Two good articles about ESPs

I ran across a couple of good posts about deliverability today. Both address deliverability issues people see who use ESPs.

http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2007/11/dont-expect-your-esp-to-have-t.php

http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2006/12/esps-and-deliverability-what-t.php

A couple of pertinent quotes:

“ESPs only control one out of the five possible causes of deliverability problems - infrastructure ... And, in almost all cases, ESPs do a good job about keeping up with the changing industry standards around how to send email.”

“ESPs should absolutely provide diagnostic tools that allow clients to monitor and analyze deliverability issues in real time”

The Little White Book

As I’ve discussed a bit before, it is important to ask your subscribers to add you to their personal whitelists. This allows you to bypass at least some filtering and increases your chances that your emails will be delivered to the inbox. How much impact these listings have varies by domain, ranging from being the final step in the filtering process and only allowing inbox delivery if it passed the other filters to bypassing all filtering whatsoever.

Included in these instructions can also be ways to ensure that images are turned on by default for your email. If you send HTML email, this is very important. Most email clients turn off images by default and your readers may not get your message as it was intended.

There are several good sources of info out there in terms of how to set up a page of instructions for your readers:

- This new one includes how to whitelist on a blackberry amongst others and has great tips on how to design the page.

- Another set of instructions can be found here.

- Here is an article about the importance of personal whitelisting and how many clicks it may take some readers before they can actually see your email.