The first purpose of an email marketing campaign is to reach the recipients with their message.
Deliverability is the ability of emails to reach the recipients' inbox ans it is the factor that differentiates successful email marketing from a bankruptcy.
The deliverability of email marketing campaigns depends on a number of factors that we can simplify by identifying in:
- Management of your database with contacts interested in our communications
- Creation of content that is not at risk of spam (for example, do not include certain types of words or special characters in the object)
- Engagement of recipients with our emails
- Implementation of additional forms of sender authentication such as SPF, DKIM, DMARC
- Reputation of the SMTP Server
For the first four elements we refer to the guides and dedicated articles, on this page we will focus instead on the fifth element: SMTP.
What is an SMTP?
SMTP Server and SMTP Protocoll are at the base of the management system of sending and receiving the email, but let's see together their function in detail.
SMTP Server is nothing more than a system of servers that have the function of managing the transfering of e-mails. SMTP, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, is the protocol through which they communicate this type of server. The SMTP protocol includes several levels of security to help SMTP servers and email providers verify that the messages they are receiving are from good senders and not spammers.
Each SMTP server is associated with a specific IP that is used to identify it and record its activities across the network. To determine who is a good sender and who is a bad sender, SMTP servers use programs that monitor and review the reputation of sending specific IP addresses.
In practice, when email marketing campaigns are sent, the sending is managed by an SMTP server. Each SMTP server is associated with a specific IP and, based on the activities performed by that server, it creates a reputation with the e-mail providers, such as GMAIL, Outlook, AOL. The reputation of the IP sender has a huge impact on deliverability.
The importance of a dedicated SMTP
The MailMarketing team works daily to optimize deliverability results and has created a series of articles and guides with best practices to improve the quality and effectiveness of submissions and to avoid SPAM.
With MailMarketing you will be able to send in the standard solution through a shared SMTP (currently the mailings take place from 4 different servers) or with dedicated SMTP, selecting it as an option.
Although our team constantly strives to optimize the sending systems and MailMarketing uses 4 different shared IPs, choosing a shared IP means "sharing" the reputation of its "neighbors", ie the other companies that send through that IP.
Choosing a dedicated SMTP instead allows you to be fully responsible for your reputation: the reputation of your IP will depend exclusively on your email marketing activity. Dedicated SMTP will also improve email delivery times and rates, and thus the success of email marketing campaigns.
If you want to switch to a dedicated SMTP, log in to your account and in the subscription management section select the dedicated SMTP option.
