All types of businesses can benefit from a well-managed email marketing initiative. Today, however, they must take extra precautions to ensure they maintain a high-quality sender reputation to optimize delivery and improve results. Check out these top tips and make sure your organization follows them all:
Ping test emails
Always ping your email before your first campaign, especially if it’s an older list, a trade show list, or a prospect list. And once pinged, never use failed pinged emails.
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Monitor your automatic responses and delete them at the address and stop immediately after each campaign. These email replies should be checked carefully as the automated reply may come from a different source than the email being deleted.
Consistency and frequency
Consistency and frequency of your email campaigns are important in maintaining a positive sender reputation. ISPs try to create and evaluate your domain’s email marketing history. The more consistent you are and the more reasonable you are about frequency, the more likely you are to build a solid reputation as a sender. This requires you to follow the other tips listed here.
Avoid/reduce complaints
Many complaints cause a lot of problems for the sender’s reputation and domain. The best way to avoid complaints is to limit campaign frequency (every other week is a good rule of thumb for most general campaigns), enforce immediate opt-outs, focus on quality content and collateral, and limit “sales pitches.”
Avoid Honeypots
Spam traps, sometimes called honeypots, are email addresses that have been specifically created to receive email from marketers who do not follow email best practices. Traps target marketers who capture email addresses from the web or simply blast emails using low-quality lists. Sufficient spam trap “catches” can result in low deliverability or even domain blacklisting.
Use relevant, educational content
“Buy my stuff and save money now”! If your content is salesy, spammy, and irrelevant, your sender reputation will be adversely affected, and it will happen quickly. Try to make your content relevant and educational. Changing regulations, industry innovations, important news of the day, and educational webinars are better received than an invitation to buy your products or services.
Email marketing is both an art and a science, and it’s increasing in complexity and deliverability. It can be a great lead generator when used correctly, or a waste of time and money when used with an email “blast” mentality. Insurance company marketers who don’t have the time or resources to implement these types of initiatives can outsource their campaigns to a skilled insurance company marketing firm.
