Avoiding the Spam Trap! Best Practices for Getting into the Inbox

Ami Kamei-Milligan Lindsay Progar Pardot Success Specialist Pardot Success Specialist Forward-Looking Statements

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● What is Spam? ● Technical Items ● Data & List Management ● Content Best Practices What is Spam? What is Spam?

● spam, aka junk email, is unsolicited bulk . ● Classification of Spam varies from one jurisdiction to the next.

Where Email goes when it’s marked Spam

● Spam or Junk Folder ● Does not pass go - ever! Spam Filters ● Spam filtering ○ On the prospect’s email server ○ Email is judged on a significant number of factors including (but not limited to): ■ IP reputation ■ Domain reputation ■ Content ● Direct complaints ○ Prospect complains to our [email protected] to complain of receiving unsolicited email. Considered a big deal due to the level of effort involved. Does not necessarily affect your sending reputation, but is likely indicative of a larger sending issue that may later affect your reputation. ● Indirect complaints ○ Clicking “This is Spam” in your email client. This immediately affects your sending reputation. Can My Legitimate Emails go to Spam?

● Absolutely. It is up to a server administrator or individual user to set their desired spam threshold and some spam filters are more aggressive than others.

Key factors that impact spam filter decisions: ● ● Bounces ● Complaints ● Content ● Engagement ● Infrastructure ● IP reputation ● List quality ● ● URL shorteners Questions? Technical Items (Check these first!)

● SPF & DKIM

● Authenticate through the two most commonly accepted standards: (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified (DKIM)

● Major ISPs and many corporate spam filters check for one or more of these types of authentication when determining whether or not to allow emails to a recipient’s inbox. IP Address

● Protect your IP Address - this is your sending reputation

● IP Whitelisting - whitelist your assigned Pardot IP Address

Shared IP Address: benefit from other clients' email volumes in order to build a strong email sending reputation

Dedicated IP: - Full control of email sending - Warming your IP address IP SenderScore

● Sender Score grades the reputation of outgoing mail servers on a scale of 0 to 100.

● Higher Score = Trustworthy Sender ● Low Score = Junk Mail or Blocked

● Calculated on a rolling 30-day average ● Aim for >90 Your customers can whitelist your domain!

● Optional: Ask your prospects to mark your company as a safe sender ● Great use case for your client lists ● Add this little bit of text to Thank You content on forms, for example Questions? Data & List Management List Hygiene

● Pardot’s Permission Based Marketing Policy

● List Compliance

● Opt-In Process ○ Permission Pass ○ Confirmed Opt-in Process Confirmed Opt-in Process .. continued

Abiding by strict anti-spam laws ● Implied consent ● Great reason to leverage COI ● Ensures that you have expressed consent Segmenting your Lists

Segmentation: ● Spray and pray method ● Sort, organize & classify based on common characteristics ● Simple & effective

Dynamic Lists: ● Use Dynamic Lists to auto-segment your database ● Select criteria from default or custom fields ● I.e. Product Interest Recency & Frequency Rule

● Running list of all recently contacted prospects ● Create this using dynamic list functionality

● Criteria: Prospect has been emailed at least ‘X’ times in the last ‘X’ days/weeks

● Use this as a suppression list for your email sends Clean Lists / Database Hygiene Why care about Database Hygiene? Segment based on criteria: ● Inactive Prospects ● Low Score ● Created Date > 365 days

● Nurture Program - Engagement Studio ● Recycle Bin Questions? Best Practices Content (text to image ratio, font colors) ● Text to image ratio ● Too many font colors ● All CAPS ● !!!Lots of exclamation points!!! ● Use a strong call to action

Spammy Words ● Click here ● Month trial offer ● Open ● Sale ● Giving away ● Free Why do embedded Videos / URL Shorteners impact my emails? ● Avoid interactive content ● Using Link shortener in your emails can get you blacklisted! Filters!

● Gmails launch of Social, Promotions and Updates Tabs ○ Filters anything content heavy into the Promotions Tabs. ● There is a great step by step on how to see if your gmail subscribers have lower email deliverability rates outlined by DJ Waldow. ○ Segment your email list by subscribers with a gmail address ○ Run reports to see what the historic open, click and conversion rates are for Gmail subscribers ○ Run the same report with a start date of May 29th, 2013 (when Gmail made this announcement). ○ Compare historical metrics for gmail subscribers ● Send timely, targeted, value add emails to people who want them and Gmail filters should not impact your KPIs. Questions? Helpful Tips & Tricks!

● Use Sender Score to Check your Sending IP Reputiation/ Score ● 4 Easy steps to Clean up your Act and Recover from Sending Spam ● Words to avoid in an Email Campaign ● Blogs posts by our Email Compliance Manager Skyler Holobach ● What is Spam - Help and Training Documentation ● 5 Mistakes that will send you to the Spam Folder ● No, Gmail's Promotions Tab Didn't Just Kill