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Email Marketing
How to Get on Personal Whitelists and Boost Email Delivery
More and more businesses and personal email users are using the spam filters that are built-in into their desktop email client software and the email ISP services they use to battle spam. This is presenting a major challenge for marketers and business owners, who are using email marketing to generate sales and leads, and to get their email messages in the inbox of their email subscribers rather than in their spam, trash or quarantine folder. Even when a commercial email message or email newsletter makes it into the inbox of the recipients, there is a high probability they are delivered as HTML text with images rendered as boxes with an X in the upper left corner. Only when the recipients take action and permit downloading of graphics, images are pulled in from the server and displayed in the message.
Personal Whitelisting
One way to ensure that email is delivered to a recipients’ inbox with images turned on is to encourage the recipient to add the senders’ from: address to the address book or personal whitelist. Personal whitelisting is a cost-effective technique that offers marketers and businesses guaranteed delivery into the email inbox (not the junk folder) of email recipients who have designated the email address as a trusted address. Unfortunately, subscribers often overlook personal whitelisting because it requires them to take specific action. When whitelisting is done correctly, email senders on a personal whitelist will never be subjected to a subscriber’s spam filter or their email ISP service provider’s blacklist, as long as they maintain a consistent “from” name and address.
In addition to the direct benefit to the recipient, there are some hints that email ISP services, like Hotmail, Gmail, AOL, Yahoo! and Windows Live Mail, are looking at personal whitelisting as part of their internal sender reputation scoring.
Getting Started with Personal Whitelisting
To encourage personal whitelisting, email senders first need to educate their subscribers about the role the email address book plays in successful delivery of email communications and newsletters. Email senders must also provide whitelisting instructions for the major email ISP providers Gmail, AOL, Yahoo!, Hotmail and Windows Live Mail and desktop email clients such as Outlook and Eudura. This can be accomplished in several ways:
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Promote Personal Whitelisting at Registration or Sign-up
Personal whitelisting is most effective when the whitelisting request is included on the subscription or site registration page. The best way to accomplish this is by presenting the subscriber with a Thank You page that includes the whitelisting request when they sign up to the subsciber email list. This way the email address can be added to the recipient’s address book before the subscription confirmation email is sent out.
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Pre-header Text Link to Whitelisting Instructions
Another effective way to promote address book inclusion is to add a pre-header text link near the top of the email message template that points to a whitelist instruction page, encouraging the email recipients to add the sender’s email address to his or her address book or contact/safe sender list. |
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Whitelisting Instructions in the Welcome Message after Subscription
One other way to promote whitelisting is to include whitelisting instructions in the welcome message sent to new subscribers. This can take the form of a call-to-action to whitelist the senders’ email address, which then points to the page with specific whitelisting instructions. |
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Send a One-time Whitelisting Request to all List Members
In addition, another effective whitelisting promotion is to create a specific email message, including a whitelisting request for the sender’s email address and whitelisting instructions, which are sent to the full subscriber list. |
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Personal whitelisting is a valuable tactic for marketers and businesses that use email marketing as a sales tool for generating qualified leads. The easier it is for email recipients to add the sender address to their personal whitelist, the less likelihood that email will automatically land in their spam folder. When email recipients greenlight receiving a company’s email message, they are ready to build a relationship and are on the way to become qualified prospects. |
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Past Presentations
128 Business Expo 2008
The Westin Waltham-Boston Hotel
"Using Social Media to Connect with Prospects and Customers"
Presenter: Louise Rijk, Vice-President of Marketing and Sales
Click here to play the video.
495/MetroWest Business Expo
Sheraton Framingham Hotel
Pre-Expo Keynote Presentation
“A Strategic Approach to Integrated Marketing”
Presenter: Louise Rijk, Vice-President of Marketing and Sales
Click here to play the video.
Bentley College, 2008 - Waltham, MA
“Planning and Integrating a Targeted Internet Marketing Campaign”
Click here to play the video.
WebmasterWorld Pubcon 2007 - Las Vegas, NV
“Planning and Integrating a Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) Campaign”
Click here to play the video.
BizAction 2007 - Washington DC
"Email, Social Media and Search in the Overall Marketing Mix"
Click here to play the audio.
128 Business Expo 2007
"Blogging and Podcasting For Business"
Click here to play the video.
495/Metrowest Business Expo
Pre-Expo Keynote
"The Rise of the Internet as a Mass Advertising Medium"
Click here to play the video.
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If you would like more information on Internet Marketing, Consulting, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing and Email Marketing, please
click here.
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Copyright © 1996-2008. Advanced Media Productions, Inc.
Advanced Media Productions, Inc.
251 West Central St., Suite 28, Natick, Massachusetts 01760, USA
Tel: 508-647-5151 Fax: 508-647-5150
E-mail: info@advmediaproductions.com
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