If you setup your sender authentication records, they will absolutely help but still may not be enough. There are a few more things you can do to build your email sender reputation and improve your email campaign performance:
• Every few email campaigns check your mail server's IP address against DNS based blacklists. You can use the MX Lookup tool to see if your server's IP address is blacklisted. If it is, there is nothing wrong with emailing to the admins of those sites and ask them how you can be removed from the blacklist.
• Sign up at email deliverability services. These services work as whitelists and ensure the email delivery to the recipient. When you sign up, your server's IP address is included into their database. The ISPs check those databases, and if your IP is found there, your email is delivered. Only note that the email deliverability services are not free. They charge a monthly fee or the fee is based on the quantity of sent emails.
• Whitelist your server with ISPs. Large ISPs have a procedure you can follow to facilitate the delivery of your email messages directly to the subscriber's Inbox and not to the bulk email folder. The bad thing is that the ISP may not whitelist you if you are using a shared mail server. Even the host owning the mail server may come into troubles with getting the server whitelisted if shared accounts are in use. The experience shows that in order to send the emails as reliably as possible, email marketers should use a dedicated mail server and implement all the steps I described above. And the final thing to do is to follow the ISP whitelisting procedure. There is also a concern about the quantity of emails sent at a time. ISPs tend to meter incoming emails and accept only a certain number of messages per hour. Gone are the days when it was possible to continuously blast thousands of messages. Now the emails should be metered to leak over time.
• Do not change your mail server's IP address without any evident reason for it. Some ISPs are more cautious to new IP addresses and restrict the amount of emails that can be sent from a new IP address.
• Do not change your "From" email address without need. The recipients have already used to your From field and probably added your From email address to their whitelists. Sending from a new email address may make them think it is spam and hit "Report Spam" button or just delete your email message. If you are forced to change your From email address, consider sending a short notification to your subscribers before the change takes place. This way, they can update your records in their address books or whitelists and your future emails will more likely to be received in the Inbox.
• Do not send the first welcome email in HTML. It's better if you send your welcome message in plain text format and after your subscribers whitelist you, you can email your regular newsletters in the HTML format. Plus, some email services (AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail) do not display images in a HTML email until the recipient loads them.
To conclude, keep in mind that nowadays the sender's reputation question is timely as never before. It's easy to fool anti-spam filters using some tricks but it's not easy to restore your good name. Your email sender's reputation determines the success of your mailings so put your efforts to create a good picture of yourself.
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