When it comes sending email, especially mass email, there are some important considerations. Failure to maintain a good reputation can mean that many of your customers simply do not get the message! đ Here are some reasons an email may not get through, and an how to protect your reputation:
Spam Reports
We all know what happens when an email goes to the spam folder. 99 times out of 100 it simply won’t be read. Whether on purpose, or by mistake, one of your customers might choose to alert Gmail or their ISP that you have sent them a spam email. Now if you get reported spam a few times, this can quickly bring about a situation where a majority of your outgoing emails simply never reach their recipient.
Bounces
If you or your customer accidentally typed an email address incorrectly, the result can be that you send an email to a server that will then reject you. This is generally the cause of a “bounce”. For example, maybe they have a gmail address, but a character in their name was left off. Google’s servers reject the email. Some services will identify invalid emails before their are sent.
Invalid Email Address
Similar to bounced emails, invalid email addresses are those addresses that do not exist on the server. It includes miss typed emails, but also perhaps someone has left the company, and the company has removed their email from the server.
Email Blocks
Generally, these are emails that are blocked by the receiving mail server because it didn’t like something about the email itself. Perhaps the body of the email contained a word that the server regarded as a “spam word”, or maybe the server does not like your ISP. For example, some mail servers will block free email accounts from places like Yahoo or “disposable email” type services.
So what can be done?
Fortunately, there are ways to protect your reputation, and there are services (even free) that work mostly in the background. You just get an account, fill out a few fields, enter a couple of things in the DSM settings and you are good to go. You can send from within DSM using your email address, and it just works. Occasionally, you may want to login and check to see if there have been bounces, spam reports, etc. You can even choose to unblock and attempt to resend. Moreover, you will get some nice reports about who received the emails, and who opened them.