Last week, Christine of the “Official AOL Postmaster Blog” posted a new entry titled, IP Reputation, the Whitelist and Inbox Delivery at AOL. I did not find anything that was earth-shattering, but the Q&A formatted article provides some real insight into how one of the major ISPs thinks about reputation and deliverability. Below is what I believe are the 3 most important takeaways (check out full post on the AOL postmaster site):
1. What is IP reputation? - “…reputation is a holistic view of your IP and takes into account a wide variety of factors including — but not limited to — spam complaints, ‘not spam’ reports, spam folder deliveries, and invalid recipients.”
2. How does IP reputation impact inbox delivery? - “In short, IPs with a good reputation will benefit from better inbox delivery than IPs with a bad reputation. Moreover, IPs with a bad reputation will be subject to more temp deferrals, temp blocks, and permanent IP blocks.”
3. How can I improve my IP’s reputation? - “The trick to a good IP reputation is to send mail to people who want it. AOL has put together a list of best practices to help senders ensure they are doing just this.”
Yahoo! and MSN/Hotmail have their own versions of the sender/delivery best practices:
- Yahoo! - What are some best practices when sending to Yahoo! Mail? As a sender, what can I do to ensure that my email goes to the right folder? General Postmaster help.
- MSN/Hotmail - Postmaster Services
The bottom line from all ISPs is quite simple: Send email that is timely, targeted, and relevant to those subscribers that have asked for it.
DJ Waldow
Director of Best Practices and Deliverability at Bronto
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- Deliverability: YOU are in control When your deliverability heads south, you call your Email Service...
- 6 Considerations to Lower Complaints & Improve Your Sender Reputation Got complaints? The bad news: Complaints are the best...
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