We all know that reaching your audience with a relevant message and a targeted list is all you need to get results . . . Not!

No one knows this better than the one person who knows more about dogs than dogs do. Cesar Millan learned the hard way, that email delivery is a skilled practice that demands effort and attention and persistently laying down a solid routine (not unlike training your pooch to stay off the couch).

When you take your eye off the ball for so long . . . things start to get out of hand. There are fundamentals to email marketing that will help you avoid a perfect storm that causes email delivery to go into a tailspin.

The biggies are:

• Collecting email addresses without verifying them

• Letting your email database go stale without updating your addys

• Old databases create the perfect climate for \”spam traps,\” which can ruin a sender’s reputation and cause delivery issues at ISPs.

If any of this sounds familiar . . . know this: The fixes for these types of situations are rarely found in a fire & forget solution. It\’s more likely that you need an expert ear to hear you out and, then, an expert hand to roll up the sleeves and do some digital marketing plumbing. While there are no \”quick\” fixes, lousy delivery rates can totally be turned around. For instance you can:

• Identify all subscribers who had never opened or clicked on an email message

• Segment the data using certain specific time criteria

• Remove obvious non-engaged subscribers from your list

. . . but there\’s a lot more.

Cesar\’s case isn\’t much different than others trying to ride the bucking bronco of email marketing, which rarely promises instant results and, more often than not, requires skill, patience and an expert helping hand. In Cesar\’s case delivery went from a paltry 81.29% to a screaming 99.7% (now that\’s more like it!).

You can find out more about how stop your email delivery from eating your wallet by reading the Cesar Millan case study.