Today’s consumers are flooded with marketing mail on a fairly regular basis. And most recipients tend to hit the ‘spam’ button purely because it’s the easier, quicker option. However, if you tend to rely heavily on email marketing, you’ll know that your sender reputation is paramount to achieving strong delivery rates.

Don’t fret too much, though. Because there is a  solution and it’s called an email feedback loop.

WHAT is an email feedback loop?

Essentially, a feedback loop is a system wherein an ISP notifies you every time a recipient has marked your email as spam. It usually is in the form of an email message that also requests you to remove the recipients email address from your mailing database. Note that spam traps can also trigger feedback from an ISP.

WHY you should subscribe to feedback loops?

• There is no clearer signal that a recipient doesn’t want to receive your email communications than a spam complaint about your mail. And the more you mail these irate prospects the angrier they’re likely to become at your brand. Frankly, I don’t see the point in continually annoying people in the hope that they’ll see something they like and make a purchase.

• Most ISPs have a certain threshold for spam complaints. If you exceed this threshold, your emails will cease to be delivered. By subscribing to a feedback loop and removing email addresses that register you as spam, you can keep yourself off the ISP blacklist and improve overall delivery rates.

• A feedback loop can also prove valuable by allowing you to gain a deeper understanding of your email marketing strategy. If a substantial percentage of recipients mark you as spam, you’ve must be doing something wrong.

• Maybe you mail them far too often. Maybe you don’t mail them often enough. Maybe you give out low quality content that doesn’t add value and is irrelevant. Perhaps subscribers don’t really understand the service you provide and how it helps them. Or possibly, your unsubscribe link doesn’t really work (or the process is too complicated).

In any case, if you keep receiving bad feedback from ISPs, you know it’s time to address the shortcomings in your strategy. Here are a few tips on how to improve your email marketing program.

HOW – Here, I’ll share a few tips on improving your delivery rates and getting the most out of using feedback loops.

• Don’t just throw away email addresses that have registered you as spam. A smarter ploy would be to remove these addresses from your email list and archive them simultaneously. By doing this you can always email these prospects 6 months later with a particularly attractive offer. If they still don’t respond, go ahead and permanently delete them from your database.

• Automate this process. Manually removing email addresses from a mailing list can be time consuming and tedious work. Improve efficiency by configuring your mailing software to automatically remove and archive spam complainants.

• Don’t subtract the total number of spam complaints by the total number of emails you send. You’ll wind up with inaccurate results. You need to measure the ratio of complaints versus inbox placement rates to formulate precise metrics.

• Integrate feedback loop data into your split testing efforts. This can help you identify why recipients mark you as spam and will set you on the path to finding an effective solution. Additionally, this sort of data analysis can also help you foresee trends in subscriber interests and behavior and will allow you to further fine-tune your email marketing program.

Ultimately, the single most influential factor when it comes to email deliverability is your sender reputation. Mess that up and your email marketing operations are guaranteed to go to hell. That’s why subscribing to feedback loops makes so much sense – they let you stem the flow of complaints before the tide overwhelms you.

Get smart. Get subscribed.