If we’re to think of Email Marketing as governed by a set of best practices, the trifecta that comes to mind would be:

1. Obtain proper permission
2. Send relevant content
3. Set and maintain frequency expectations

On the surface, these appear to be simple; however, many marketers are not following these practices as dogmatically as they should be. The most common repercussion from this is having your email land in the spam/junk folder, or potentially being blocked. Many ESPs (Email Service Providers), DSPs (Deliverability Service Providers) and marketing groups have all published case studies which confirm that straying from “The Big Three” leads to the following:

1. High complaint rates
2. Mailing spam trap addresses
3. Mailing invalid (expired accounts, accounts that were never valid, etc.) addresses

As these are driving factors in many ISP reputation systems, not adhering to recommended best practices often generates data that reflects poorly on you and your campaigns. The idea is to legitimate your operation by distinguishing yourself from the Viagra salesmen of the world. To do this you have to set the bar high and work on setting your program up for success as a means of discernment in not only the ISPs eyes, but that of the filtering companies many of them employ to stop spam. In the weeks to come, we will expand on each item and provide information to help make your email marketing efforts more successful and help place your mail in the Inbox.