Protect your best subscribers from the worst ones
Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on April 21, 2008
If you talk to deliverability experts, they'll tell you to use different sender IP addresses for processing your transactional and marketing email.Marketing emails are important, but transactional emails (order confirmations, electronic invoices etc.) are critical.
The emails that trigger delivery problems tend to be marketing ones. So the argument goes like this: if you keep the two separate, then should your marketing emails accidentally land the sending IP address on an email blacklist, this won't stop your mission-critical transactional emails from getting delivered.
So why not apply the same concept to your best subscribers?
Why not have different sending IP addresses for emails to "premium" and "standard" subscribers?
Premium subscribers are your high-value subscribers. The ones producing the most profit / responses.
By definition, they should be the ones interacting / engaging with your emails most. So they're not the ones likely to hit "report spam" buttons and get you blacklisted.
This is more likely to happen with the less-engaged standard subscriber. So if the latter cause your main list to run into deliverability problems, you're still able to email those premium high-value recipients.
(Delivery experts please weigh in with thoughts on the plausibility and usefulness of this approach!)
Possible issues to think about:
1. Defining a "premium" subscriber...at what point do you graduate a subscriber to the "premium" list? Or relegate them back to the "standard" list?
2. By taking out the active, happy subscribers from the main list, you make it more likely for this standard list to run into delivery problems...potential complainers now make up a greater percentage of the total list.
3. Spam reports are just one cause of delivery problems. You still need to follow deliverability best practices (such as keeping your bounces low) to ensure the "premium" list stays clean.
4. It adds another layer of complexity to your email marketing.
Thoughts? Examples? Counterarguments?
Tags: email marketing, email deliverability, email blacklists
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8 Comments:
Interesting extension of a best practice...
<devilsadvocate>
On the other hand, if you remove your "premium" subscribers (who are not marking your messages as spam) from an IP, you technically raise the complaint rate for that IP (lowering the volume of messages while keeping the complaints constant, all other things being equal).
In the extreme, this could mean that you have even more problems with that IP over time. So it gets harder to get enough mail delivered to your "standard" subscribers to determine who should be on the "premium" subscriber IP.
Meanwhile, if your "premium" subscriber list still gets unsubscribes, while not doing much growing. You could run into a situation where that list just kind of dwindles away - at which point you're back to square 1 (one "standard" list).
</devilsadvocate>
All of that is theoretical, of course, and perhaps an extreme example :)
I think there is some usefulness to separating mail along such lines - but for most businesses I think it's better to focus on making more (all?) subscribers your "premium," responsive subscribers.
By 
Justin Premick, on
21 April, 2008
Yes, keeping your list out of trouble in the first place is the prime solution.
Wonder if there are special cases though. For example, keeping the delivery infrastructure separate for paid newsletter subscribers and those who get the free version.
Interesting, interesting.
Thanks for the comment Justin. Getting different views and slants on the topic always improves the original post.
By 
Mark Brownlow - Email Marketing Reports, on
22 April, 2008
Reputation isn't only based on IP addresses -- it never was. Are you using the same domain name? The same URLs? The same HTML tags? The same content, as determined by proprietary post-Bayesian fuzzy-matching algorithms?
These games -- in effect, trying to pretend that your mail isn't really from you -- just make you look like a spammer. Be proud of your brand!
By J.D., on
23 April, 2008
Thanks J.D. Just to clarify, are you saying that using different sending IP addresses when everything else remains constant would trigger some kind of spam pemnalty / filter?
By Mark Brownlow - Email Marketing Reports, on
23 April, 2008
That's an interesting idea but I think your point about creating deliverability issues on that "standard" list is a very good one, besides the increased list management required. Some retailers offer a handful of different topical newsletters -- Amazon offers 50! So having "premium" and "standard" lists would double their number of lists. The solution is to keep a tighter rein on your lists, maintaining good permission practices and bounce management.
By Chad White, on
25 April, 2008
Thanks Chad. Based on yours and others' comments I'm declaring this idea as interesting but probably not worth it except for very special circumstances.
Like people have said, better to focus on keeping your whole delivery program "clean" than trying to work round the problems with "tricks."
By Mark Brownlow - Email Marketing Reports, on
25 April, 2008
Mark -
My thoughts tend to echo what the folks at Return Path preach all the time. Instead of worrying about ways to "trick the system," why not just send out relevant, timely, targeted email to subscribers who have asked for and expect to receive it?
Clients propose scenarios like the one you mention all the time.
How do I reduce my complaints? Can I split my "partner emails" onto a different IP? What is a "good" complaint ratio?
I think marketers tend to focus on the wrong things. We - as an industry - sometimes add fuel to the fire by making deliverability a complex issue. It is really quite simple (I know, I know...I'm oversimplifying it now), but...
Let me reiterate:
Send relevant, timely, targeted email to subscribers who have asked for and expect to receive it.
dj at bronto
By DJ Waldow, on
01 May, 2008
Well, we're all agreed then. Which begs the question, why keep transactional emails separate... ;-)
By Mark Brownlow - Email Marketing Reports, on
02 May, 2008
