Category Archives: Best Practices

As SendGrid Developer Evangelist, Elmer Thomas says “If your email doesn’t make it to the inbox, you are talking to yourself. Not cool.” Every email you send has to contend with the dreaded spam folder and sadly, 1/5 of them lose the battle. What kind of email are we talking about? Confirmations, reminders, shipping notifications, receipts, password resets, and more. So how can you help your email win this fight? We know that sometimes trying to ensure that your email stays out of the spam folder can seem like a big task. So to help you remember the best practices…

Spam complaints have a huge impact on your sender reputation, so wouldn’t it be helpful to know who’s reporting your email as spam? You can with feedback loops. Feedback loops were once a tool for ISPs to monitor abuse from their networks, but now, they are also available to senders who would like to use the information to perform list hygiene and to gain insights into what may be negatively affecting their email program. Here’s how feedback loops work: MAAWG: Complaint Feedback Loop Best Current Practices (April 2010)  How to use complaint data Track complaint rates to measure email effectiveness.…

Personal, anticipated, and valued—that is the true definition of transactional email. It’s the most coveted type of email on the planet because it is triggered by an action that your user or customer has taken. In fact, we argue that since transactional email is sent once someone has become a buyer and/or user, you should take great pains with the care and nurturing of this email stream to ensure email delivery and email engagement. Not convinced? Let’s take a quick walk down memory lane. It might surprise you to learn that transactional email was once considered a bit of a…

A few weeks ago, SendGrid’s email experts Ken Apple and Jesse McCabe held a webcast called How to Get Your Email Marketing Off the Ground. They discussed how to: Create cost effective transactional and marketing email programs Get your emails delivered to the inbox Analyze the performance of your programs Scale your program to meet the needs of your growing business With so much to cover, Ken and Jesse couldn’t answer all the questions they wanted to. In an effort to continue the conversation, here are responses to the questions they were unable to get to during the webcast. And for…

Email gurus Paul Kincaid-Smith and Carly Brantz kicked off the first of SendGrid’s monthly webcasts a year ago this month with a deep dive into the challenges of maintaining a good sender reputation. Over the past year, we have tackled new topics each month, ranging from technical API workshops to best practices for incorporating marketing into your transactional email. Each month we heard from many people who are struggling with the basics of email deliverability and didn’t even know where to start. In response to the demand for a better introduction to email deliverability, we are adding an additional webcast…

Are you signing your mail? No, we don’t mean are you adding a closing signature, we’re talking about authenticating your email streams. Email authentication helps ISPs identify which domains are legitimate and safe for delivery. One of the most common ways to “sign your mail” is with DKIM. DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) is an email authentication method developed by Yahoo! that checks an encrypted “key” embedded in each email sent against a list of public records to positively confirm the identity of the sender. In short, it helps ISPs identify the good mail and aids in preventing malicious email from…

For those of you who want a quick and simple overview of some basics to keep in mind when thinking about your email reputation, here’s a short and helpful list to get you started:  1. Keep a clean list, avoid traps A clean, well-managed subscriber list can be your best asset.“Dirty” lists–those with out-of-date information, are a leading cause of deliverability failures and are sure to damage your sending reputation. List hygiene is the process of removing “bad” addresses in a timely manner. Good list hygiene practices are essential if you want to avoid spam traps and keep your bounce…