VerticalResponse for AppExchange Blog

What You Need to Know About Email Delivery

Email Delivery sounds pretty simple:  you create an email, hit send, and then mighty wizards transport that email to your recipients through the use of hand-crafted cables and powerful laser beams.  What more is there to it than that?

As anyone who has sent more than a few pieces of commercial email knows, there is much more to it than that.  Nothing has a bigger impact on the bottom line of an email campaign than seeing that email delivered properly and then opened by as large a range of recipients as possible. 

This leads to two questions: what does VerticalResponse do to ensure email is delivered?  And what can you do to ensure your email is getting in front of as many recipients as possible? 

Let's take a look at both these questions.

What Does VerticalResponse do to Ensure Excellent Delivery?

We Use Authentication Protocols

As our CEO Janine Popick points out in the VR Marketing Blog today, we authenticate client email through the use of the four major authentication protocols: SPF (Sender Policy Framework), Sender-ID, DomainKeys and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail). With SPF and Sender-ID we have published records that state our mail domains are allowed to send email on behalf of our own IP Addresses. With DomainKeys and DKIM we sign each email with a key that the recipient server can then use to verify that we actually sent the email.

Authentication is an increasingly important component in email delivery, as email service providers can be confident that fully authenticated mail is not a scam or phishing scheme of some sort.  And VerticalResponse is one of the only providers in our space that utilizes all four of the major protocols for clients by default.

Be sure to take a look at Janine’s article if you want to learn more about authentication.

We Use Feedback Loops

We have feedback loops set-up with every single ISP that is known to offer one. This means if someone clicks Report Spam at Hotmail, that Hotmail trusts us to take action on the complaint. It also means that when someone clicks such a button at a participating an ISP (like Hotmail), VerticalResponse users don’t have to worry they’ll accidentally send mail to that person again as we automatically unsubscribe recipients who treat your mail in this way from your list.

Each ISP has their own threshold regarding how many complaints are allowed.  If you near this threshold or go over it, we will reach out and help you get to the root of the problem.

We Automate Bounce / Unsubscribe Processing

By automating this process (like many of our competitors), we ensure no users can abuse our IP Addresses by ignoring bounces and unsubscribes. This also helps us keep an excellent reputation.

Most service providers take their bounce messages very seriously and do not like it when someone continues to send email to addresses that provider says no longer exist.  Ignoring bounces can lead to mail not being delivered.  And, of course, ignoring unsubscribes is illegal according to the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act. 

We’re Anti-Spam

Everyone says they’re anti-spam, but we really, really mean it. We respond to and investigate every single complaint that comes in to our abuse desk, we quickly deal with clients who receive complaints (before they start causing delivery problems), and we even look over every email our clients launch to make sure nothing suspicious or fraudulent can make it out the door. This keeps complaints to a minimum, which is a big part of maintaining a strong reputation for our IP Addresses.  And a stronger reputation for us means a higher delivery rate for you, since your mail is being sent out through our IP Addresses.

What Can You Do To Help Ensure Excellent Delivery?

Keep Your List Healthy

Be sure everyone on your list has specifically requested info from or about your company. Also make sure you’re not mailing previously unsubscribed or bounced addresses (as I noted above). That went out of style a long time ago.

And remember that permission is not forever.  If someone gave you their business card at a tradeshow two years ago, it’s not a good idea to send them their first email today.  Don’t wait more than a month or so to mail a new contact, otherwise large segments of your list will begin to forget their interaction with your company.  This will lead to a lower open rate and cause some people to unwittingly report your email as spam.

Design With Delivery in Mind

Don’t just put a big image together in Illustrator and think you’re good to go. Make sure the email is easy to read (consider paragraph length and fonts), that images are being used only to enhance the HTML / text content (not as the sole content), and that the email is something that the subscriber would expect to receive based upon their sign-up.

If you use one our email creation tools - like the Canvas - then you’re probably just fine here.  However, if you write your own HTML you’ll need to make sure it’s validated and that you’re using code that is supported by all the various email clients out there (email clients are not as capable as web browsers when it comes to rendering HTML).  Check out my article from several months ago on HTML you should avoid.

Treat Subscribers with Respect

Don’t mail subscribers too often and clutter their inbox with mail they don’t want. Set expectations at the time of sign-up: “This is what we’re going to send you. And we’re going to send it to you this often.” Also try to maintain a relationship with the subscriber. Don’t mail them sporadically once or twice a year and expect them to take action with your emails. How often is too often? How sporadic is too sporadic? I would say twice a week to once every two months is a good range to keep in mind, depending on the type of messages you're sending out.

Have any thoughts or questions?  Let us know in the comments!

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

Digging Into Deliverability

Sending one-off emails is pretty easy - I mean, anyone with a Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail account can send a message.  However, making sure that your message gets to hundreds or even thousands of in boxes at a time, well, that can be a bit of a balancing act.

Did you know that VerticalResponse has a team dedicated exclusively to email delivery?  It's true!  They manage our relationships with the ISPs, and keep a constant watch on email delivery to ensure that even the smallest issue is dealt with immediately.  What's even more impressive is that they keep track of all of the latest regulations and trends relating to email; I don't know if any of your have tried to read through the CAN-SPAM act in its entirety, but I'm here to tell you that it's no page-turner like Harry Potter.

Everyone says that they're anti-spam, but VerticalResponse really means it.  Really, we do!  We respond to and investigate every complaint that comes into our abuse desk, and we quickly deal with accounts that receive complaints before there are deliverability issues.

Most emails sent via VerticalResponse gets a once-over by us, as well.  Why?  We're checking to make sure that it doesn't contain anything suspicious or fraudulent.  This helps us maintain our stellar reputation with the ISPs (and you thought we were just because we're nosey!)

In the same spirit of keeping our reputation clean with the ISPs, we have a feedback loop with every internet and email service provider known to offer one.  That may not seem that impressive, but I assure you, we're not dishing with them about the latest episode of Gossip Girl.  It means that if someone with, let's say, a Hotmail account,clicks on their "Report Spam" button in an email that is sent using VerticalResponse, that provider trusts us to take action on the complaint if needed.  After all, each provider sets their own standards for the number and type of complaints that are allowed.  This way, we can make sure that all of our customers meet their standards.  Pretty cool, right?

We also process all bounces and unsubscribes, which means that no one can abuse our IP addresses by mailing to people who have opted out of their emails.  This all happens automatically, but the lists are available to download in case you are curious (or even better - perhaps you'd like to woo your unsubscribes back into the fold with a direct mail campaign?)

Now, I realize that, depending on your job function, email deliverability may not be your highest priority.  The good news is that VerticalResponse takes the steps outlined above to provide you with great deliverability, which means your email messages have the best chance of getting into the inbox.  That frees you up to figure out new ways to build your list and increase opens.

Has all this talk of deliverability got your interest piqued?  We recommend Deliverability.com for the latest on, well, deliverability!

Jess Greene-Pierson, Marketing Programs Manager

When Competitors Stretch the Truth

We got word from a customer that reps from another email marketing company have been saying a few things while selling against VerticalResponse that were, well, just not true.  The company will remain nameless, but let's just say their company shares the same initials as a certain big-headed alien with a sweet tooth for Reese's Pieces.  So, we thought we'd shine a light on some of the misinformation they are sharing with their prospects and customers.

We get it, it's a competitive world, and we like these guys a lot, but if they're going to share information about us, we'd just like them to get the facts right. So here are a few things they mentioned and our response...

*Disclaimer: Although we're posting the exact quotes, we've changed the company's name to Reese's Pieces.

"Reese's Pieces trusts you, the marketer, with all bounces and unsubscribes.  VerticalResponse quarantines this data and does not allow access to it.  Therefore, there is no way to then run reports off of these key metrics."

I can think of 3 ways to get this data within the VR app, but here's the quick and dirty way:

1) Go into the Reports tab

2) Scroll down to the pre-built VR Email History reports

3) Click on "Contacts: Bounced", "Contacts: Unsubscribed", "Leads: Bounced" and "Leads: Unsubscribed"

Et voila!  You have a complete list of all your Bounces and Unsubscribes.

"You have one "from" address with VerticalResponse. So when you want your reps to maintain that one-to-one relationship with their prospects, forget about it. Your from address would be creative@mail.vresp.com, so your prospect might not know who that is. With a reply address of vresp.com and a domain of YourCompanyName, the ISP’s may think that you are phishing and blacklist you or send you to the spam filter."

Each email sent through VerticalResponse can have a different "reply-to" email address, and the user simply specifies the "reply-to" prior to launching the email campaign. So, if your org is sending out multiple email campaigns, you can specify a different "reply-to" email for each of the emails.

VerticalResponse emails are sent through the domain mail.vresp.com but there are actually a few reasons for it. VR authenticates all emails using SPF, Sender-ID and DomainKeys. If we allowed users to "spoof" the domain, we wouldn't be able to send fully authenticated emails for those users. Authenticating emails is a general practice and not doing so can greatly compromise email deliverability. We've chosen "vresp.com" since it doesn't include any branding and recipients will not recognize that domain and associate it with our long domain of verticalresponse.com. So, if your "From" label is "Widgets", the recipients of your email would see the sender as "Widgets <widgets@mail.vresp.com>".

We do have a few users who use their own domain. This requires some work on both our end and the user's end (mainly, registering the IPs we use with your domain's name). We do this the right way and the emails remain fully authenticated.

"Lastly, you have to send your list to VerticalResponse prior to every send to get their approval and this process can take up to 24 hours."

We are currently the only Email Service Provider who manually screens emails (not lists) before they are mailed. We screen to make sure our clients' emails are CAN-SPAM compliant (the "From" label reflects the sender of the email, the subject line isn't misleading, the email contains the sender's postal address, etc...), We also screen to ensure that graphical emails render correctly, and most importantly, to stop unsolicited emails (such as phishing scams) from going out the door (letting these types of emails go through is the fastest way to get blacklisted, and nobody wants that).

That said, this process generally takes merely minutes, but at the very most, 2 hours, which is far from the 24 hours mentioned above.

And there you have it. Hopefully any confusing issues are settled.

Reese's Pieces, make note of this stuff and give us a shout if you need any more information.

- Chris Carpio, Product Manager