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It's well known that email continues to provide the most cost effective marketing medium and has great advantages in immediacy and ability to measure the ROI.

But in today's world we also all know the risks of an email not getting to the inbox. A solution to ensuring an email gets to the inbox is to use Certified Email, for example as provided by Goodmail.

So how does it work? Your ESP (email service provider) needs to support Goodmail and Goodmail in turn have relationships with some of the major ISPs to ensure inbox delivery. The systems of your ESPs, Goodmail and the ISP then work together to put a certified stamp onto the email and the email is delivered to the inbox without the ISP filtering it out. The recipient sees an icon to let them know it is a certified email. Reporting is then available to confirm it was delivered.

So what is to stop spammers becoming certified? To be accepted into the Certified Email scheme you have to show you are well behaved. In today's world Sender reputation in email marketing is everything. If you have a poor reputation then you can't become certified until you clean your act up.

Crucial today to sender reputation is the 'report as spam' button on many email clients, such as AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo and more. If too many people hit 'report as spam', then the ISPs will consider that it is spam. The reality is that the definition of what is spam is in the hands of the recipient and not some legal definition. To have a good reputation means ensuring:

- Recipients have agreed to let your message to their inbox. Make the opt-in permission obvious and clear as to the extent of the opt-in. Is it for particular messages, or is it an opt-in to any email from you?

- Your email branding is clear and consistent with the branding when the user first got to know you. If your sister company sends an email with different branding there is every chance that the user won't understand it was opted-in.

- Don't send too frequently. Between once a week and once a month is typically right.

- Target the content, sending content that is useful and interesting to the user. With all professional email marketing systems content can be heavily dynamically targeted.

- Provide a clear unsubscribe method that works. If the process doesn't work or isn't clear then users will hit the 'spam' button as the easier option.

- Let them know they did opt-in and when, to jog their memory. How many people can remember all the times they have provided their email address and to whom?

- Stop sending to people who show non-responsive behavior patterns.

- Look at the spam complaint reports that the professional ESPs can provide. Do the people who report as spam share common characteristics? Did they come through the same source, did they all subscribe a long time ago (eg more than twelve months). This can allow you to remove people before they complain.