5 tips for 95% email deliverability

If you’ve spent time marketing online at all, you’ve heard the phrase “The money is in the list.” And in one sense, it’s absolutely true. You’ll make more money off a 1% conversion rate from a list of 10,000 than you would off a 1% conversion rate from a list of 100.

But if your conversion rate is 1% because half your readers aren’t even getting your emails, you have a lot of room to improve without having to make any other changes to your copy, product, website, SEO or anything else.

SPAM is a big problem, but so are SPAM filters for legitimate businesses. So here are 5 tips to take back control of the original online form of communication:

1. Start off with good content. Now, I know I said you don’t have to make changes to your copy. But if you’re sending out stuff nobody wants to read to start with, well, stop here. Seriously, make it something they will want to subscribe to.
2. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, here are some the technical things you can do to help get to that 95% deliverability rate. Get an ESP (Email Service Provider). Don’t send emails out straight from your inbox, get a professional company to do it on your behalf. Some good companies are Aweber, Constant Contact, and iContact.
3. Double opt-in. Just do it. In the long run, you’ll end up with a more responsive list.
4. Authenticate your domain. Now, this is a technical discussion outside of this post, so you can read more about DomainKeys and Sender Policy Framework, but just know that you will need to involve your hosting provider or your server administrator. But, it’s worth it because it will help whitelist your domain with many major ISPs.
5. If you’re serious about top-notch email delivery, then sign up for a 3rd party Reputation Service that can verify to ISPs that you’re a legitimate company sending legitimate emails. A few to consider – Habeas, Bonded Sender, and ISIPP.

Email marketing can still be very effective, but not if it doesn’t get to your readers. So if you’re serious about using, start by doing it right from the beginning.

[tags]Rebecca Zwar, email marketing, virtual assistant for internet marketing[/tags]