Following this checklist will ensure your email messages successfully reach your recipients and will increase the likelihood of your messages being accepted, not marked as spam/junk, by your recipients.
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 3rd 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
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 Segmentations
- 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
