FireDrum is dedicated to providing its customers with the best possible email throughput. To assist our customers with this goal, we maintain a list of best practices to follow in creating your email content and campaign.
In addition to abiding by FireDrum’s Terms of Use, we recommend that list owners adhere to the following best practices. By carefully following these recommendations, you'll avoid subscriber complaints, ensure successful e-mail delivery, and protect your brand’s reputation.
| Ensure Informed Opt-In Consent |
Provide clear and explicit language for gathering subscribers’ opt-in permission. Let subscribers know exactly what they’ll be receiving.
| Ask Subscriber to re-confirm: |
Use our system’s subscriber confirmation so subscribers can confirm their subscriptions from their actual e-mail addresses. This reduces problems from typos or forgeries that can affect lists, even though you may have taken proper precautions. Additionally, some ISPs give preferential routing or “whitelisting” based on messages with a reconfirmed status.
| Ask subscribers to add your address to their address book: |
Many ISPs exempt messages from filtering if the recipient has added the sender to their address book. Tell subscribers to add your “From” address to their address book – this guarantees delivery of your messages.
| Use FireDrum's online Subscription Tool |
Use FireDrum's online subscription tool on your web site to capture IP number/date/time of the subscriber's opt-in request. Doing so sends the information directly into the FireDrum system.
| Leverage your Identity Branding |
Make sure that recipients can easily recognize your from address, subject, and body content. Studies have shown that an unrecognizable e-mail is less likely to be opened and more likely to generate complaints. The reverse is true if the recipient recognizes the content.
When possible, remind subscribers about where/when they opted-in. This reduces the amount of complaints.
Some ISPs (AOL9) have images and links turned off by default. Be sure to include enough text so the reader will know whether to view your links or images.
| Avoid links that use IP numbers instead of domain names: |
AOL filters based on IP numbers in links.
| Keep your message size compact: |
Use your mailings as teasers to drive traffic to your web site. Long messages, especially those over 25k, may annoy recipients and trigger additional filtering.
| Avoid using poor quality, 3rd party sourcing: |
The stronger the connection between the opt-in and the e-mail required, the fewer complaints generated and the less damage to your brand's reputation.
| Include your physical postal address: |
The CAN-SPAM law requires the sender's postal address for commercial e-mail.
| How to protect yourself from Spam, Take the Spam test: |
- Are you importing a purchased list of ANY kind?
- Are you sending to non-specific addresses such as: sales@domain.com, business@domain.com, webmaster@domain.com, info@domain.com, or other general addresses.
- Are you sending to distribution lists or mailing lists which send indirectly to a variety of email addresses?
- Are you mailing to anyone who has not explicitly agreed to join your mailing list?
- Have you falsified your originating address or transmission path information?
- Have you used a third party email address or domain name without their permission?
- Does your email's subject line contain false or misleading information?
- Does your email fail to provide a working link to unsubscribe?
If you have answered YES to ANY of the above questions you will likely be labeled a SPAMMER. For more information visit The Coalition Against Unsolicited Email www.cauce.org or contact FireDrum’s Customer Support at support@FireDrum.com |
