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How Your Choice of Platform and Best Practices Drive Email Deliverability INTRODUCTION | PLATFORM | BEST PRACTICES | EMAIL DELIVERY DOWN TO A SCIENCE | ABOUT SOCKETLABS The Science of Hitting the Inbox How your Choice of Platform and Best Practices Drive Email Deliverability Excellence INTRODUCTION | PLATFORM | BEST PRACTICES | EMAIL DELIVERY DOWN TO A SCIENCE | ABOUT SOCKETLABS Email is more than a fact of business life. It’s both the engine and the fuel for commercial engagement of all kinds. And, it’s more problematic than ever. Poor email practices and bad email actors have pushed If you’re managing your email efforts in-house, the major platforms to police their traffic to the point you probably don’t have your own army to that 20% of the world’s legitimate business email is fight back. Even if your overall delivery excluded before it gets to its intended recipient. That rates seem stellar, it’s hard to know if it’s number is growing as spam, phishing scams, enough, or what opportunities you are cyberattacks, and lax or nonexistent corporate policies missing. What pockets of your business force the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo to are less than optimal? At what cost? consistently ratchet up, calibrate, and evolve their And how well are your email practices filters, blocking techniques, and AI rules. They have maximizing service levels, revenue, and ROI? literal armies of strategists and technologists Perhaps you are seeking help from email defending their customers’ mailboxes. So, what are service providers (ESPs). But, ESPs are not all the same. you doing to get your millions Sure, they all run email software on their own servers of varied types of messages and infrastructure. And, yes, most manage and safely delivered through monitor performance around the clock. But, what the fray? “Your choice of ‘platform’ and ‘best practices’ ultimately separates one provider from another is two important factors: make all the difference in your 1. The technical innovation of their solution(s) email delivery success. Combining 2. The collective strength of their software these with service excellence and service delivery strategists in driving creates the ultimate adherence to industry best practices communications experience.” 2 ©2019 SocketLabs INTRODUCTION | PLATFORM | BEST PRACTICES | EMAIL DELIVERY DOWN TO A SCIENCE | ABOUT SOCKETLABS In short, it is your choice of platform and best practices that make all the difference in your email delivery success. Whether you manage email delivery in-house or via an Put simply, your email ESP, successfully addressing these critical areas will deliverability depends help you: on your IP reputation IP reputation – a real, honest-to- 1. Grow and strengthen your sending reputation goodness score drives email that is consistently 2. Optimize the time and resources you spend deliverability monitored and on email delivery and analysis updated by the mailbox providers. This score, 3. Coordinate your high-volume email traffic which is all about for maximum ROI demonstrated and expected trust, determines if your 4. Relieve the pressure of keeping pace with email makes it to your recipients’ inboxes, hits the spam constant inbox and spam filter innovations folder, or is blocked altogether. You should think of your IP reputation score like an “email credit score” for two Being with a provider who delivers responsive, reasons: personalized service further ensures the ideal 1. There are many factors (controllable sending environment for email communication success. choices) that contribute to your score 2. There is almost always room for improvement 3 ©2019 SocketLabs INTRODUCTION | PLATFORM | BEST PRACTICES | EMAIL DELIVERY DOWN TO A SCIENCE | ABOUT SOCKETLABS If you are trying to find a suitable long-term ESP Platform partner, there are several important platform qualities that contribute to your sender reputation and help drive deliverability rates higher. They are: your APIs can support customized data handling. ✔ Technical maturity and reputation strength Sending reputation is further enhanced by adherence to email management rules, such as CAN-SPAM and ✔ Message encryption for security and privacy European GDPR regulations, so look for a compliant ESP. Finally, ESPs must actively manage their platforms to ✔ Comprehensive authentication support remove any mail activity that violates best practices. ✔ Stream-level performance tracking and Message encryption for security and privacy optimization The large-scale mailbox providers make the rules. If that isn’t clear yet, it’s worth formally stating now. ✔ Continuous flexibility and scalability And, large-scale mailbox providers have been pushing for email encryption for more than five years. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security Technical maturity and reputation strength (TLS) are methods of encrypting traffic while in Experience is everything when it comes to transit. TLS is the successor to SSL, but the learning and adapting to the rules of email “An ESP platform differences are negligible in most cases. By delivery. System availability and stability are with a solid track using SSL/TLS to protect your email, you critical but should be considered bare record provides immediate maintain the confidentiality of minimum qualifications. What you should deliverability benefits. These information in your messages while in really be looking for is an ESP that include a proven sender transit. With the power of Google boasts experience in and for different behind it, adoption is increasingly industries, use cases, and workflow reputation and intelligent widespread. In fact, the company’s complexities. The multi-layer needs of traffic shaping – based on data from the start of 2014 shows a an agency are different than those of a machine learning – for near 100% growth rate in SSL/TLS SaaS application. And if your development tailoring deliveries to implementation across its mail streams. team will be building workflows around your mailbox providers.” So, your ESP of choice needs to be email functionality, you need to ensure that knowledgable in this area, too. 4 ©2019 SocketLabs INTRODUCTION | PLATFORM | BEST PRACTICES | EMAIL DELIVERY DOWN TO A SCIENCE | ABOUT SOCKETLABS Platform Comprehensive Setting up DMARC Authentication Support There are two additional steps your ESP should be taking If yours is a compliance-driven to tighten up the security of your messages in transit organization, Domain Message and build your sender reputation. These are: Authentication Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) support 1. Implementing DKIM and SPF Authentication is necessary to help detect and 2. Setting up DMARC prevent email spoofing (for example, to prevent a phishing scam that looks like the Implementing email is coming from your bank or PayPal, DKIM and SPF DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) prompting you to click on a link to reset your Authentication and Sender Policy Framework (SPF) password or to give them your information). are forms of email authentication. DMARC unifies SPF and DKIM authentication SPF proves to ISPs that your mail is into a common framework and ensures that from you, and you are who you say legitimate email is properly authenticated you are. against these standards. Specifically, DMARC DKIM uses an encryption key and digital allows a domain owner to publish policies in signature to defend against malicious DNS and tells remote mailers what to do with modification of your in-transit email messages that do not align with these messages by ensuring that what arrives in polices. If mail coming from your your recipient inbox was not faked or “Mailbox providers domain is suspected of being altered. In the meantime, an SPF record prefer to receive fraudulent, the messages are is an email authentication protocol usually blocked (this is that allows you to specify which IP authenticated email dependent upon how DMARC is addresses are authorized to send because authentication configured, but a general rule email on behalf of your domain. makes it easier to block of thumb). harmful uses of email, such as phishing and spam.” 5 ©2019 SocketLabs INTRODUCTION | PLATFORM | BEST PRACTICES | EMAIL DELIVERY DOWN TO A SCIENCE | ABOUT SOCKETLABS Continuous Flexibility and Scalability Platform Every company’s communication needs and goals are Stream-level Performance different. That’s why flexibility is critical. As your Tracking and Optimization business grows, so does the number of email Your ESP must absolutely be able to help you adjust and streams that your ESP must handle. You need hone your email programs over time, using quantitative confidence your provider can seamlessly expand and qualitative methods to keep deliverability rates high and evolve with you. as mailbox providers continuously change the rules of A healthy email ecosystem provides options the game. Doing so requires understanding how and for customization, offering more than just a one-size-fits-all approach. There should be why certain messages are failing to reach the inbox, and guidance on how to use this flexibility to optimize then responding as necessary. First and foremost, your message delivery. Be sure you can discuss ESP must attack the issue from a best-practice-based customizations or system configurations that can perspective (this approach of segmenting and tracking improve your experience. For example, setting custom email performance will be discussed later in this ebook). sending domains and IP whitelists are great choices to help Second, your ESP must help you understand how well build the corporate brand and the reputation
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