Our compliance and deliverability team is pretty busy dealing with the dark side of the Internet, but from time-to-time they do find time to share their thoughts. These are their stories.
Last week our team shared Part 1 of how to prepare your dedicated IP address for prime time by focusing on what an IP actually is.
This week in Part 2, they are going to go deeper and focus on building a great reputation.
Preparing Your Dedicated IP For Prime Time Part 2 - Building a GREAT reputation
The short version of IP reputation is pretty simple. Good senders get a good reputation and bad senders get a bad reputation. Now that we have that covered, let's move to the "how" part of the equation.
To make sure that you build a great reputation when sending email, first make sure that you are following best practices for sending opt-in email.
In brief, this includes:
1. Confirming email addresses as they sign up.
2. Sending them an email soon after signup.
3. Promptly removing hard bounces, complainers, and unsubscribes from your lists.
4. Removing inactive subscribers.
5. Sending interesting, relevant content to your lists.
6. Sending on a regular, consistent basis
If you are already doing all this, first of all, nice work. You are making it easy for compliance departments everywhere. All that is left is a little bit of up front effort to warm up your new IP address. You are on your way.
If you have not been clearing your unsubscribes or bounces, and you haven't previously managed dealing with complaints, you will have trouble getting your email delivered.
If your client data has been sitting idle and has never been used, it is a bad idea to suddenly send an email to it.
Your list will likely be full of bad email addresses, some which may now be spam-traps.
If you want to start sending to old data, your best option is to not even try. This is not one of those cases, where things may slip by. They won't, so don't risk your entire email marketing plan.
We suggest, you grab only the data from the last 30-to-90 days and then add new users as they sign up and opt-in.
Sending to your old data will do far more harm than good in the long run and prevent the newer and potentially 'hotter' leads from receiving your email campaigns. Think "doing it for the greater good" if you will.
Sending to older data could even result in your SimplyCast account being terminated. Before you think, you will just go to another provider, they will also have the same rules in place.
The Solution
The answer to not sending to old data and creating an optimized dedicated IP address? Using our solution of course. Hard bounces, complainers and unsubscribes are automatically removed from future sends as they occur. We also provide the tools to help you collect and confirm new signups that are opt-in and ready to go.
That is the end of today's lesson and Part 2 of this series. Stay tuned for next week's conclusion where we focus on managing your new IP address.
Need to catch up on Part 1? Read Preparing Your Dedicated IP Address For Prime Time Part 1.
For more tips and answers when it comes to compliance and deliverability, take a look at our FAQ.
