Short blog this time — it’s been a crazy week. The majority of my time has been spent primarily on two areas:

1. Helping to set up our clients on our system – meaning setting up their email, DNS, and authentication settings.

2. Working with potential and current customers on delivery best practices – maintaining clean lists and using a confirmed email opt-in method.

Folks, I can’t stress enough the importance of these two items. If you send email, and want to have good deliverability, you have to follow some simple rules:

• Use a dedicated IP address – don’t share IP space with someone that could potentially damage your sending reputation
• Make sure your IP address has correct reverse DNS set up on it
• Make sure your “mail from” or HELO domain is correct
• Implement all methods of authentication (SPF, SenderID, DomainKeys, DKIM)
• Remove invalid email addresses that bounce
• Only send email to people that really asked for it (confirmed opt-in)
• Ensure your subscribers have a clear understanding and expectation of what emails they will be receiving
• Send relevant content – make sure your subscribers know that the email they are receiving is coming from you and that you’ve already established a relationship in some way with them.
• Don’t share your lists between properties. If someone signs up with you for a newsletter about the stock market, don’t send them emails about business opportunities. Even if your Privacy Policy allows you do this, don’t – it’s simply bad practice.
• Make it easy to unsubscribe, and honor those requests in a timely manner

Again, if you want to have good email delivery, all you have to do is follow the rules of email best practices. I will be at MAAWG next week, and these will be the types of issues that will be discussed between email senders and receivers. I’ll look forward to giving you a great report of the events.

Until next time,

Drink Responsibly, Drive Responsibly, Email Responsibly

Jaren Angerbauer
Director of Deliverability
mobileStorm