E-Mail Marketing Precautions and Tips

So you’ve got an e-mail list. Your sites have been slowly gathering the list for months, and you’re ready to market it. What should you do?




Getting Your E-mails

Do not Mine the Internet for E-mails. They’re crap, illegal, and will get you blacklisted so fast it will make your head spin.

Under no conditions do you ever BUY an e-mail list. Yeah, they say it’s not gotten from web crawlers, but e-mail list sellers are scammers 95% of the time. They generate new dates and information for the e-mails.

You can test for this, by matching the state to the given IP address for the customer. A IP to Location database is available somewhere out there, and a quick fix can be found here.

You can verify non yahoo/hotmail/msn e-mails. The smaller the better.

Connect to the mail server, and emulate a SMTP connection(docs online for that, lookup SMTP through telnet), and try an obviously non-existant e-mail address. When you enter the RECPTO address as this, and it should give you an error. If not, it’s a catch all.

If it was NOT a catch all, try the e-mail address up until that RECPTO command. If no error, the e-mail is valid. Do this with at least 10 from the sample. This gives you an idea of how many are valid, without sending an actual e-mail.

Beware the cheap, massive Co-Reg feeds. They are filled with spam traps first of all, which we’ll get to later. But secondly, real, illegal spammers use those, and completely max out any marketing capacity they once had. There’s only 3 or so co-reg feeds that are available on the net, so write off any promise that it’s “unique”.

Hosting

Get it okayed with your server administrator. Or better yet, PAY someone to do it. It’s worth it.

Note that your hosting will take the same, if not more heat than the servers sending the e-mail. Get hosting okayed as well as the mailing servers.

Do not buy servers from individuals. Use companies. Individuals often to not understand what they’re being asked, or are unreliable, or are shady as shit. Oftentimes, they also use compromised servers.

Beware of anyone claiming to have rotating, unlimited IPs. This is probably botnet hosting/mailing, and you do NOT want a piece of that. No matter how enticing it might sound.

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Spamhaus Scorned

These guys are the enemies of people with a LOT of money, including the russian mob. They do not play games. They do not care about you. They do not accept excuses.

I have known of situations where they SBL(a death sentence) blocked 5 entire net ranges owned by a hosting company with a flawless record. And not because of “spamming” per se, but because of a messed up configuration for a message that was meant to be CAN-SPAM compliant(legal). They would not unblock the ranges, or authorize the data center to come back up, until they had information on who sent the legit-ish e-mails in question.

Since they refuse to do anything without having information on those in question, keep track of who you do business with. Who you rent servers from(Resellers). Who you bought the e-mail lists from. Things of that nature. If you’re sending for a client, make sure to have their real name/phone/address on hand.

Do not bother rambling about them being vigilantes. Do not bother mentioning they have no right to block your servers or shut down their datacenters. Should they be able to? No. Can they? Yes. Deal with it.

Read up on the CAN-SPAM act, if you’re in the United States or not. Being CAN-SPAM compliant is your only chance, since traditional spamming is not easy, and you probably lack the resources. Oh yeah, and it’s polluting the net. Even if you are CAN-SPAM compliant, most anti-spammers will not be ok with it.

Send out only offers directly relevant to the offer you got their e-mails from. Sending out common offers will result in problems. Many problems. You want to seperate yourself from the spam that barrages their inbox.

Use completely, 100% solid and seperate hosting from your normal hosting. If something goes awry, like a misconfiguration, you do not want your normal site going doing. Anti-spammers lately concentrate on eliminating hosting and DNS servers, almost moreso than the sending servers. Providers react swiftly to an Spamhaus request

Check, double check, re-check your settings. Make sure your stuff is setup properly. If you are not 100% compliant, or make one single mistake, You Will be Shut Down

Show these guys respect. If they find a problem with your marketing, try and fix it. Do whatever you can.

Avoid Mailing Servers in: Russia, Brazil, Korea, China, or really any Asian Country

Most of these are blackholed by common service providers. KoreaNet and ChinaNet especially.

Getting your Mail Inboxed

Look into whitelisting. Earthlink, Aol, and I believe Yahoo offer whitelisting services. Guard this with your life.

Have multiple IPs. Preferably on different 255 blocks. All major e-mail providers now employ graylisting, which will allow you to send perhaps, 250 e-mails per IP that will hit inbox. After that, they’re spam boxed, or delayed on delivery until the users classify them as spam or ham.

Rotate redirect domains as well(as long as this is CAN-SPAM compliant, I believe it is). Whether it’s spam or not, it’s ridiculously easy to get on the SURBL blacklist, which will make it impossible to hit inbox. Also, once again, large provider graylist domains.

Search for the company’s name online. Figure out if it really hit inbox. Also, make sure to search NANAE for any reactions to the company. Although, be aware, these guys hate pretty much all internet marketing, so you’ll never see a glowing endorsement. Best case scenario, the company is not mentioned. Also search for the owners name.

Do not troll. Do not piss these guys off. They will destroy you from within.

Ignore Jamie Bailey(aka Lamie). Everyone else does.

Check the company’s IP blocks. Figure out where they’re blacklisted. DnsStuff.com has a badass RBL check.

Ignore the APEWS list. It’s worthless, and no one uses it.

Use the customer’s name somewhere in the e-mail. It’s reassuring. Remind them of who you are, who you represent. And of course, as with all CAN-SPAM compliant e-mails, give a physical address.

Keeping your List So Fresh and So Clean

Process your Remove List. Every single day. Have it be instantaneous if possible.

Remove small domains, that are also catch-all. They’re likely used to inflate a list’s size, or are spam-traps that your list guy screwed you over with. You do not want them.

Let it Go! An old e-mail list is likely to get you complaints. Kill it off if necessary.

Talk To your Fellow SEOs

Many whitehats have experience, and can make reccomendations

Many blackhats have spewed their share of mail, first hand. Very usefu

Do Not Abuse Your List

Do not send out unrelated offers.

Do not send out mail every day.

Do not use obnoxious or misleading subjects

Finally, the #1 Most-Important-You-Should-Never-Forget-This-Rule Rule

Never, Ever, Ever Use Your Home Computer For Anything! Leave it to the pros, or get yourself some dedicated servers.

There is not room for argument here. You do not have room to be shady or original. Prepare to play by the rules, or spend a lot of money, and risk a lot of legal problems, to play by your own. These are your options.



I don’t do this anymore, but I thought I’d spread some knowledge about how to pull it off. Stay legal, and have fun.