Recommendations for Maintaining Mailings – InfluencerSoft

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Content

1 Basic recommendations for mailing
2 Recommendations for the web programmer
3 Verification of the email before sending
4 If you are still in spam

Email is one of the oldest Internet tools, unchanged, and has survived to the present; however, it has gotten a huge number of associated standards and application practices documented nowhere else.

In the email standards themselves, there are no ways to check the sending or prevent unwanted mailings and spam. Therefore, any mail server (Gmail.com, Yahoo.com, etc.) performs several additional checks to weed out unwanted correspondence.

We have compiled a list of tips that will help you pass these additional checks. Many of the recommendations below are not mandatory, but the more of them you will do, the higher the probability that problems with the delivery of emails will not arise.

InfluencerSoft service gives you the opportunity to send emails with pre-defined settings so that your emails will reach the Inbox; however, we remind you that the delivery of emails to the “Inbox” lies with the author of mailings.

Basic recommendations for mailing

Do what you promised

The content of the newsletter must match what is stated on the subscription page. Write honestly, do not deceive the recipients.

If the subscriber does not receive what was promised, the best case, he will simply unsubscribe from you, and worst case, he will click on “SPAM.” Each click on the “SPAM” button from the subscribers’ side affects the deliverability of your email and your sender reputation.

The fastest way to be considered as spam is to keep sending ads that do not provide valuable content. To avoid this, follow these three rules:

Do not burn out the database by mailing excessively

It is strongly recommended not sending more than one email a day to the same subscriber groups without a good reason, otherwise, it is only a matter of time the mail services are guaranteed to mark you as a spammer.

Many people agree that the optimal frequency of mailings is not more than three times a week and at least once a month. If you send more often, your newsletter may get boring, which will increase the number of clicks on the “SPAM” button. If too infrequent, subscribers will not recognize you and forget that they subscribed to your mailings, which will also increase the number of clicks on the “SPAM” button.

Be careful with reciprocity and advertising

Many authors in the pursuit of financial gain begin to actively take part in promotions of mutual piracy or in advertising of other projects.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with moderation on using such methods of monetizing traffic and increasing the subscriber base. But this becomes a genuine problem when advertising or reciprocity becomes:

Persistent and intrusive
Not belonging to the subject of your newsletter

Email distribution, despite all its mass character, is a means of maximally close communication with your target audience. Respect and take care of your target audience.

In our business, there were cases when authors threw the subscribers dozens of rambling emails a day, starting from computer literacy courses and gardening tools to offers for increasing male virility. Of course, such authors are forever blocked by mail services and were not our customers for long.

Be consistent with your email style

Spam filters of email services are extremely complex systems that track tens and hundreds of parameters. They monitor the indicators of your mailings hourly: From which IPs they are committed, from which domain, and with what function. Based on this, the mailing-service workers build a model of your behavior and make a prediction for the future.

If you start to behave atypically for your model of behavior, for example, dramatically increasing the number of emails sent or changing the sending IP server, mailing services can treat this with suspicion.

There are two important points:

When moving to a new mailing list service, never start sending your messages right away through the entire database. Select several target segments and carefully increase the number of messages sent.
Frequently changing service providers adversely affect the delivery.

Segment the database

Who said that sending all the emails across the entire database is a good idea? This is an awful idea. It is best to segment the subscription base.

Segmentation of the base is the division of the whole subscription base into smaller groups according to the interests and preferences of subscribers. The open rate of your emails is causally related to how well your subscription base is segmented. In addition, segmentation has a positive effect on the delivery of messages by mail services.

Very convenient methods of segmenting the database are:

Segmentation through a survey
Segmentation via a quick subscription/unsubscribe link

+Briefly, what is a quick subscription/unsubscription link

Do not be afraid to clean up your database

Do you hope that subscribers who have not opened your emails for many months will suddenly start reading them? This probability is small. Most often these subscribers are no longer interested in your newsletter.

We already wrote about how seriously the mailing system tracks the metrics of your mailings. One such metric is the opening-rate of your emails. The lower it is, the less likely subsequent emails will be delivered.

Accordingly, it is better to get rid of inactive subscribers. For this, you can use the “auto-cleanup of subscribers who did not read 15 emails in 45 days” settings in the mailing lists and the auto group of inactive contacts (if you still want to save them for some reason).

Do not be afraid of the links “Unsubscribe” and “SPAM”

You do not need to be afraid of the Unsubscribe link and "Report as SPAM link, which InfluencerSoft offers.

If a person wants to unsubscribe, it is better to give him this opportunity and put it in the most prominent place. Of course, this will slightly increase the percentage of unsubscribes, but it will significantly reduce the clicks on the “spam” button in the mailer. With fewer clicks on “SPAM,” the less chance of being tagged as such.

The more interesting question is, why should we put the "Report as SPAM” link? The fact is that if the subscriber still wants to not just unsubscribe, but complain about spam, and clicks on the link, the complaint will go to the InfluencerSoft service and not the mailing service. Ask yourself, who do you want to deal with more: The Support Service of InfluencerSoft or, for example, the support service of Gmail.com? In view of this, the "Report as SPAM” link should be brighter than the “spam” button in the subscriber’s mail client.

Pay attention to the subject of the email

Even if the subscribers agreed to receive your email, they may not initially recognize who it is from. The subject of the email “Our daily mailing from …” or “Your monthly update from…” will help subscribers to immediately get to know your email.

The subscriber should understand why there are receiving your email

One of the main reasons why your emails do not reach the subscribers is complaints about SPAM. For subscribers to understand why they received the email, we recommend that you include the following information in the emails (sender’s contacts):

You received this email because you subscribed to mailings from a SPECIFIC PROJECT on the SITE website. If you do not wish to receive more emails from this mailing list, you can unsubscribe from it by clicking on the link: unsubscribe from the mailing list. SPECIFIC AUTHOR, City, Country, Phone

+How to do it in InfluencerSoft?

It has become a practice to show this information not only in the “footer” of the email but also at the top of the email. It can just be plain text.

“You received these mailings as you agreed to receive links from the SPECIFIC PROJECT on the SITE website. If you do not wish to receive more emails from this mailing list, you can unsubscribe (unsubscribe link).”

You can place this text yourself when making an email and add an unsubscribe link.

Refer by name

Always use the variable “{$ name}” to contact your subscribers. As practice shows, this increases the loyalty of subscribers to your mailings.

+How to do it in InfluencerSoft?

Write more than 500 characters

There is a belief that there is a ratio of text/images that affect the delivery of emails. If you do not comply with it, the email cannot reach the subscribers.

The good news is according to the statements of many of our colleagues and competitors and confirmed by statistical data if the HTML-code has more than 500 characters, then the number of images in it does not affect the delivery of emails.

Another point, indirectly related to this rule: you can never send emails that consist ONLY of images (without text). Such emails are guaranteed to go into spam since most professional spammers use this technique to bypass anti-spam filters (more on stop-words below).

Beware of stop words and watch your spelling

Spam filters of email services do not like certain words that professional spammers often use.

Here are just some of these words and phrases:

test, test, testing, dollar, free, advertising, available, gift, bonus, commercial offer, discount, 100%, savings, earnings, ruble, income, guarantee, secret, novelty, limited, transaction, price, account, buy, urgently, only today, do not remove, access, money, benefit, congratulations, freedom, cheap, sex, XXX, investment, easy, earning, mortgage, lottery, million, timeshare, credit, lose weight, etc.

Text triggers on the headers also often get your email reported as SPAM. Do not put “Immediately,” “While free,” “Buy it right now,” or “Register soon” in the headlines! No mention of “freebies” or proposals for instant enrichment.

We also recommend you to follow some rules that will help your emails to successfully pass spam filters:

Do not use the <$> character, especially in headings.
Do not abuse the exclamation marks <!>. Three exclamation points in a row is already a signal for a spam filter.
Use capital emails only where it is necessary. YOU DO NOT NEED TO USE THE CAPS LOCK KEY TO WRITE ENTIRE SENTENCES
Do not overdo it with bold and underlined font
Do not abuse the abundance of multi-colored text in an email and carefully avoid excessively bright colors (for example, spam filters can easily block colors such as #FF0000; #0000FF; #00FF00)

Below is a good example of how easy it is to break all the rules and in the blink of an eye go into spam. We often see this in spam emails.

WEBINAR TOMORROW!!!!! CATCH THE MOMENT, BUY A PLACE WITH A DISCOUNT 50%!!! $:) $

Despite these filters, many authors successfully send emails with small violations in words and stop-colors and their emails get to incoming subscribers. Why? Because otherwise, their mailings are impeccable, they have a good reputation, high opening-rate, and a small number of complaints about spam. Of course, the example above will drive even the most ideal sender into spam. We are talking about small and rare violations. If you are just starting an email activity, you should not take risks at all. The presence of even a single stop-word can lead to being classified as a spammer.

Services-abbreviations – email killers

All references in the text of the email should be shown in the form of a fully qualified domain name. You are not allowed to use IP addresses and URL-encoded domain names as references. Goo.gl, Bit.ly, J.mp, tinyurl.com, and the like – just forget about them. Such services are often used by spammers and the trust of the mailing service to such links is minimal.

If the email has a short reference – 9 cases out of 10 your email will get blocked.

No more than two different domains in one email

Ideal: All links used in the email, as well as domains of return email addresses, must match. Also, we do not recommend using more than three links in the email in total.

System links in the footer of the email from InfluencerSoft (View the history of emails from the InfluencerSoft service, unsubscribe from the newsletter, report spam, link to the site) do not fall under this rule and are not summed up with links in the body of the email. Moreover, the presence of these system references is one of the mandatory rules of the mailing system and is guaranteed to help get your email delivered, not lower the delivery.

Do not mess with suspicious domains

Do not specify in the email's links containing domain names whose IP addresses are in popular stop-lists.

Find the IP address of any domain at http://ipaddress.com/ip_lookup

You can check the location of the domain’s IP address in popular stop-lists on the following sites:

http://whatismyipaddress.com/blacklist-check

http://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx

The stop-list can be either global or local, that is, only for certain mail service, for example, only for Gmail.com or only for Yahoo. Therefore, if the mailing service has fixed your IP as spam, no matter which mailing service you use, the emails will still be sent to spam. In this case, even redirects will not help.

Do not use dangerous code

If the broadcast is in HTML-format, you’re not allowed to use ActiveX, JavaScript, VBScript frames, or IFrames. Mailers regard them as potentially malicious programs. The result is blocking the mailing or cutting the message.

We also recommend writing the text of the email, either directly in the editor of the email in InfluencerSoft, or in the Notepad program, and then copy the text to the email editor. Do not copy the text of the email from Microsoft Word, Evernote, or even Google notepad. The copied information will be guaranteed to have an HTML code, which will either spoil the layout of the email or lead to blocking the mailing.

Another tip in terms of mailings – to not copy emojis from social networks or from the Internet into emails. Their presence can be negatively perceived by mail programs, and they can cut them along with a solid piece of the rest of the content. In this case, it is also possible for the mailing to be classified as spam.

Use only domain mail

Just forget about using email sender for mail on free domains.

InfluencerSoft service is also familiar with similar (so far one-time) use cases with mail on @ Gmail.com, etc.

There is only one way out: Use corporate mail on a personal domain of the form, for example xxxxxx@yoursite.com

Recommendations for the web programmer

Be Easy

Do not forget that web mails must filter some tags and attributes for security reasons, and they all do it differently. Avoid using classes, minimize the use of styles, especially for positioning. Layout on the tables is recommended.

Do not create the interface for a particular post service

Users often configure redirection, mail collectors, or read emails in email programs.

Think about the user

He can open your email on a huge retina display or on an old phone on top of Mount Everest, trying to grab a GPRS connection. So, the email should load quickly, but look beautiful even when pictures are off.

Do not forget to specify the protocols

In all URLs, please specify the protocol (http: //, https: // or mailto:).

The use of URLs without a protocol, for example “//example.com/”, is unacceptable and can lead to freezing of the message in some email applications due to attempts to access the network. The use of protocols other than those listed is not recommended because they can be cut down by filters.

Choose the correct way to integrate images

Choose the most proper way to embed images. Below are the following options, each with its own positives and negatives:

External images. From the point of view of the speed of sending, this option is the most preferable. External images do not weigh anything and do not complicate the structure of the email. However, many applications and mail services require the user’s permission to display such images. In addition, the server on which they are found should be reliable enough that when opening a message, they do not lead to freezing because the picture is inaccessible. Use them when the presence of pictures is optional.
Inline images. They are sent along with the contents of the email. They complicate the structure of the email and increase its weight, but can be large enough and usually displayed by default.
Data URI. The content image is inserted directly into the tag. They do not complicate the structure of the email, and are always shown in web mail, sometimes even with pictures disabled. As a rule, they have a size limitation, and so are suitable for small icons. However, please note that Gmail users may have problems displaying images in this format.
Font images. Images of Unicode characters from default fonts or using embedded custom fonts. A unique property – can be scaled along with the text. They may not display correctly, depending on the version of the operating system and the installed updates, device, mail program, or service.

Test it!

Test each new layout of the message on different devices in different web mail before sending it to “live” users.

Verification of the email before sending

When sending mass mailings, always use the function “Test the distribution for spam.”

If testing shows a hit in spam, first check the semantics of the email according to the algorithm:

Change one word in the subject, conduct testing
Change the second word in the subject, conduct testing
Remove the first sentence, conduct testing
Remove the second sentence, conduct testing

By the method of sequential exclusion of sentences or paragraphs of the email, it is possible to determine whether the problem lies in semantics (which means that it can be corrected operatively), or whether it is worth “digging deeper.”

We also recommend you register to two to three well-known email providers (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.), with 12 to 15 emails and place into a separate group of subscribers.

This group should be created specifically for these mailboxes and there should not be other emails in it, except for your test mailboxes.

It is better to sign emails with real names – John, Thomas, Olivia etc. You do not need to configure any filters or exception lists on these mailboxes. Leave as many settings as you intended by the creators of the email. Then, send the email with problems with the test results ONLY to this special group.

Based on the delivery of real emails to real addresses, you can already conclude:

If the messages are not spammed, try sending the scheduled email to the desired subscriber group. Even though email testing is almost identical to the actual mailing, it has micro-differences in several instances and can sometimes be perceived by email-service providers in a slightly different way.
If the emails are still spammed, you at least now have specific addresses for which the problem arose, and you can write to the support team of your email service provider with a request based on these data to give an answer why the emails were placed in spam.

Of course, sending out to such a small number of subscribers may not be considered mass, so the method is not foolproof, but it helps a lot when communicating with the services if the emails still go into the spam. Eighty percent of users of the service do not perform such actions, due to which the time of solving problems with mailings grows many times, which is simply not permissible at the speed of the information business.

If you are still in spam

We strongly recommend using the suggestion given in this article.

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