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When you create or edit newsletters, in the Content Options step of the editing process, you have the option of including an Content Header section before your newsletter content. This Content Header area can provide instructions for subscribers to add your email address to their safe-sender lists.
This is important because many e-mail programs require you to explicitly add the e-mail addresses of the people whose e-mail you want to receive. Messages from all other senders are blocked, which keeps subscribers from seeing your newsletters in their inbox. The web page at http://wl.s4m2.com/index.php contains instructions on adding e-mail addresses to address books and safe senders lists in various popular e-mail programs. All the necessary information (the link and your e-mail address) will be automatically shown to subscribers on the default confirmation page they are sent to after subscribing to your newsletters.
If you have customized your subscription forms, you may want to add a link to that page somewhere in your content. If you have your subscribers sent to a different page altogether upon subscribing they will not be shown this information unless you include it. We suggest that you write explicit instructions on what address to add to their lists.
Improve Delivery through Updating Your SPF Record
Ask your website, email, or domain administrator about updating your domain's SPF record to include mynewsletterbuilder.com in the SPF record for the domain that you are using for your Sender Email and Return Email addresses.
If you manage your own domain, here is more information:
The SPF record can be set through tools provided by most Domain Name Registrars which will put the record on the primary DNS servers for your domain.
An example SPF record might look like, "v=spf1 mx:mynewsletterbuilder.com", with "mx:" meaning known permitted "mail exchange" servers for this domain.
Some Internet Service Providers look for an SPF record to validate the identity of the email sender (and avoid relaying bulk emails from spammers using fake identities). A small number of large organizations will have "~all" in their SPF records, which will mark the SPF record email server list as exhaustive. If your organization does this, then you definitely will want to have your SPF record updated with MyNewsletterBuilder.com to avoid have your emails marked as suspicious or cause you to be labeled as an unsolicited bulk emailer.
For most organizations, an SPF record (Sender Policy Framework record) is not exhaustive. The domain's SPF record can confirm whether an email sender is using a recognized e-mail server, but it cannot prove whether the email is valid. In these organizations, your email newsletters and email marketing might not be penalized by an SPF record with no "mx:mynewsletterbuilder.com", but you can still benefit.
Email open rates are tracked when someone chooses to view images or clicks a link in a newsletter/e-blast. This is technically the only way possible to actually know if someone is reading the email. There will always be a small percentage of people who aren't reflected in the open report and may have read the email but not viewed images or clicked links.
Spam filtering is generally email content based (unless it's a very strict business/LAN special setup). The vast majority of your clients will be using online webmail programs like Gmail or email client software like Outlook to download email from a POP server. The type of default SPAM filtering done by these programs is content based unless a user has manually created special criteria for SPAM filtering.
Most of these programs have a ranking system which attributes a SPAM score to your email based on red flags like:
Here is a great SPAM checking utility (there are quite a few on the web):
http://spamcheck.sitesell.com/
Some programs may send all email to the SPAM folder if it isn't from a recognized recipient. Here is a link with instructions to send to recipients on how to add your address to their safe sender's lists and address books for several common mail applications:
http://wl.s4m2.com/index.php
If you have a certain recipient (like a government facility for instance) who has an extremely strict SPAM filtering set up, we can provide the IP addresses of our mail servers and their IT department can white list our servers on their network. Recipients that fall into this category are very few and far between.
According to the latest market research, a 20% open rate is average, 30% is good, and 40% is excellent. There are certain things you can do to increase open rates like experimenting with different subject lines and checking to see which ones work best and personalizing email subject lines with recipient's first name. When creating a newsletter, there are options to automatically include a header section with links to view the newsletter as a web-page and instructions for the user to add your address to their safe sender's list/address book. Additionally, people are statistically more likely to open email if they recognize the sender's name/organization and/or email address.
Spam filtering is generally content related. There is a very good free spam checking website that will give you lots of specifics on your newsletter's "spamminess" (things that are likely to increase your newsletter's spam ranking).
Each email program has it's own version of such a "spam score ranking" system. It is also possible for users to set up custom spam filters based on certain criteria or configure their security settings in their email program or with other software on their system to be even more strict than normal. For example, Microsoft Outlook offers a way to junk/filter (and optionally automatically delete) all email that comes from anyone outside their safe senders list (which they create).
Generally, some major content issues to avoid are:
Filtering technology is constantly evolving, and there is a whole host of different things that different spam checkers look for. No one thing is likely to get your email filtered by itself, but rather, it is a combination of multiple factors that trips a threshold based on unique ranking systems defined by each ISP, software package, or email provider.
Additionally, you may provide instructions to recipients to add your address to their safe sender's list (whitelist) and/or address book. This will prevent your emails from going to junk folders in some applications which send all email to junk folders by default if it is not from a recognized address. You can send the following link with instructions for this for several common email programs:
http://wl.s4m2.com/index.php
You can include a note to add your address to people's safe senders lists with the "email options" - content header step of the newsletter editing wizard.
MyNewsletterBuilder is here to support you. If you are not finding the help you need through on-page help and this help directory, please contact us:
We provide Live Support 15 hours a day weekdays excluding major holidays. We also check support emails at night and over the weekend. Inquires received after 10 PM EST/EDT (after 9 PM EST/EDT on Fridays) are responded to via email as soon as we have answers to your questions.
Please include your name, username and contact information when you contact Live Support.
If the issue is related to a specific newsletter, please provide the name of the newsletter, the web browser version and the operating system (Windows Vista, for example), and a description of the steps to take to reproduce the issue. This small amount of information allows us to see what you are seeing and address your concerns as promptly as possible.
Yes, we provide Live Support for Free Trial customers. If you do not have an account with MyNewsletterBuilder, the best way to find out how easy it is to create your email marketing is to start your Free Trial today.
