Email certification and accreditation

One way of improving your deliverability is to get your email marketing program certified or accredited by a recognised organisation. Here you'll find a list of the major services available.

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Email certification refers to three different types of program (with hybrids possible). The first kind gets your emails automatically whitelisted or delivered at those ISPs and companies working with the relevant program. Certifying organisations require that you pay a certification fee and that you satisfy stringent requirements regarding your email marketing policies and practices.

The second kind of certification is where a positive audit of your emailing practices entitles you to display some kind of public seal of approval on your website (next to your sign-up forms).

And the third kind is where some kind of icon is displayed next to your email in the recipient's inbox, indicating the email passed some kind of quality test.

Whitelisting programs

In no particular order...

Sender Score Certified
The successor to the Bonded Sender service, acceptance into the Sender Score Certified program gets you on a public whitelist used by several top ISPs, including Hotmail, MSN and Road Runner. Compliance is closely related to the concept of email reputation, which is the focus of the parent company's other deliverability services.

Goodmail Systems
Goodmail run the CertifiedEmail program which generated a lot of debate when it first launched. ISPs supporting the program ensure delivery of Goodmail-certified email with a "certified" icon attached and all links and images intact. The accreditation system is supported by Yahoo and AOL, with plans to extend coverage to other leading ISPs.

Habeas
Habeas will review your business processes and email practices as an independent service. If you manage to comply with the necessary requirements, they will also place you on their Safelist, a public whitelist supported by many email receivers (including AOL, Earthlink, Google, MSN, Ford and Sony).

CSA - Certified Senders Alliance
A public whitelist formed in a collaboration between the Association of German Internet Enterprises and the local DMA. Participating ISPs are primarily Germany or Europe-based, and include the likes of Lycos Europe, Web.de and GMX.

SuretyMail
Not a whitelisting service per se, but an accreditation program that acts as an independent third-party source of information about your emailing practices. A large number of ISPs, spam filters and mail servers take this accreditation into account when deciding whether or not to let your email through. The program is managed by the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy.

Certification seal programs

Email privacy seal
Operated by TRUSTe and entitling you to display a "We Don't Spam" seal.

Icon programs

Iconix
The Iconix software plugin does an authentication and identification check on your emails. If you're part of the program and the email passes muster, it displays a Truemark icon next to your email in the inbox. This tells the recipient that the sender really is who they say they are. Iconix works with most of the common email clients and webmail services.

See also the deliverability article category for advice and insight on the pros and cons of certification.