Email Deliverability: Best Practices and Future Trends - Last Word: Reputation
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In the last article I wrote about the growing awareness of email accreditation protocols such as authentication (SIDF and DKIM) with the large email providers seeking to have more senders following these protocols. Their wishes may not be fulfilled as quickly as they would like since a large percentage of mail is sent by small web sites, which may take years to join the protocols.
The next measure which may occur after authentication is reputation. This is where the best practices checklist comes into play. After the sender is verified by the authentication procedure, the reputation service checks bounce rates, unsubscribing practices and other highly subjective data. The reputation service will then probably give the sender a rating which will be provided to all users by the email service.
Current data being collated on practices will definitely go a long way in determining future ratings of email senders by reputation services. For long term planning, it is best to start observing best practices now, instead of after authentication. As with all other things online, it will probably gain a following long before it becomes a standard.
Pure Paranoia or Justifiable Concerns
Are all these precautions necessary? Are email providers over reaching them selves? Is all this just an opportunity to bash advertisers? Mail marketing, door to door sales, and cold calling have always been integral parts of marketing. Email marketing, even spam, is just a logical extension of this trend. But consider that the Internet is a whole new media, and the main attraction it gives to its users is the amount of control they have over it. Unsolicited mail reduces that control.
Yahoo surveys show that 77 percent of their users find spam unpleasant to deal with, and 8 percent actually think spamming is a criminal offense. The idea that a website they subscribe to could begin to send them spam makes them wary when dropping their email addresses on websites (forums, sales, newsletters). This is not helpful to sites that actually follow best practices (hopefully, yourself included). If you are intent on providing a great experience for your users, following best practices and taking the appropriate precautions will surely help.
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