Email sender best practices for better deliverability

MAAWG (Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group) issued a set of sender best communication practices yesterday (press release | documents). In other words, how should you send and manage your outgoing emails so you're staying on the right side of the spam line and seeing more emails get through to the recipients?

This is important reading because MAAWG's membership represents all the elements in the email delivery chain. Email marketing services and software vendors sit next to ISPs and those selling anti-spam solutions. All are working together to combat messaging abuse. So there's no "them and us." Legitimate email marketers are seen as part of the solution, not part of the problem.

The 10-page document's official aim is to "enhance the transparency of legitimate messages and enable receiving operators to maximize their resources in the fight against messaging abuse." In it you'll find recommended practices on:

• Permission


• Unsubscribe mechanisms


• Authentication and sender records


• Content and coding


• List and bounce management


• Resolution of delivery problems

A lot of the technical details in the main document are translated for marketers in a separate executive summary. The latter also has a set of questions you can ask your email sending service to see if they're doing a good job or not.

Obviously this document is a great checklist for anyone sending out commercial email. My only criticism would be of the relatively brief treatment given to obtaining permission.

While other aspects of sending email are covered in quite some depth, permission and the sign-up process get (relatively) glib treatment. For example, it would have been nice to see guidelines on issues like pre-checked opt-in boxes. But perhaps that was beyond the scope of the document.

Regardless, if you do want to be part of the anti-spam solution and also help get your bulk emails delivered, print out the documents and put them to work.

More on deliverability | Tags: email marketing, maawg, email deliverability, email sender best practices

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