I often get asked as I am talking to perspective customers, “What do you do to make sure our email goes into the inbox?”.  It’s a valid question and really the number one concern for the people who are coming to us looking for help.  It isn’t until they start experiencing deliverability problems that they start looking for a managed SMTP relay service like SocketLabs On-Demand.

Based on our experience here are 5 key components that are critical in providing good deliverability for bulk email and consistently getting into the Inbox:

1. Sending Rules – most if not all of the large ISPs have specific limits as to how many connections and number of messages per connection they will accept from a single IP address.  By not obeying these limits you can get into trouble quickly. These limits change periodically as well so you need to keep on top of the changes.
2. Email Authentication – having properly formatted SPF DNS records, SenderID, DomainKeys and DKIM in place so an ISP can validate your identity as a sender helps build trust with the ISP.
3. Accredited IP Addresses –  having your IP address(es) on an accredited list that is leveraged by the ISPs helps build additional trust with the ISP.  SuretyMail and ReturnPath are 2 good ones.
4. Remove Bad Email Addresses and Complainers – two things that can really hurt deliverability is passing too many bad email addresses or having too many people complain about your email and categorize it as spam.  Immediately removing these addresses from your email lists will help ensure good deliverability.
5. Only Send Email to People Who Have Opted-In to Receive Your Specific Email – sending to purchased or rented lists, old lists, borrowed lists, collected feed lists, etc… WILL harm your reputation and adversely effect your deliverability GUARANTEED!

We’ve found at SocketLabs that we can manage and control 1 thru 4 but, we need the cooperation of our customers to manage and control #5.  There are no shortcuts to good deliverability!