Set Yourself Up for Successful Deliverability

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Describe the methods of authenticating a domain in Marketing Cloud Engagement.
Determine whether a dedicated or shared sending IP is best for your company.
Learn best practice tips for ongoing success in the email marketing space.

Importance of Authentication

To improve the likelihood that your email gets to the intended recipient, emails must be properly authenticated, not just validated. Google, Yahoo, and other mailbox providers take authentication seriously. They check for all industry-accepted forms of authentication using DNS records of your sending domain. Additionally, authentication reduces the likelihood of spam, spoofing, and phishing attacks, thus protecting your brand and reducing spam complaints.

Methods of Authenticating a Domain for Use on Marketing Cloud Engagement

Sender Authentication Package (SAP)

An SAP configured for Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement ensures you have compliant, authenticated email messages when sending from our platform.

But what exactly do you get with an SAP? An SAP is a collection of products, including an authenticated private domain along with link and image wrapping (that is, branding), a dedicated IP address, and reply mail management (RMM). While some of these products can be purchased individually, an SAP is best thought of as an account branding tool, as link and image wrapping is only offered with an SAP setup.

Private Domain

Message authentication helps mailbox providers know that your sends are legitimate. Private Domain is a paid product that provides Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) authentication to your Marketing Cloud Engagement sending domain.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is a DNS-based email authentication feature that allows senders to publish a list of IP addresses that are used for sending.
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) signs messages with a cryptographic signature that verifies the domain and prevents spoofing.

Together, these authentication methods satisfy Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting & Conformance. DMARC is a protocol that determines the authenticity of an email message. A properly configured DMARC policy can tell a receiving server whether or not to accept email from a particular center. Not all receiving servers perform a DMARC check before accepting a message, but most major mailbox providers do.

Get to Know IPs

You can’t learn about deliverability without discussing IPs and IP warming. Whether you’re new to Marketing Cloud Engagement or a seasoned professional, it’s good to review how IPs impact deliverability.

Shared IP vs. Dedicated IP

First, let’s start by understanding when you should consider a dedicated IP address over using a shared IP address.

Shared IP sending is recommended for low-volume senders who otherwise wouldn’t be able to establish their own sending reputation due to consistently low volumes or the sporadic nature of their sending. Mailbox providers are looking for a consistent mail flow to extract engagement-related data points from (commonly referred to as “reputation”). Sharing sending IP(s) with other Marketing Cloud Engagement customers offers a solution to keep volume and reputation on the sending IP(s).

Most customers will have a need for a dedicated IP address. Any customer sending more than 100,000 messages per month will benefit from a dedicated sending IP. This allows you full control of the sending reputation tied to your outbound mail, which factors into the ability to reach the inbox of your subscribers. And if you’re sending more than 2 million messages per day, you will need more than one IP address. (Sending more than 2 million messages a day from a single IP can result in deferrals by major mailbox providers.)

Get Started with a New IP Address

If you’re a new Marketing Cloud Engagement customer or adding a new IP to an existing account, you should know that your purchased IP address is unused, with no email sending history or sender reputation. This means there is no such thing as a pre-warmed IP. Since spammers often use new IP addresses, mailbox providers limit the amount of emails they accept from IPs with no sender reputation. Emails coming from a cold IP address cause concern and are carefully observed for unusual or high-volume activity. So what should you do?

IP Warming

IP warming is the process of gradually increasing the volume of mail sent by a new IP address. The goal is to build up at least 30 days of desirable sending history so that mailbox providers have an idea of the kinds of mail coming from your new IP address. Basically, it’s your chance to build your reputation as a desirable sender. The ramp-up period can take longer than 30 days for some senders and a shorter time for others. Factors such as your overall list size, list quality, send frequency, and subscriber engagement can influence the amount of time it takes for your IP address to be fully ramped up.

Keep Learning

Deliverability isn’t just something you learn and then forget about. It’s truly continuing education, because it requires continuous learning. You can have the best deliverability one month, and then—poof—something happens. More than 300 spam-filtering companies exist with different filtering logic. It’s hard to keep up with these changes, but here’s a list of best practices to help maintain good deliverability, stay out of spam folders, and maintain a favorable IP reputation.

Best Practice	Explanation	Consideration
Ensure that all subscribers you send to have given permission.	All of the names on your subscriber lists must give explicit permission for you to send them email via the application. Even if you’ve received permission, people often forget they signed up for emails.	Review your opt-in process to ensure opt-ins are clear. Add language at the top of your emails stating how the subscriber opted in to receiving your communications. A reminder can help increase results and reduce complaints.
Have an easy unsubscribe process.	Ensure the unsubscribe process is easy and hassle-free for the end user. It’s better for a user to unsubscribe than mark your email as spam.	Include an unsubscribe link at the top of the email as well as the footer. Review the unsubscribe process to make sure it’s user-friendly and easily visible. Making the link difficult to find can result in spam reports from your recipients.
Send to engaged subscribers.	Adapt your sending practices to ensure you only email subscribers who want to hear from you.	Launch a reengagement campaign for unengaged users and then either opt-down or opt-out those unengaged subscribers.
Deal with bounce rates greater than 10%.	Proactively remove your bounced addresses before your next send. Though the application automatically holds undeliverable emails after the third bounce, a bounce rate over 10% can dramatically harm your deliverability and mailbox provider reputation.	Check out Remove Subscribers with Hard Bounces for instructions on removing bounces before your next send.
Be easy to identify.	Make sure your from names in email addresses and subject lines are easily recognizable.	Review both subject lines and from names, as these are often the first thing people look at when determining what mail to open and which to ignore or complain about. Include the name of your organization in the subject line.
Proactively monitor spam complaint rates.	Keeping spam complaints to a minimum (under 0.3% per Gmail’s guidance) helps ensure your content continues to make the inbox at the various mailbox providers, but it’s also an indicator that your product or message still resonates with your subscribers.	Send relevant content at the agreed-upon cadence. Avoid flooding subscriber inboxes with repeat or similar copy. Keep content personalized and relevant to the individual subscriber.
Practice good data hygiene.	Do you have names you haven’t mailed to in six months? How about customers who haven’t opened an email or clicked a link in that same time period? If yes, it’s time to see if these old or inactive addresses bring you joy, or if you need to get rid of them. These customers cost money to mail, reduce your ROI, and are more likely to complain.	Run the Unengaged Subscribers for a List Report to view which subscribers haven’t opened or clicked through your emails during a certain time period. Run the Subscriber Engagement Report to pull information into a third-party program to query emails not clicked or opened.
Manage frequency and content.	Are you sending your emails more often than you promised? Less often? Is the content different from what you promised? Remember that permission communications are to be anticipated, personal, and relevant. If your users don’t anticipate your email or your content, reevaluate why you are sending them email in the first place.	Enable Einstein Engagement Frequency and try Einstein Content Selection to improve engagement. Create a preference center where customers can choose how often they receive email from you.

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