Just what is a good open rate average, and is there an open rate formula? In our world we talk a lot about open rates, and why it’s so important to track them (you can read more about the importance of tracking open rates here). While open rate averages vary widely across industries, senders, ESPs, and ISPs, and there is no real open rate formula, a very general rule of thumb is that inbox providers and ISPs like to see a consistent 20% or better open rate in order to keep putting the email that you send flowing into the inbox, and help to avoid your landing in the spam folder. But what is less talked about is what causes ‘failure to opens’ (FTOs) and how to prevent them.

Prefer to read it instead of listen to it?  Do that here: https://www.isipp.com/blog/the-top-3-things-that-will-cause-ftos-failure-to-open-for-a-mailing-list/

The Everything Email Marketing blogcast is provided by Get to the Inbox by ISIPP SuretyMail, the founder of the email deliverability industry. For more information about how we can help you get to the inbox go to GetToTheInbox.com

One of the most important things that you can do to ensure good email deliverability is to add email deliverability test accounts to your mailing list. Fortunately, adding deliverability test accounts is also one of the easiest things that you can do! You should do this by creating one or more test accounts with each of the major free webmail hosts, such as Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo. You can do this by using your “company name” as your standard email deliverability test account name.

Prefer to read it instead of listen to it?  Do that here: https://www.isipp.com/blog/remember-to-add-test-accounts-to-your-mailing-lists/

The Everything Email Marketing blogcast is provided by Get to the Inbox by ISIPP SuretyMail, the founder of the email deliverability industry. For more information about how we can help you get to the inbox go to GetToTheInbox.com

We are often asked how we can be so much lower cost an alternative to Validity, and it’s because we do things like giving you email deliverability check information that you can do yourself to improve email deliverability, instead of charging you a bunch to do it for you. Actually today we’re going to give you two email deliverability self-help tips. One of these is actually super-easy and seems obvious, yet we regularly get a surprised look from customers when we ask them whether they have done it already.

Prefer to read it instead of listen to it?  Do that here: https://www.isipp.com/blog/little-known-self-help-email-deliverability-checks-to-improve-email-deliverability/

The Everything Email Marketing blogcast is provided by Get to the Inbox by ISIPP SuretyMail, the founder of the email deliverability industry. For more information about how we can help you get to the inbox go to GetToTheInbox.com

Let’s play a game that we like to call “Can I Use This List?” or “Can I Put This Email Address on My List?”. Here are fifteen scenarios in which someone may come across or into possession of somebody’s email address, or a mailing list, and you have to decide whether or not it is ok to use the email address or list. Which ones are fair game to use? The answers may surprise you!

Prefer to read it instead of listen to it?  Do that here: https://www.isipp.com/blog/can-i-use-this-list/

The Everything Email Marketing blogcast is provided by Get to the Inbox by ISIPP SuretyMail, the founder of the email deliverability industry. For more information about how we can help you get to the inbox go to GetToTheInbox.com

There’s a lot of misunderstanding around domain reputation when it comes to email sending and email deliverability. Domain reputation is a thing, and it does relate to email and email deliverability, and it is important. For example, it is absolutely the case that if example.com starts spamming, inbox providers are going to start putting email from example.com into the junk folder, or maybe even block it altogether. But still, domain reputation is not what a lot of people think that it is.

Prefer to read it instead of listen to it?  Do that here: https://www.isipp.com/blog/the-myth-of-domain-reputation-when-it-comes-to-email-deliverability/

The Everything Email Marketing blogcast is provided by Get to the Inbox by ISIPP SuretyMail, the founder of the email deliverability industry. For more information about how we can help you get to the inbox go to GetToTheInbox.com

Did you know that there are a lot of regular words that can help push your email to the spam folder if everything else isn’t squeaky clean? Remember George Carlin’s “7 words you can’t say on tv”? Well there are a whole lot more words that you can’t say in email without risking your email being a candidate for further scrutiny and possibly going to the spam folder. In fact one of the things that is most surprising to many email senders is just how many words there are that, when in their email, and if their email doesn’t otherwise adhere to best practices, can trip up the spam filters. They are even more surprised when they learn what some of those words are, because they are very common words, words that seem (and often are) innocent, and yet the spam filters will take note of them, and if your email contains enough of these words, or has these words along with some other factors, they may reroute your email to the spam folder. This is of course why we always advise senders to follow all best practices (only add email addresses to your mailing lists with the consent of the email address holder, regularly remove bouncing and even unresponsive email addresses from your primary mailing list, etc..).

Prefer to read it instead of listen to it?  Do that here: https://www.isipp.com/blog/words-that-can-get-your-email-in-trouble/

The Everything Email Marketing blogcast is provided by Get to the Inbox by ISIPP SuretyMail, the founder of the email deliverability industry. For more information about how we can help you get to the inbox go to GetToTheInbox.com

Did you know that it’s a violation of LinkedIn’s policies to send cold LinkedIn outreach messages? A lot (and we mean a lot) of businesses use LinkedIn as their personal cold lead generation playground, but that is not at all what LinkedIn is intended to be, and LinkedIn’s posted policies, and their very definition of spam, make that clear.

The Everything Email Marketing blogcast is provided by Get to the Inbox by ISIPP SuretyMail, your outsourced email deliverability team, and the original email deliverability company and consultants, since 2003. For more information about how we can help you get to the inbox go to GetToTheInbox.com

Prefer to read it instead of listen to it?  Do that here: https://www.isipp.com/blog/cold-linkedin-outreach-messages-are-spam-and-violate-linkedins-terms-of-service/

When a Spamhaus check reveals that you are on a Spamhaus blocklist (also known as a blacklist), what should you do? The Spamhaus Project maintains a few different blocklists, such as the Spamhaus SBL and the DBL, and for each Spamhaus blocklist removal entails a couple of steps which may differ between the lists, but which are similar and not difficult. Note that most of these blocklists are DNSBLs (DNS-based blocklists), which means that what gets listed on them is IP addresses, specifically IP addresses demonstrated to be the sources of spam.

https://www.isipp.com/blog/what-to-do-when-a-spamhaus-check-shows-you-are-on-a-spamhaus-blocklist/

The Everything Email Marketing blogcast is provided by Get to the Inbox by ISIPP SuretyMail, the founder of the email deliverability industry. For more information about how we can help you get to the inbox go to GetToTheInbox.com

What is a spam trap email address? (Or, if you prefer the one word version, what is a spamtrap email address?) Perhaps more importantly, why do they matter? Here we explain spam traps, and how to avoid spam traps. People used to not really believe that spam traps existed, at least not so many of them that an email sender would really need to worry about having a spam trap on their mailing list. But they do exist, they are everywhere, and as an email sender you do have to worry about avoiding them. So let’s start by explaining the definition of a spam trap, and where they come from.

The Everything Email Marketing blogcast is provided by Get to the Inbox by ISIPP SuretyMail, your outsourced email deliverability team, and the original email deliverability company and consultants, since 2003. For more information about how we can help you get to the inbox go to GetToTheInbox.com

Prefer to read it instead of listen to it?  Do that here: https://www.isipp.com/blog/what-is-a-spam-trap-and-why-do-they-matter/

Sending email from a decoy, pass-through email domain which forwards to your primary domain is never a good idea, yet there are people who do this. (Some people call this a ‘dummy domain’, but that’s actually something different.) What they do is set up a decoy domain and send their cold email from it, with links in the cold email which point to their primary domain. They do it this way in an effort to protect the reputation of their primary domain; aren’t they so clever? Here’s the thing; actually two things: 1. It doesn’t work, it will still drag down their primary domain’s reputation, and 2. it doesn’t work because they are spamming. Calling it “cold email” when what you’ve done is scraped or purchased an email address and put it on a mailing list without consent is spam, no matter how much you try to polish it up and call it something else.

Prefer to read it instead of listen to it?  Do that here: https://www.isipp.com/blog/dont-use-a-decoy-pass-through-email-domain-name/

[The Everything Email Marketing blogcast is provided by Get to the Inbox by ISIPP SuretyMail, your outsourced email deliverability team, and the original email deliverability company and consultants, since 2003. For more information about how we can help you get to the inbox go to GetToTheInbox.com]