Prospective law firm clients often ask us why they should pay a bit more for our email marketing service than they might pay for, say, a standard blast service like Constant Contact or Campaigner. I respond that email marketing is not just about sending emails, but about getting them delivered, and that (among other benefits) they'll get better deliverability with our service using tools such as private IP addresses, and authentication. Plus we can monitor a firm's "email reputation" for any red flags that might affect deliverability, such as blacklists.
To illustrate the point, compare the deliverability and reputation reports for three email alert campaigns distributed recently by three leading law firms.
Screenshot #1: The first campaign was sent using a well known blast email service. The deliverability report shows numerous red flags that could affect deliverability. Here's a link to download a screenshot of the relevant report; see the analysis below.
First, the reputation report shows that the emails are not authenticated, which could cause deliverability problems at clients using authentication as a filtering tool. As observed in the past, use of authentication as a spam filtering tool is becoming more common.
Second, there is no Abuse.net address. Since many spam reporting tools use the abuse.net database to determine where to send "spam" complaints, if you don't have an entry in the database, you leave parties with no choice but to complain to the blacklists and anti-spam organizations. Much better if they knew where to write to you directly so you could address any misunderstandings BEFORE they contact the blacklists and anti-spam organizations.
Third, the report is showing that the shared IP address used to send this email appears on a blacklist (albeit, fortunately, not a widely used blacklist). This highlights a common issue. The reason so many blast services can charge so little for their service is because they allow many accounts to share the same IP address. As a result, even if you follow email marketing best practices in terms of your list hygiene (e.g., no unsolicited addresses), if other accounts are engaging in spam or other questionable tactics, then those activities will affect the integrity of the shared IP address being used to send your emails, and your own reputation will suffer. Indeed, as we observed in the past, using a shared IP address is analogous to sharing your social security number with other people. You can have stellar credit, but if those sharing your social security number don't pay their bills, the bank will still deny you credit.
Fourth, the report shows that the blast service's domain name appears on a domain blacklist. This is bad news.
We wonder if the law firm using this blast service is even aware of these issues. Probably not.
Screenshot #2: The second campaign was sent using the InterAction Tikit product running on the firm's own mail servers. The reputation report shows several issues. Click here to view the screenshot of the report; then see the analysis below.
The main issue here is that because the mail server used for email marketing is operated by the firm, the firm's IT department must take responsibility for managing issues like authentication and Abuse.net entries. Given how overworked IT departments typically are, they haven't given any attention to these issues. As a result, there are deliverability red flags.
In contrast, when a firm outsources email marketing to an email service provider like eLawMarketing, we'll assume the burden of making sure these deliverability issues are addressed.
Fortunately, in this second campaign, there are no blacklist problems. But what if one arises? Will the firm's IT department become aware of it? Without ongoing monitoring, no one will know and deliverability of the firm's email alerts and newsletters will suffer silently without anyone knowing there is a problem.
Screenshot #3: The third campaign was sent by a firm using our mail servers and with a private IP, abuse.net entry and authentication in place. Here's a link to the screenshot - as readers will see, deliverability is maximized.
To learn more about our deliverability solutions, here's a brochure you can download.
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