Audience hygiene

Your list is the biggest factor in deliverability. Mail to addresses that do not exist or do not care lowers your reputation for everyone you send to.

#Collect good addresses

• Use confirmed opt-in for marketing lists: a double check that the owner of the address wants the mail. See Email consent.
• Validate the format at the signup form, and ask people to type their address once clearly rather than rejecting plus signs or new TLDs.
• Never buy, rent or scrape lists.

#Let usend remove bad addresses

usend adds an address to your suppression list after a hard bounce or a complaint. Emails to suppressed recipients are skipped, and broadcasts skip suppressed contacts. You do not need to do anything to benefit, but do not delete a suppression unless you know the address was suppressed by mistake.

#Prune quietly

• Inactive people. Run a re-engagement email to people who have not opened or clicked in 6 months. If they do not respond, stop mailing them. Remember that opens are an estimate: use clicks and site activity too.
• Role addresses such as info@ and sales@ complain more and bounce more. Avoid them for marketing.
• Old imports. Addresses collected years ago are more likely to be abandoned or recycled into spam traps.

#Respect unsubscribes

• Every marketing email needs a working unsubscribe link: Unsubscribe links.
• An unsubscribed contact is never subscribed again by a CSV import. Do not work around this: re-adding people who left is the fastest way to complaints.
• Use topics so people can leave one kind of email without leaving everything.

#Segment, then send

Segments let you send to the people who care about a topic. A smaller, relevant send has lower complaints than a blast to everyone.

#Watch the signals

usend warns when rates climb, and suspends an organization above 4% hard bounces or 0.08% complaints, so act early.