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Maximizing Email Delivery
We practice only permission-based, opt-in email marketing and enforce it with our clients and partners. Since current spam filtering software erroneously blocks many legitimate emails as well, we’ve taken several steps to ensure our clients achieve the highest possible delivery rates.

Spam Filters - The Basics
The average email user will receive nearly 1,600 unsolicited commercial email messages in 2006, leaving most ISP’s and tech departments scrambling to protect themselves. Most have added filtering mechanisms to block unsolicited email or “spam.” The problem is that filters block not only spam, but also permission-based email as well. According to recent research, the cost of spam false positives can easily exceed $50 per user per year and will cost U.S. businesses about $3.5 billion in 2003 (the overall cost of spam is now estimated at over $10 billion annually). For this reason, it is now more important than ever to prevent valid emails from being falsely labeled as spam.

How do ISP’s and corporations decide whether an email is spam or not? There are four primary types of filters. TeeMailer provides a solution for each, as follows:

Filter Type 1: Content Filtering

Content filtering is used by anti-spam software systems employed by a growing number of organizations. These systems, including SpamAssassin, SpamKiller and others focus on the contents of the email subject line and body content to determine whether of not to deliver an email. This type of filter works on a point scoring system, and each item in the subject line or email body that “looks like” spam add to the spam score assigned to the email.

Content filters focus on promotional, phrases such as “work from home”, “guaranteed income”, or even seemingly innocuous phrases such as “click here” and “unsubscribe.” They also assign points to text formatting that is indicative of spam, such as the use of ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, excess use of bright colors, or very large fonts.

TeeMailer Solution: Content Detective

TeeMailer offers a proprietary system called the “Content Detective” to help our clients ensure that their permission-based emails avoid being erroneously labeled as spam due to content filtering. This feature mirrors the logic used by spam filtering software to identify words, phrases, and patterns that are likely to trigger filters, then recommends a resolution to each identified problem, before an email is sent. Content Detective is included free of charge with all of our products.

Filter Type 2: List Quality Filtering

Many spam lists contain a large number of bogus addresses so spammers “bounce” a lot of mails with ISP’s. To combat this problem, many ISP’s have added list quality filters to detect when a large percentage of email addresses are bogus. If the volume of bounces exceed a certain quantity, all other emails may be disallowed (see “blacklisting” below).

TeeMailer Solution: List Detective

TeeMailer also offer a proprietary “List Detective” to validate list integrity and ensure that email is only sent to valid addresses. List Detective scans each address as they are uploaded to our system checking for known ‘seed’ addresses that indicate a list may be non-permission based. If they are found, the email addresses are not uploaded and the TeeMailer Abuse Desk is notified. These include known unsolicited addresses, planted addresses, and addresses that don’t belong to an individual, such as nospam@, postmaster@ or abuse@.

List Hygiene - Designed to improve the integrity and performance of your e-mail list, Return Path E-mail List Hygiene analyzes your e-mail file using hundreds of proprietary algorithms to determine whether addresses are valid and mailable. Every list is checked for: format and syntax errors, invalid domains, common domain typos, bogus e-mail addresses, and eNixies: e-mail addresses that have been proven to be bad.

ECOA - Most lists shrink by 30% each year due to users changing email addresses. Return Path ECOA captures up to 10% of those bad address back each year. How does it work?

1. Consumers register their old and current e-mail addresses with Return Path through various points of presence on the Web (network partner sites, ISP’s, top community sites, etc.).

2. Return Path verifies the accuracy of the registered e-mail addresses by sending confirmation e-mails to the old and new e-mail addresses.

3. Businesses using Return Path ECOA are notified when the consumer gives permission for their new e-mail address to be shared.

When combined, list hygiene and ECOA allows our clients to retain 20% more of their addresses each year.

Filter Type 3: Volume Filtering

Since many spammers send bulk emails without regard to their accuracy or volume, many ISP’s filter using volume based filtering. Volume filters focus on the number of simultaneous connections that are opened at any one time with an ISP.

TeeMailer Solution: Domain Monitoring

TeeMailer employs domain-level monitoring to manage the number of connections opened for each ISP domain at any one time. This ensures emails are delivered at a maximum rate without triggering volume filters at large ISP’s such as AOL or Yahoo. Due to the large percentage of users with major ISP’s, domain monitoring is especially critical for lists over 1 million addresses.

Filter Type 4: IP Address Filtering

Many organizations have employed IP address filtering to identify IP addresses that send spam and disallow them into their system. The technique of adding suspected IP addresses to a filtering list is called “blacklisting.” There are numerous active blacklists in use today, some by private companies and individuals, and others operated by anti-spam organizations. A related concept, in which a list of “trusted senders” is used to determine which email is legitimate, is called “whitelisting.” White lists are lists of IP addresses of organizations that are trusted to deliver only legitimate, opt-in messages. Typically an ISP will have several guidelines that a sender must follow in order to qualify for the white list status, including email formatting, name capture tactics, and client enforcement.

TeeMailer Solution: Private IP & Monitoring

TeeMailer can host a unique IP address and domain for each individual client. Clients selecting this option receive an IP address which is registered within TeeMailer's whitelist status, providing the client with better deliverability than could be attained on one's own. Our abuse desk personnel constantly work and monitor the individual IP's to ensure full delivery of client emails.

TeeMailer Solution: ISP Agreements

We have developed white list relationships with key ISP’s, anti-spam organizations, and others to ensure emails sent via our system reach the intended audience. We are listed on the “white list” for major ISP’s, such as AOL, Juno, Yahoo, Compuserve, NetZero, and others. Our white list status allows mail sent from our system to be appropriately delivered to their customers without the potential for filtering.

TeeMailer Solution: Abuse Desk Management

One way to get in trouble with the anti-spam community is to avoid responding to email complaints. Our in-house abuse desk is managed by a team of email delivery experts and we work on behalf of our clients to respond to spam complaints received. If necessary, we follow up with our clients to ensure appropriate permission-based name capture policies and procedures are in place. By knowing the efficacy of the name capture practices employed by our clients, we will defend the validity of the list and name capture practices to anti-spam organizations.

Are you currently using another system for your email marketing efforts?  Can they offer this level of deliverability and service?

Maximize your email deliverability with IGM's TeeMailer.  Call us today at (336) 889-4206 and begin seeing greater results instantly!