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 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

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