How are your mails perceived?

When it comes to matters of deliverability, CAN-SPAM is merely a starting point. I once had a teacher that told me to look at laws as the bare minimum of acceptable activity. If you want people to respect you, invite you in, or simply not ignore what you have to say, people know that they have to go above what the law outlines. Things like manners, ethics and values often exceed legal expectations in terms of personal interactions. The same should be true of email legal compliance.

CAN-SPAM outlines a number of policies for senders of mail in the US and there are a myriad of international laws on the matter as well. The more important issue to senders than “can I legally do this”, is “how will sending this be perceived”. Receiving servers can block email for any number of reasons ultimately lumped together as, ‘we are trying to protect our users’. An email can be legally compliant and still find itself directed to the junk folder or worse blocked. We recently encountered a case of blocking based on URLs because they perceived emails sent from that domain as not being compliant, even though the sender responsible may in fact have been following legally acceptable practices.

The FTC certainly seems to be moving toward interpreting can-spam as a transparency issue. If it isn't clear and obvious and easy, it could be viewed as non-compliant. More importantly, however, is the damage done to the reputation of both your brand and your IP addresses if things like unsubscribing are not simple and quickly observed.

Some advice from Yahoo!

On Monday I sat in on a call with Yahoo’s Mark Risher. Mark is in charge of deliverability at Yahoo and described his role there as one of “the shepherds of the inbox”. One question that was asked was what takeaways he would like us to pass along to our clients. He responded with 4 items that senders should keep in mind:

• Ensure prompt response to unsubscribe requests. CAN-SPAM currently allows a 10 day lag time between the time that a subscriber notifies you of a wish to leave your list and the time you actually cease mailing them. It is better to remove those people from your mailings as quickly as possible. Continuing to email subscribers that have asked to be removed leads to increased spam complaints which is the highest contributor to blocking at Yahoo.
• Use data returned from their feedback loop. Yahoo recently implemented a feedback loop that is still in beta for senders utilizing domain keys. The feedback loop allows you as a sender to monitor your complaint rate. You can see if it is coming from specific portions of your list, for different content-types, frequency, or other factors. It also allows for the removal of complainers from your list.
• Be certain to use a meaningful from name and subject line. Users most often decide to open your mail based on these fields, but many also base the decision to complain on these factors alone. Emails should be clearly branded by the sender and accurately represent the content of the message.
• Avoid disreputable senders and use a consistent send strategy. He recommends not sending email from ESPs that are trying to game the system and get messages through by sending at non-peak times or other means. By consistently sending you can establish a reputation on your emails and your subscribers can become familiar with the cadence they will be arriving.

As Yahoo moves further along the path to domain based reputation it is imperative for senders to adhere to email best practices. Yahoo hosts a significant number of corporate domains in addition to the yahoo domains. While they are working on increasing transparency regarding their expectations and how you are performing, they also expect senders to do their part in keeping the users of Yahoo happy. The user is their top priority after all.