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Things for you to do:

• Send your initial lists to clean lists (people you know well who won't hit the spam button)
• Use lead nurturing to send relevant content based on roles, actions and interests
• Only send to old database contacts once you develop a good reputation
• Consider using a different but related domain for sending emails
• Setup SenderID and SPF
• Setup postmaster@ and abuse@ email addresses
• Avoid buying, renting or borrowing lists from 3^rd parties
• Check the integrity of your contact lists before and after an upload
• Create great marketing content
• Segment your marketing content into smaller chunks vs. sending "clusters"
• Get people's permission before adding them to an email marketing track
• Embed a "Safely Unsubscribe" and "Privacy Policy" link at the bottom of your messages
• Do not be too aggressive with your email communications especially at first (think dating)
• Use auto-responders that cross promote
• Use an active email address as your reply-to email address
• Make the unsubscribe process easier than the subscribe process
• Use your colors and logo in your content so your recipients recognize you
• Don't include too many images (<=4) in your messages
• Keep your messages small (< 37K Bytes)
• Follow CAN-SPAM Act requirements

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• Setup DKIM/DomainKeys
• Send from a dedicated IP address, not a shared IP address
• Start by warming up your IP address and sending a small amount (<1,000) of messages
• Process hard and soft bounce emails and test
• Check blacklist records occasionally to make sure your dedicated IP address is not on any lists
• Make sure you tag your contacts with a lead source
• Segment current and future contacts by building Lead Liaison Target Lists
• Build several landing pages and web forms to increase lead capture and build subscribers
• Keep web form fields simple
• Send a text representation with your html email
• Monitor feedback loops and resolve spam complaints
• Avoid using spam-like words ("free") in your messages

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Deliverability and reputation problems can occur if you are using a shared IP address to send out your emails while other senders use the same IP address. If the other senders emails get marked as spam or the shared IP address gets blacklisted your IP will be blacklisted and/or your emails will land in the junk folder. Many ESPs automatically use shared IP addresses across many clients.
Lead Liaison assigns a dedicated IP address to each customer. Trials are run using a shared IP address pool. Even in the pool, there are multiple IP addresses to prevent one from going down and affecting other trials.

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If you're just starting out with Lead Liaison or your IP address has changed you will need to warm up your IP address to develop a reputation with the ISPs. If you suddenly send out 30,000 emails in one day from a new IP your messages will be limited or purposely throttled by ISPs. If you're in the thousands of emails to begin with you might avoid scrutiny. However, if bounces, spam complaints, or spam trap hits represent a high percentage of your emails sent you'll damage your reputation right out of the box. Make sure you initial sends are to very clean lists.

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Try not to send emails to invalid or very old contacts in your database. It's best to run some type of database cleansing tool on your database first. If you send a single message to your entire database and include these dormant contacts you could have a high percentage of bounces. Additionally, old email addresses could be spam traps. Bounces and spam traps will send a notification to the ISP and damage your reputation. The best practice is to send frequent emails to small amounts of old contacts, vs. sending to your entire database or all old contacts, and monitor results. If you're getting lots of bounces phase out this effort. Conduct this "experiment" only after establishing a good reputation.

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As discussed, establishing a good reputation is vital for email deliverability. To protect your reputation several methods have been developed by various consortiums. These methods verify your email messages come from an authorized server and not from a nefarious source. The solutions are DomainKeys/DKIM and Sender ID/SPF records. Each authentication method is described below.

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Created by Yahoo!, DomainKeys/DKIM is an authentication scheme that signs messages based on the "from" header and a DNS (Domain Name Server) record maintained by your DNS servers. For example, if your company's domain name is registered with GoDaddy.com there's a good chance your DNS is also hosted with GoDaddy.com. To keep it simple, a DNS is a set of rules and parameters for your domain name. Since your DNS is managed by you and hosted inside a secure area (such as GoDaddy.com) it's a secure way to prove the "from" address originated from the correct mail servers.
DomainKeys/DKIM validates emails using two security keys. The keys encrypt messages before delivery and validate the message at delivery time. DKIM and DomainKeys are very similar; however, DKIM was created by several companies to enhance DomainKeys. Today, major ISPs such as Google (@gmail.com) and Yahoo! (@yahoo.com) use DKIM.
Benefits of using DomainKeys/DKIM:

• It allows the originating domain of an e-mail to be positively identified, allowing domain-based blacklists and white lists to be more effective. This is also likely to make phishing attacks easier to detect.
• It allows forged e-mail messages to be discarded on sight, either by end-user e-mail software (mail user agents), or by ISPs' mail transfer agents.
• It allows abusive domain owners to be tracked more easily.
• It allows a great reduction in abuse desk work for DKIM-enabled domains if e-mail receivers use the DKIM system to automatically drop forged e-mail messages claiming to be from that domain.
• The domain owner can then focus their abuse team energies on their own users who actually are abusing their use of that domain.

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Things to do with Lead Liaison's support:

• Setup DKIM/DomainKeys
• Send from a dedicated IP address, not a shared IP address
• Start by warming up your IP address and sending a small amount (<1,000) of messages
• Process hard and soft bounce emails and test
• Check blacklist records occasionally to make sure your dedicated IP address is not on any lists
• Make sure you tag your contacts with a lead source
• Segment current and future contacts by building Lead Liaison Target Lists
• Build several landing pages and web forms to increase lead capture and build subscribers
• Keep web form fields simple
• Send a text representation with your html email
• Monitor feedback loops and resolve spam complaints
• Avoid using spam-like words ("free") in your messages

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How to Get the Best Email Deliverability

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Don't Send Emails through a Shared IP Address

Deliverability and reputation problems can occur if you are using a shared IP address to send out your emails while other senders use the same IP address. If the other senders emails get marked as spam or the shared IP address gets blacklisted your IP will be blacklisted and/or your emails will land in the junk folder. Many ESPs automatically use shared IP addresses across many clients.
Lead Liaison assigns a dedicated IP address to each customer. Trials are run using a shared IP address pool. Even in the pool, there are multiple IP addresses to prevent one from going down and affecting other trials.

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Warm up your IP Address

If you're just starting out with Lead Liaison or your IP address has changed you will need to warm up your IP address to develop a reputation with the ISPs. If you suddenly send out 30,000 emails in one day from a new IP your messages will be limited or purposely throttled by ISPs. If you're in the thousands of emails to begin with you might avoid scrutiny. However, if bounces, spam complaints, or spam trap hits represent a high percentage of your emails sent you'll damage your reputation right out of the box. Make sure you initial sends are to very clean lists.

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Use Caution with Old Database Contacts

Try not to send emails to invalid or very old contacts in your database. It's best to run some type of database cleansing tool on your database first. If you send a single message to your entire database and include these dormant contacts you could have a high percentage of bounces. Additionally, old email addresses could be spam traps. Bounces and spam traps will send a notification to the ISP and damage your reputation. The best practice is to send frequent emails to small amounts of old contacts, vs. sending to your entire database or all old contacts, and monitor results. If you're getting lots of bounces phase out this effort. Conduct this "experiment" only after establishing a good reputation.

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Use Authentication

As discussed, establishing a good reputation is vital for email deliverability. To protect your reputation several methods have been developed by various consortiums. These methods verify your email messages come from an authorized server and not from a nefarious source. The solutions are DomainKeys/DKIM and Sender ID/SPF records. Each authentication method is described below.

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DomainKeys/DKIM

Created by Yahoo!, DomainKeys/DKIM is an authentication scheme that signs messages based on the "from" header and a DNS (Domain Name Server) record maintained by your DNS servers. For example, if your company's domain name is registered with GoDaddy.com there's a good chance your DNS is also hosted with GoDaddy.com. To keep it simple, a DNS is a set of rules and parameters for your domain name. Since your DNS is managed by you and hosted inside a secure area (such as GoDaddy.com) it's a secure way to prove the "from" address originated from the correct mail servers.
DomainKeys/DKIM validates emails using two security keys. The keys encrypt messages before delivery and validate the message at delivery time. DKIM and DomainKeys are very similar; however, DKIM was created by several companies to enhance DomainKeys. Today, major ISPs such as Google (@gmail.com) and Yahoo! (@yahoo.com) use DKIM.
Benefits of using DomainKeys/DKIM:

• It allows the originating domain of an e-mail to be positively identified, allowing domain-based blacklists and white lists to be more effective. This is also likely to make phishing attacks easier to detect.
• It allows forged e-mail messages to be discarded on sight, either by end-user e-mail software (mail user agents), or by ISPs' mail transfer agents.
• It allows abusive domain owners to be tracked more easily.
• It allows a great reduction in abuse desk work for DKIM-enabled domains if e-mail receivers use the DKIM system to automatically drop forged e-mail messages claiming to be from that domain.
• The domain owner can then focus their abuse team energies on their own users who actually are abusing their use of that domain.

Lead Liaison uses a premier email marketing engine from Port25 which enables authentication using DomainKeys/DKIM. Lead Liaison will completely configure DomainKeys/DKIM for you. No setup is required on your part. Your Lead Liaison Customer Success Representative will set this up.

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Email bounces are automatically processed by Lead Liaison. After processing your emails, subscribers will be marked appropriately, and you can access all bounce related statistics from the Statistics ? Email Campaign Stats or Statistics ? Contact List Stats pages. Hard bounces will mark a Subscriber as "Bounced" by the application after one bounce, and deal with problems like "email address doesn't exist" or "invalid domain name". Soft bounces take 5 times to remove a subscriber from your list, and deal with more common problems like "relay problem" or "mailbox is full".
Lead Liaison also has a process to configure DKIM/DomainKeys, SenderID and will support you when setting up your SPF record.

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Occasionally recipients may report a complaint to an ISP. ISPs will look for a way to communicate with your company. It is recommended postmaster@yourdomain.com and abuse@yourdomain.com are set up as valid email accounts and go to someone that can and will actually do something about complaints.

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Ensure your dedicated IP address is not listed on any RBL (real-time black lists). You can do this by checking list, and deal with more common problems like "relay problem" or "mailbox is full".
Lead Liaison also has a process to configure DKIM/DomainKeys, SenderID and will support you when setting up your SPF record.

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Resolve Spam Complaints

Occasionally recipients may report a complaint to an ISP. ISPs will look for a way to communicate with your company. It is recommended postmaster@yourdomain.com and abuse@yourdomain.com are set up as valid email accounts and go to someone that can and will actually do something about complaints.

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Check Blacklist Records

Ensure your dedicated IP address is not listed on any RBL (real-time black lists). You can do this by checking http://www.mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspxhttp://www.mxtoolbox.com/Su%3Cdiv%20class=[

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