Chances
are, if you’ve been involved with email marketing for
any length of time, you’re aware that AOL, Hotmail,
and Yahoo! are the “Big 3” when it comes to email
addresses. Industry trends and our own databases have shown
that for the past five years, these three lead in not only
page views but also in the number of subscribers. The primary
reason these three have stayed at the front of the pack is
their ability to control spam, provide maximum storage space,
and accessibility.
AOL and Yahoo work pretty much the same way. Good email marketers
know that they have one shot at an AOL or Yahoo! address.
If that email doesn’t make it past the SPAM filter,
consider it dead. The Email Service Providers (ESP), or domain,
systems are designed to recognize SPAM as messages that continually
try to “ping” an inbox over and over. If you’re
working with one of the larger ESP’s, chances are they
have a deal with these companies to not let email continue
to try to get in inboxes. Messages that continue to “ping”
an inbox are at risk of “Black listing” their
senders. Black listing means that from then on, all email
providers will recognize the sender as a spammer, and won’t
let any messages from that sender through.
Hotmail puts much of the filtering in the hands of the consumer.
It allows consumers not only to customize their own security
settings, but also includes new “Sender ID” technology.
If a suspicious e-mail arrives, Hotmail does not display the
message. Instead, it warns the user that the e-mail appears
to be potentially fraudulent and asks them if they want to
block or allow that message and any other e-mails from that
sender.
Gmail is rapidly becoming a huge player in the email world.
Since its launch in August 2004, there has been a huge increase
in the number of subscribers. This is primarily due to the
vast number of fun features Gmail has to offer. First, the
amount of storage space allows users to hold on to email for
a much longer period of time. Second, Gmail has introduced
a search feature which is very similar to the popular Google
search. Gmail has also adopted an idea used similarly by other
ESP’s by blocking any images in an email unless users
click on a link requesting them to “display external
images,” so marketers could potentially see lower click
through rates for links related to images.
Reader
Tom Green at Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ asks:
“How are you able to defeat spam filters at major ESP’s,
such as AOL?”
Avoiding words and phrases in your subject line and message
body that SPAM filters recognize helps. Another option to bypassing
spam filters is to align yourself with a white listing service,
such as Habeas and BondedSender. These companies do the compliance
legwork, and provide "outsourced white lists" for
other ESP’s. Being certified at one or both of these organizations
will automatically white list you across all ESP’s that
subscribe to their service.
Student Horizons’ partner, EmailLabs, works directly with
ESP’s to make sure that transmission is not interrupted
and any email delivery issues are handled with utmost expediency.
We maintain relations with ESP’s that include: AOL/Time-Warner,
MSN/Hotmail, Yahoo, Earthlink, Cable & Wireless, Hurricane
Electric, Roadrunner Cable Networks, and Juno/Netzero.
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