Resources: Email Deliverability

Maximizing Email Delivery

We practice only permission-based, opt-in email marketing and enforce it with our clients and partners. Since current spam filtering software erroneously blocks many legitimate emails as well, we've taken several steps to ensure our clients achieve the highest possible delivery rates.

Spam Filters - The Basics

Nearly all Internet Service Providers (ISP) and IT departments have some form of email filtering software as illustrated by the diagram below.

As you can see from this diagram, delivering even an opt-in email to a recipient's inbox can be a daunting task due to the number of points for potential failure and filtering.

How do ISP's and corporations decide whether an email is spam or not? There are four primary types of filters. Through our partner, Exact Target we provide our customers a solution for each, as follows:

Filter: Content Filtering

Content filtering is used by anti-spam software systems employed by a growing number of organizations. These systems, including SpamAssassin, SpamKiller and others focus on the contents of the email subject line and body to determine whether or not to deliver an email. This type of filter works on a point scoring system, and each item in the subject line or email body that "looks like" spam add to the spam score assigned to the email.

Content filters focus on promotional, phrases such as "work from home", "guaranteed income", or even seemingly innocuous phrases such as "click here" and "unsubscribe." They also assign points to text formatting that is indicative of spam, such as the use of ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, excess use of bright colors, or very large fonts.

E-Mail Logic Solution: Content Detective

E-Mail Logic uses a proprietary "Content Detective" system to help our clients ensure that their permission-based emails avoid being erroneously labeled as spam due to content filtering. This feature mirrors the logic used by spam filtering software to identify words, phrases, and patterns that are likely to trigger filters, then recommends a resolution to each identified problem, before an email is sent.

Filter: List Quality Filtering

Many spam lists contain a large number of bogus addresses so spammers "bounce" a lot of emails with ISP's. To combat this problem, many ISP's have added list quality filters to detect when a large percentage of email addresses are bogus. If the volume of bounces exceed a certain quantity, all other emails may be disallowed (see "blacklisting" below).

E-Mail Logic Solution: List Detective

We use a proprietary "List Detective" to validate list integrity and ensure that email is only sent to valid addresses. List Detective scans each address as they are uploaded to our system checking for known 'seed' addresses that indicate a list may be non-permission based. If they are found, the email addresses are not uploaded. These include known unsolicited addresses, planted addresses, and addresses that don't belong to an individual, such as nospam@, postmaster@ or abuse@.

Filter: Volume Filtering

Since many spammers send bulk emails without regard to their accuracy or volume, many ISP's filter using volume based filtering. Volume filters focus on the number of simultaneous connections that are opened at any one time with an ISP.

E-Mail Logic Solution: Domain Monitoring

E-Mail Logic employs domain-level monitoring to manage the number of connections opened for each ISP domain at any one time. This ensures emails are delivered at a maximum rate without triggering volume filters at large ISP's such as AOL or Yahoo. Due to the large percentage of users with major ISP's, domain monitoring is especially critical for very large lists of addresses.

Filter: IP Address Filtering

Many organizations have employed IP address filtering to identify IP addresses that send spam and disallow them into their system. The technique of adding suspected IP addresses to a filtering list is called "blacklisting". There are numerous active blacklists in use today, some by private companies and individuals, and others operated by anti-spam organizations. A related concept, in which a list of "trusted senders" is used to determine which email is legitimate, is called "whitelisting". Whitelists are lists of IP addresses of organizations that are trusted to deliver only legitimate, opt-in messages. Typically an ISP will have several guidelines that a sender must follow in order to qualify for the whitelist status, including email formatting, name capture tactics, and client enforcement.

E-Mail Logic Solution: Private IP Address

E-Mail Logic can host a unique IP address and domain for each individual client. Clients selecting this option receive an IP address which is registered within E-Mail Logic’s whitelist status, providing the client with better deliverability than could be attained on one’s own. We monitor the individual IP’s to ensure full delivery of client emails.

E-Mail Logic Solution: ISP Agreements

We have developed whitelist relationships with key ISP's, anti-spam organizations, and others to ensure emails sent via our system reach the intended audience. We are listed on the whitelist for major ISP's, such as AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, NetZero, and others. Our whitelist status allows mail sent from our system to be appropriately delivered to their customers without the potential for filtering.

E-Mail Logic Solution: Abuse Desk Management

One way to get in trouble with the anti-spam community is to avoid responding to email complaints. Our in-house abuse desk is managed by a team of email delivery experts and we work on behalf of our clients to respond to spam complaints received. If necessary, we follow up with our clients to ensure appropriate permission-based name capture policies and procedures are in place. By knowing the efficacy of the name capture practices employed by our clients, we will defend the validity of the list and name capture practices to anti-spam organizations.

Email Marketing is Fast, Easy and Cost Effective.
To find out more about E-Mail Logic call us at 847.681.8502, submit your contact information here or email us.