July/August 2004

Ask an Expert: Your Questions Answered

Question:
"Are nonprofits experiencing considerable problems getting messages through to their list members who are subscribers to major consumer email providers? We seem to be. Didn’t know if this was an industry-wide phenomenon." — a Convio Connection subscriber

Answer:
by David Crooke, Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Convio

Major consumer email providers such as AOL™, Yahoo!™ and Hotmail™ are fighting an increasingly frantic war to protect their email systems and their customers from being deluged with spam. Organizations sending legitimate email newsletters and other email communications often are the victims when their emails are misclassified as spam.

Do not mistake this for intent on the part of consumer email providers to block all volume email. Charles Stiles, AOL's Postmaster, said when he spoke to nonprofits at the Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network (NTEN) 2004 conference this spring: “I'm not a censor — if my customers want your email, then I want to deliver it to them.”

Organizations experiencing problems with email delivery to major destinations including AOL should first turn to their email marketing service provider (ESP) — or get one if they do not already have one — for help. An organization without an ESP that is sending email communications from its own office email server, not only has less effective email marketing than it could, but also is jeopardizing delivery of its day-to-day, non-bulk email. It is impractical for technical staff at nonprofits to maintain the extensive infrastructure and relationships needed to support a robust email marketing system. Even the largest nonprofit organizations including Easter Seals outsource email marketing to a service provider that manages delivery relationships with consumer email providers.

There are other benefits of using an ESP and the software they provide. ESP’s offer database-driven email marketing tools that automate list management as well as collect data that a nonprofit can use to target and personalize online constituent communications and track constituents’ responses to those communications.

Another step toward managing email delivery problems is to set up test accounts with each of the major consumer email providers and register the email addresses to receive communications from your organization. Accept the default spam management settings in these tools. Send test emails to these accounts to confirm that the emails went through and were not mistakenly blocked as spam, and include them in your newsletter distribution to confirm delivery. The test messages are also an opportunity to see the communications as they will appear to constituents with accounts at those providers.

Having addressed basic delivery issues, the next concern is ensuring the content and structure of the email do not cause it to be misclassified as spam. Again, an ESP can help here, with both advice and technology. For example, Convio has added functionality in the latest version of its product, Convio 4.0, to allow organizations to run test emails through a popular spam checker before sending them to constituents. This process flags any content that might trigger spam filters and block email delivery, so the organization can modify the content before sending.

As with direct mail, it is not possible to guarantee delivery 100 percent of the time, but with a few easy steps and the right tools, any organization can reach the majority of its constituents in an effective manner.

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