2emailsocialThe times in which bulk e-mails could still be sent out without prejudice through a company’s own mail server are definitely over, since the most important criterion for spam filtering is the dispatching mail server. Today, businesses must prove that they are reputable and therefore have to make sure that their service provider is a member of the "Return Path Certification", the world's largest certification program or the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) that combines the messaging industry in the fight against spam, viruses and phishing emails. By the way, MAAWG represents over one billion mailboxes from some of the largest networks in the world.

To ensure that no abuse is conducted with trusted addresses, Dmarc was also recently founded, an initiative with which Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and Paypal try to combat the annoying phishing emails. Here, senders define by themselves which computer they want to use for their domain mails and this information will be filed centrally with the Domain Name System (DNS).

Well, besides CSA-certified dispatch servers, there's much more, that militates in favor of professional distribution tools, which you should know:

Usability is in demand: Make your life easier and automate the exchange of data with a standard interface, keeping in mind that the simple usability of the software is an important factor for e-mail delivery. Look, for example, if your content management system or online store offers such interfaces. More and more systems also allow the visualization of complex follow-up campaigns and of course the convenient set-up of rule-based transaction or trigger emails.

Everything is going mobile: You may already know that the main usage of smartphones is the retrieval of e-mails. Besides, more and more users are reading newsletters on a mobile device and in doing so the design must of course be adapted. However, since people tend to read e-mails on mobile and on their PC, it is not recommended to have just a pure mobile version.

While the MIME encoding allows a combination of HTML and plain text, there isn’t such a standard for mobile mails yet. Put a lot of efforts into the click friendliness, although the click rate is currently still lower on smartphones than on the PC. Links need to be large and pictures should always be linked, too, not to mention considering to create generously spaces around the links for those with fatter fingers.

Further tips are:

  • Smartphones show the pre-header in the preview that should summarize the main contents of the email and not display standard texts such as "If you cannot read this email, please click here";
  • The new iPhones automatically enlarge text to font size 12, which has as a result that lines run into each other and the text becomes unreadable with smaller fonts. Therefore, keep in mind to create emails for mobile devices in font size 12 and line spacing 17;
  • For Blackberries pay attention to the text version, especially since it is mainly used in B2B;
  • If you measure how many people access your e-mails on mobile devices, you can send content that is valuable while on the go;
  • Make the social sharing buttons large enough, as making use of it increases your reach.

So, what about social media?

The fact that private communications are shifting from e-mail towards the social web is beyond any question, but that is no reason to cancel your e-mail address. To the contrary: The social networks even use e-mail to inform their members and even the application itself runs mostly through e-mail. However, what’s more important is the fact that people increasingly prefer to receive bills and booking confirmations via email, making the channel more alive than ever and literally the most effective one to push campaigns to the social web. Both channels complement each other in many ways.

By MediaBUZZ