Seven Steps to Optimize Email Deliverability Using JangoMail

Overview:

Email deliverability is a key concern for most email marketers, and at JangoMail, we think we do a pretty good job of ensuring the highest possible inbox placement of our clients' emails. JangoMail is a highly customizable platform, from sending speeds, to email headers, to SMTP protocol level customizations. Taking advantage of certain settings and features can help ensure high email deliverability.

Some of these steps involve separating yourself from other JangoMail clients. It's not that JangoMail accepts spammers, but JangoMail does accept different levels of opt-in email marketing. For example, some customers use single opt-in, while other customers use confirmed opt-in. Generally, customers using confirmed opt-in experience higher deliverability. Therefore, different JangoMail clients have different reputations with ISPs, so if two clients are both using a username@jangomail.com From Address for example, they both can impact the reputation of the domain jangomail.com.

The Seven Steps:

Following the below steps will solve most email delivery issues to major consumer ISPs, like Yahoo, Hotmail, GMail, and AOL.

1. Use a branded From Address rather than a username@jangomail.com From Address. All JangoMail accounts come with the option to use username@jangomail.com as the From Address on your email campaigns. This is provided as a convenience to our clients.
   
   a. In order to separate your reputation from other clients using jangomail.com as their From Address, use your actual corporate email address, like john.smith@company.com.
   
   b. An even better and safer option is to use a branded sub-domain, like john.smith@newsletters.company.com. That way newsletters.company.com can have its own SenderID and DK/DKIM records. Additionally, there is an SMTP level benefit to setting up a branded sub-domain -- it allows the SMTP MAIL FROM command during the SMTP transaction between our sender and the recipient server to show your sub-domain rather than jangomail.com. For instructions see the PDF Setting up a Branded Sub-Domain.
   
   Who should do this? The technical person who manages your domain's DNS settings.
   
   
2. Use a branded tracking domain, that is based on your organization's domain name. The tracking domain is the domain referenced in the open-tracking mechanism, the click-tracking re-directs, the unsubscribe link, the forward-to-friend link, the view-as-a-web-page link, and other links that offer tracking in your email messages. By default, every new JangoMail account is assigned a system tracking domain that is shared amongst multiple clients, like x.jango5.com for example. By setting up your own, you can isolate yourself from the activities of our other clients. Set up your own by going to Settings --> Tracking Domain. If your domain is mycompany.com, then setting up x.mycompany.com makes for the perfect tracking domain.
   
   
   
   Who should do this? The technical person who manages your domain's DNS settings.
   
   
3. Setup DomainKeys/DKIM for the domain use in your From Address. Both Yahoo! Mail and GMail currently look for DKIM signatures in the headers of email messages. The presence of a DKIM signature fosters a sense of trust that the email was sent by who was purported to send the email. To setup DomainKeys and DKIM in JangoMail, see our PDF entitled Setting up DomainKeys/DKIM with JangoMail.
   
   Who should do this? The technical person who manages your domain's DNS settings.
   
   
4. Setup SenderID on your domain, and then set your campaigns to use your own From Address as the SMTP-level MAIL-FROM address. Instructions can be found in the PDF How to Publish SPF Records in JangoMail.
   
   Who should do this? The technical person who manages your domain's DNS settings.
   
   
5. If you're sending HTML email, make sure you include a corresponding plain text message. Spam filters tend to frown upon emails that have a heavy ratio of HTML to plain text content. This is as easy as setting the Plain Text Message to "auto-generate". See screenshot below. This will cause a plain text message to be generated (based on your HTML message) at the time of email sending.
   
   
   
   Who should do this? The person using JangoMail.
   
   
6. Enroll in the Sender Score Certified program. In order to be accepted, you must have a complaint rate of 0 to 0.1%. Once enrolled, your emails are sent from IP addresses that are certified. Hotmail virtually guarantees inbox placement for emails sent from certified IPs, and Yahoo prioritizes emails sent from certified IPs.
   
   Who should do this? The person using JangoMail.
   
   
7. If using click-tracking, anchor text should be phrases, not URLs. Some spam filters look closely at how you link to determine whether the link is legitimate or fraudulent. They do this to prevent phishing scams--a type of scam where an email pretends to be a request from a legitimate company in order to get the login credentials of that company's user. For more information on phishing, see the Wikipedia article on phishing. The best way to explain good links versus bad links is with an example:
   
   Good Link: <a href="http://www.browniekitchen.com/">Visit our web site.</a>
   
   Bad Link: <a href="http://www.browniekitchen.com/">http://www.browniekitchen.com</a>
   
   When these URLs are click-tracked in JangoMail, the final email message looks like:
   
   Good Click-Tracked Link: <a href="http://x.jango5.com/y.z?l=http://www.browniekitchen.com">Visit our web site.</a>
   
   Bad Click-Tracked Link: <a href="http://x.jango5.com/y.z?l=http://www.browniekitchen.com">http://www.browniekitchen.com</a>
   
   What makes the bad link bad is that the anchor text is a URL, and that domain in that URL does not match the domain in the link destination. Phishing filters look for this domain mismatch. In the good example, however, the anchor text is not a URL to begin with, so the phishing filter will accept it as legitimate.
   
   Who should do this? The person designing your email campaigns.

Further Reading:

For more information on general JangoMail deliverability practices, see our Deliverability page on our web site

There are basic steps that any email marketer can take with the content of their emailings to ensure high deliverability. The content-related issues are covered in the PDF document Optimizing Email Deliverability.