"Never use a 'do not reply' email address" is something that we seem to have been saying for years (because we have). Today we are repeating it, hot on the heels of a real-life example, a retail mini-saga that unfolded for us with a large, well-known online retailer. The saga could have been easily downgraded to a minor glitch, had it not been for the fact that we kept receiving what seemed to be quite urgent, even strident, emails, all from a "do not reply" email address, and with no other way to respond to the email (no alternate email address, no phone number, zip, zero, zilch). It serves as a good reminder that not only can "do not reply" email addresses be incredibly frustrating (especially if some sort of alternate communication option is not provided), but they can also affect your email deliverability, especially when "no reply" email addresses are in fact non-existent email addresses.
You'd think that by now people would understand that spam complaints impact your deliverability, both to the inbox and, ultimately, even to the inbox provider themselves. Yet we regularly get questions and comments, both in the course of our business day, and in casual conversation, which make clear that there is something that people just aren't grokking, so here it is, put as plainly and clearly as we can put it: If you get too many spam complaints YOUR EMAIL IS GOING TO START GOING TO THE JUNK FOLDER and may eventually be blocked. Period.
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").
We are often asked "Why are my emails going to spam?" And while we know, and you may know, that there are obvious missteps to avoid when ensuring that your email is not marked as spam, there are some commonly overlooked practices, or lack thereof, that can still cause a legitimate email to be marked as spam.
Often the way that you find out that a user's email address is no longer valid is that you get a bounce back ("user not found"). But sometimes a user will switch email addresses, and they will actually try to notify you. What do you do then?
Here's one way to tell transactional email vs marketing email: have a court slap you for putting what it says is advertising or marketing content in your opt-in confirmation email. This court decision happened inside the EU, however it is also a cautionary tale for anyone in the U.S., or Canada, or really anywhere that has national email marketing laws.
Many email senders rage against the machine - the spam filtering machine, that is, and specifically spam filters for email. And it's easy to understand why: legitimate email getting caught and misidentified as spam, also known as false positives, can play all sorts of havoc for an email sender. But consider this: what would the email world look like if the email receivers (ISPs and inbox providers) didn't use spam filters?
Wondering how to avoid spam filters and your email going to spam? Here's a very basic thing to remember: one of the main reasons that spam filters, and even people, may mistake your email for spam is because, in fact, the content of your email makes your email look like spam. Remember that old saw, that "content is king"? Well, content can also be the joker, where the joke is on you. Because if your content is garish or gaudy, or full of lots of big images and little text, then instead of getting the royal treatment, it may go straight to the spam folder.
What a great way to start the week – getting to announce our newest service: our […]
We've talked before about the things that can artificially suppress open rates, and the dangers inherent in not being aware of the issues. And of course we've talked about the importance of continuing to monitor your open rates, even after iOS 15, because hey, the inbox providers continue to monitor them. Now we're going to share with you a real-life story about how a business gave a loyal subscriber the boot because that subscriber was reading email without loading images, and so the business assumed they were inactive. Don't make this mistake.
