The Journey to your Inbox
The barriers in the way of you receiving an email are considerable. Consider an email's typical journey after you press 'Send': even the first step after it has left your own mail server - negotiating the cloud - is problematic - ISP tools like StreamShield can track, report on and dynamically block traffic. Then it reaches your recipient's firewall, filters and mail server, each with its own hardware configuration and software version (not forgetting service packs, patches and updates). Then there are all those checkboxes, with, more often than not, high security and very high anti-spam settings (filters are increasingly defensive and sophisticated by default). Spam blockers look at all sorts of variables, like the area of the email used up by images v text, disallowed keywords, your Subject title, and the originating mail server.
That's before it reaches your email client on your desktop. Taking Outlook as the default example, it's really no different from the above. The myriad of choices in the form of checkbox customisation and in the name of security make it challenging, to say the least, to predict why mail will or won't reach the Inbox. As well as the hurdles to overcome listed above, there's Outlook's own proprietary set of rules, updated whenever the software is. Legitimate emails can easily end up in the Junk Folder.
You can ask the recipient to make you a trusted sender, by including your 'From' address in their contacts list. You can also make sure you use a reputable broadcast email service provider implementing best practice (like us), who knows how to format both the HTML and the plain text parts, can advise on deliverability in terms of design and the words you use, and can achieve 99%+ success rates.
Posted by:
Peter Greatorex, Managing Director, Page Nine Ltd. www.broadcast-email.co.uk
The barriers in the way of you receiving an email are considerable. Consider an email's typical journey after you press 'Send': even the first step after it has left your own mail server - negotiating the cloud - is problematic - ISP tools like StreamShield can track, report on and dynamically block traffic. Then it reaches your recipient's firewall, filters and mail server, each with its own hardware configuration and software version (not forgetting service packs, patches and updates). Then there are all those checkboxes, with, more often than not, high security and very high anti-spam settings (filters are increasingly defensive and sophisticated by default). Spam blockers look at all sorts of variables, like the area of the email used up by images v text, disallowed keywords, your Subject title, and the originating mail server.
That's before it reaches your email client on your desktop. Taking Outlook as the default example, it's really no different from the above. The myriad of choices in the form of checkbox customisation and in the name of security make it challenging, to say the least, to predict why mail will or won't reach the Inbox. As well as the hurdles to overcome listed above, there's Outlook's own proprietary set of rules, updated whenever the software is. Legitimate emails can easily end up in the Junk Folder.
You can ask the recipient to make you a trusted sender, by including your 'From' address in their contacts list. You can also make sure you use a reputable broadcast email service provider implementing best practice (like us), who knows how to format both the HTML and the plain text parts, can advise on deliverability in terms of design and the words you use, and can achieve 99%+ success rates.
Posted by:
Peter Greatorex, Managing Director, Page Nine Ltd. www.broadcast-email.co.uk
