I was recently at the SIPA conference speaking about the basics of deliverability. The majority of the audience were B2B publishers that had only recently started emailing. It was interesting to hear all of the different perspectives of deliverability from these folks. Some had been learning about it and trying to follow best practices, while others had little to no understanding of it. One guy actually told me that it was all Voodoo.

This same gentleman then went on to ask me how he could improve his delivery rates, so I asked him about his business and his list. He told me that he had a list of about 50,000 names. None of them were opt-in, and he said that most of them were “scraped” from the Internet. Well, I wanted to look him in the face, scream at the top of my lungs, and let him know he will never improve his delivery rates because he is a SPAMMER.

Rather than doing that, I decided to explain to him that, at a minimum, he needs to send a re-engagement message asking people to opt-in to his messages. I went on to tell him how he would see better results from 5,000 people who wanted his mail, as compared to the 50,000 names who had no idea who he was.

After explaining this and answering a couple more questions, the gentlemen had one more question.. He asked, “Ok, I understand what you said about splitting up the 5,000 opt-in users from the other 45,000 users, but how do I get those other 45,000 emails delivered and opened?"

Once the session was over, I began wondering if anyone had been listening to what I've been preaching the last couple of years. Then I realized something. Some of the folks out there just don’t want to learn. I can go to conferences, talk with clients, write articles, but in the end, most ISPs look at senders and think of people like this guy.

So what does that mean for the true legitimate senders? You need to make sure that you are following best practices, not just giving them lip service. Make sure that you are keeping your list clean as possible. And finally, make sure that you understand how most ISPs might think of you, and be better than that.

As an email deliverability consultant, I often get asked what affects deliverability more – reputation or content? This is a good question; unfortunately the answer isn't so straightforward. In fact, it really depends.

If you have a poor sender reputation it won't matter what your content looks like, because it probably won't get to your customer's inbox. On the other hand, if you have a good reputation, but your content is getting caught by every anti-spam software available, your customer still won't get your message.

To answer the question, it helps to start at the beginning. Imagine that you are setting up a brand new mailing system and are going to start sending email off of new IP addresses. What would you focus on first? Hopefully, you answered "reputation," because that's exactly where you should be focusing your attention at this stage of the game. The fact is that many receivers do not trust new IP addresses and will view you as guilty until proven innocent. That being said, you need to build a positive reputation with the receivers, and you do that by starting SLOWLY.

When building a new reputation on a new system, make sure to send smaller segments of your list and test them to make sure that they are getting through. As you continue to see positive delivery rates, you can increase the percentage of your list that you are mailing until you get to full production. By doing this in a very iterative-type approach, you allow the receivers to look, assess and put a formal (hopefully) positive reputation on your new system.

Remember that during this time you want to send to your best and most active customers. By doing this, you are less likely to see the complaints or unknown users that can quickly put a negative affect on your reputation.

Once you have a positive reputation for your mailing system, you should make sure that your content is not causing you any issues. There are many ways to do this, but the most important one is to test. There are plenty of tools available to test your messages against the most common anti-spam software. By testing, you will be able to tell if your content might case a delivery issue. Also, remember to follow best practices like a good HTML-to-Text ratio, personalization of the content in the message and steering clear of commonly used SPAM words.