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.

So you might be thinking to yourself—why on earth would I want to read another blog about email deliverability? What could I possibly learn from this blog that I can’t from other articles and blogs out there? Well the answer is simple—there are no other blogs offering my in-the-trenches perspective. See, I started in the email industry as a sender and many of my counterparts come from an anti-spam background. Another difference is that many other email companies try to scare senders into thinking deliverability is some “black art” no one will ever figure out. Seriously - this is just not true. Not only have I learned it but I have also helped dozens of clients become completely self sufficient when it comes to deliverability.

A quick background on me first. I started working in email while at NASCAR.com. There, I concentrated on getting our campaigns completed on time and achieving the conversion results we desired. From there I moved into the deliverability space with Accucast, as their Dir. of Deliverability. While at Accucast I created and built a group that became so integrated with our clients, we were often introduced to other departments with a client organization as if we worked internally. Accucast was then purchased by Premiere Global Services and we continued to grow the group. During that time I started to look for some better backend reporting to potentially integrate with our front-end system. It was then I started talking with StrongMail and realized what a unique space they were going after. It was then I realized StrongMail had an incredible ability to change the way email marketing was handled within larger organizations and that I could help teach customers how to handle things themselves if they wanted.

Since coming to StrongMail, I have worked with many customers on all different levels. By using StrongMail and bringing the email processes and procedures in-house customers can determine how much help they want/need with deliverability. Some of my clients want us to handle everything for them, in turn we become like a remote employee of their company. Others simply need guidance on best practices at the beginning and feel as though they can handle it themselves after that. Finally there are those that use my team as an insurance policy, we have trained them how to handle the basic issues but they come to us when things get out of their comfort zone.

So now you know a little about me you may still be wondering why you should read this blog. Well, not only will you learn important information but it will come from a point of you view you can understand. There’s a lot of noise out there about how we need more education on email deliverability best practices.In my experience, this education needs to address six different audiences:

1. Senders who don’t know anything and they’re fine with that—they don’t want to learn it so they ask me to take care of it for them.
2. Senders who know enough to get by but are interested in learning more to help improve their campaigns themselves.
3. Senders who think they know it all and then unfortunately learn they don’t know much at all.
4. Senders who think they know it all, don’t follow best practices, fail, then give up.
5. Senders who live and breathe this stuff and are always looking five steps ahead to discover the next great thing.
6. Senders who send and never care how much of their campaign reaches the inbox.

What can you expect from future posts? This blog will help those that want it and know that they need it. I also plan to challenge the establishment of some other companies and the scare tactics they use. Education is key if you are willing to learn. If there is ever a specific topic that you would like me to discuss please let me know and remember—Improvement Never Stops!