It’s all about Engagement

It may seem early to be thinking about holiday email deliverability, but months before Santa begins packing his sleigh, email activity skyrockets as marketers begin holiday ad campaigns, consumers start shopping, and inboxes begin to fill up. This time of year people have less time to engage with their email yet they receive more of it. Here are some holiday season tips to help you end up in the inbox and not on one of Santa’s Blacklists.

Each year the spam button becomes a tempting beacon of sanity in a chaotic inbox. Protect your reputation and avoid email blacklisting by adding a List-Unsubscribe Header link that unengaged recipients can use as an alternative to the spam button, without even opening your messages. SocketLabs has created an automated version of this feature for our On-Demand customers that can be set up with a single click: Adding a List-Unsubscribe header in SocketLabs On-Demand Hosted Email Delivery Service

If you are an On-Premise Hurricane MTA Server customer, the following article will give you the information needed to take advantage the benefits of List-Unsubscribe: Unsubscribe Processing in SocketLabs On-Premise Hurricane MTA Server

What else can I do this Holiday Season to avoid email blacklisting?

In a recent post by expert Laura Atkins from Word to the Wise, a particular statement really stuck out and is something that we agree with wholeheartedly here at SocketLabs:

“Some people argue that the increase in blocking during the holiday season is because the folks running the filters are attempting to sabotage retail marketing… The processes and techniques the ISPs and filter companies use don’t change during the holidays [so organizations will benefit if they] consider deliverability as a factor in their marketing strategy”.

Turns out the causes of many senders’ holiday headaches are generally either their own changes in sending behavior, or not adjusting their sending patterns to take into account the huge increase in email experienced by everyone this time of year.  Here are some quick tips to think about when making decisions about the campaigns you may launch:

• Target your customers carefully this busy season. Break them into smaller groups according to engagement level.  Highly engaged users will respond more favorably to increased volume.
• Verify that your mailing lists are clean. Bad addresses that result in bounces and/or failures will likely have a larger cumulative effect this time of year due to sheer volume.
• Be wary of trying to re-engage too many old lists or addresses.  Brushing the dust off of a list that has sat idle at your organization for more than 6 months is a risk that isn’t worth the possible trouble.  This especially applies during what may be your most important time of year for successful deliverability.

For more information about getting the best delivery performance from your email please contact the SocketLabs Support Department.

If you are not currently a SocketLabs customer but are interested in our email deliverability services, sign-up now and try it for free today!