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Optimized email marketing is simply the practice of using email to market to a specific audience in the most effective way. Research indicates that the Email Marketing industry has grown to over $1 billion a year. So there is no doubt that email marketing is a vital part of the marketing world. Email allows companies to effectively build their brand name, advertise products and build loyalty for much cheaper than other marketing mediums. A company can track their return on investment (ROI) much easier than other forms of marketing by analyzing click-through rates (CTR) and open rates among other data. Since email marketing is still relatively young so are ways to police the negatives in the industry.
With email comes spam (unsolicited mass email), phishing (using fake email addresses to appear as a legitimate business to gain access to personal or financial information) and other aggravations that cost businesses money. To combat these negatives congress has taken action by introducing the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM). Of course this only offers a benchmark to prosecute those caught and not an actual way to prevent them from happening. To go along with the CAN-SPAM Act the industry has begun to adopt certain standards that are quickly becoming the norm and forcing companies to follow suit with there email systems. The number one issue email marketers have to deal with is their email not being delivered thanks to all of the spam blockers and other security techniques beginning to take hold. Due to the growing number of undeliverable emails companies and software are starting to pop up promoting email optimization. Email marketers should stay ahead of the curve and even consider hiring companies specializing in email delivery if they want to stay successful.
An open standard that is rapidly becoming common protocol is Sender Policy Framework (SPF). SPF is simply an extension to the current standard in email, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). It prevents sender address (return-path) forgery by allowing a domain owner to create a mail sending policy that is stored in the DNS allowing the exchange server to determine whether a received email is legit or not. This appears to be the standard most ISP's and ESP's will adopt in the near future if they have not already. To go along with SPF new companies are creating ways to determine "Trusted Email". This is being done through adding trusted email sources to whitelists and bad email sources to blacklists. There are companies cropping up that promote certified email and the ability to handle a company's email tasks so that they are assured of delivery. All of these companies go about certifying or accrediting email in slightly different ways but most will require SPF in addition to other criteria. For instance, a company called Sender Score Certified establishes trusted email based on whether it complies with RFC (Request For Comment) 2821 and 2822 standards, requires SPF, monitors complaints, implements consent and unsubscribe requirements and quantity limits. By subscribing to this service companies are assured they will be notified if they receive complaints or become non-compliant. This way legitimate email marketers can update their standards and stay off the blacklists.
All in all these services will cost companies more money to continue their email marketing campaigns but in the end they should increase their delivery rates. The cost is minuscule if you compare the loss of revenue from the emails not being delivered. The email certification field is already exploding and businesses can expect it to grow by leaps and bounds as more security measures are added to block unsolicited emails. Here are a few of the companies offering optimized email marketing: Sender Score Certified, Habeas and Goodmail Systems.
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