I wanted to share a little checklist to go over before sending your email marketing campaign.

Some of the items on the list are highly technical and may be handled by your service provider. Most of the well known services will take care of the first two sections, but if you feel that your emails are not getting through, I would suggest verifying these steps by yourself.

If you have anything to add, please leave a comment. Later on, I will create a PDF file that will be available for download.

Email Template

Does your email template comply with CAN-SPAM?

Did you test against common web mail interfaces and clients?

Provide an address at the footer. Offer an unsubscribe URL Test your email against email clients: Outlook 2003 – Latest

Outlook Express

Apple Mail

Iphone

Android

Gmail

Yahoo

Hotmail

Add your popular local providers here Don’t use unsupported CSS /HTML tags.

Email Content

These steps will lower the chance of your email being marked as spam.

Keep your image to text ration sane Don’t use obvious spam keywords, such as “click here” Don’t use an ALL CAPS subject line Is your tracking image in place?

Maling List

Keeping a clean list should be a one of your highest priorities. Sending even one email to a Honeypot may harsh consequences on your delivery rate.

All of the recipients on the list double double opted, right? Of course you didn’t buy this email list. You removed any bounced emails from the previous campaign.

Email Authentication

The first thing you should take care of is making sure that your emails are authenticated by the different ISPs.

To do so you need to:

Configure PTR records for your servers. Set up SPF records in your DNS zone file. Sign your emails with DKIM / Domain Keys. What is your MTA reputation score?

I hope that this information will help you send an email marketing campaign, and again, if there is something that you see missing from the list, leave me a comment.