhere to the agreed industry standards in terms of how their receiving mail servers interact with the sending mail servers - for example five different ISPs may use five different SMTP error codes when they bounce an email because the email address doesn't exist, even though people believe there to be one generally accepted code for that situation (along the lines of "550 user unknown").
Address book importing. Odds are good that if you aren't doing it, you are either thinking about doing it, or you know someone who is doing it or thinking about doing it. Because, you see, it's all the rage. It's also an awful practice.
You should never send mass or bulk email through a new IP address before you warm up that new IP address. Warming up an IP address is a critical step towards not only having good deliverability, but also to making sure that your email isn't tagged as spam, or blocked. To illustrate the importance of warming up an IP address, we're going to tell you a story.
Exactly what is a CAN-SPAM physical address? The CAN-SPAM Act, which is the U.S.' Federal email marketing law, requires that you include your physical mailing address in each and every bulk mailing, such as an email newsletter, email marketing, or other email to a mailing list. For some reason this requirement confuses people - maybe because it's so straight-forward, and people are used to complex, convoluted, and contradictory (the Three Cs of legislative drafting) language when it comes to the law. So what exactly does this mean in the context of CAN-SPAM?
Here's one of those things that impacts email deliverability which can be so subtle, and yet so critical. It can bite you in the back without your realizing it, and then six months later you wonder why you have gangrene in your knees; it can be that difficult to connect the dots. That is until someone points it out to you, and then you have that forehead-slapping moment: of course! And that thing is that setting and meeting subscriber expectations will have a direct and demonstrable impact on your email deliverability (not to mention your email's effectiveness).
You know, sometimes it's the silliest, most boneheaded things which trip us up. This is true for your email too. See if you can spot the mistakes in this email (this is a genuine, unretouched email, other than our changing the name of the service to "Geegaw" in order to protect the hapless).
Here's why you should never send email "from" an email address that doesn't exist, and why an email address from which you send email needs to be real. Once upon a time somebody - somewhere - somehow decided that it would be good idea to send email to their mailing lists using an email address in their "From:" field that didn't really exist. But sending email "from" an email address that doesn't really exist is a spectacularly bad idea. In fact, it may even qualify as the Epic Fail of "from" email address ideas.
One of the many things that we explain to people in our Email Deliverability Handbook is that while you must comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, you shouldn't say that you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act. This advice may seem counter-intuitive, however here's why.
It's hard to believe as we are closing in on 2023 that there are still email marketers and other bulk email senders who don't immediately remove people who unsubscribe from their list, but it's true. So this article is for those people who need to understand that you really really need to remove the email addresses of people who want to opt-out from your mailing lists as soon as humanly possible. Yes, even though CAN-SPAM gives you 10 days to do it!
Just mention the term 'DNS', and many email senders' eyes glaze over; say "reverse DNS" or "rDNS" and a look of panic may replace the glaze. Yet, not only are these not complicated concepts, but having reverse DNS set up is crucial to having consistent, good email delivery and deliverability. So it's important to have a good understanding of what DNS and reverse DNS are, and do.
Listen to Our Blogcast
- Iowa, Montana, Indiana, and Tennessee Join the Ranks of States with Email Opt-in Requirement in New Data Privacy Laws (Season 3 Episode 8)
- New Texas Data Privacy Law is Strict on Email Collection and Email Marketing (Season 3 Episode 7)
- The Value of a Political Email List: Ready for Ron (RFR) versus the FEC (Season 3 Episode 6)
- Who is Behind the Domain Kmail-lists? Here's Who (Season 3, Episode 5)
- Get a Great Return on SMS Marketing While Following SMS Marketing Laws and Best Practices (Season 3 Episode 6)