Before You Host Your Own Email Service
The intent of this article is not to overwhelm you, but rather to expose you to potential annoyances and problems you may run into if you choose to host your own email marketing software. By no means is this a solution or a guide or a process, rather it is an unordered list of tools, technologies and concepts you should be somewhat familiar with before you dive into self hosting. In other words, if anything here is foreign you may wish to reconsider before you decide to purchase a self hosted email marketing system.
By email marketing software I am referring to all list building, auto-responder and newsletter software that you purchase and host on your own server or shared server. This does not include email-marketing services like AWeber, iContact or ConstantContact.
The MTA (Mail Transfer Agent)
A mail transfer agent is the backend software running on your server that sends and receives email messages. Some of these programs include Postfix, SendMail, Microsoft Exchange Server and Exim. There are dozens of similar programs available.
The MTA you choose is critical to your success. It needs to be secure, maintained and able to support email authentication technologies like DomainKeys, DKIM or SenderID. If you choose to host your software on a shared host you will have no control over the MTA your host has installed. You will only be provided with an email address and an inbox. If you decide to run your own email marketing software, it’s in your best interest to host it on a dedicated or virtual dedicated server.
Email Authentication
You have several DNS records to add. Not only will you need to modify the typical MX (Mail Exchange) records but you will need to create an SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record that indicates which IP’s are allowed to send email from your domain as well as DomainKey records for email authentication (more on this in a moment.) This helps the recipient MTA’s like Gmail and Hotmail block obvious spam from emails that aren’t being sent from your server but that are masquerading as if they were.
Newer and more complex technologies like DomainKeys and DKIM take this proof of origin concept a step further. They use Digital Signatures to prove that the email was generated from the listed domain. The implementation of these technologies is a must if you wish to avoid spam boxes and blacklists.
Blacklists
If you get blacklisted you can expect all of your emails to end up in a spam box or rejected altogether. You have to keep an eye on the major blacklists to ensure your domain name and your IP address remain trusted. You can check the status of your email using services like Spamhaus SBL (Spamhaus Block List), XBL (Exploits Block List), RBL (Realtime Blackhole List) and PBL (Policy Block List.) Google these terms to find more information.
The FBL (The Feedback Loop also known as The Complaint Feedback Loop)
At times email providers like Yahoo, Comcast and RoadRunner simply will not trust emails from your domain until you ask them to. To do this you need to register your postmaster@yourdomain (or equivalent) email address as the FBL for your domain. This allows services like Yahoo and Hotmail to forward the messages that originated from your domain back to you once one of their users mark the message as spam. As long as you handle these complaints promptly, and stop emailing that user completely, you should be fine.
To find the feedback loop submission forms for the major email providers, simply search Google for things like “Comcast Feedback Loop,” “Hotmail Feedback Loop,” and “Roadrunner Feedback Loop.” Seems a bit overwhelming doesn’t it?
Every time you receive a bounced email due to spam or overall distrust, you’ll need to immediately search for that provider’s FBL and postmaster contact information and ask to have yourself removed from their in-house blacklists.
Your Email Marketing Software
Your hosted email marketing software needs a few features to succeed in the email-marketing arena. It should be capable of tracking email open rates and click through rates and it must alert you when you accidentally break anti-spam rules. You can easily do this by including words like “free” and “reserved” or adding images that may be too large or simply have an HTML to text ratio that is too high. The software must allow your subscribers to unsubscribe as quickly and easily as possible. Remember, it’s far better to have a user unsubscribe then to have them click the “this is spam” button.
Your email software must be secure. All software has bugs but staying on top of those potential exploits is critical if you want to run your email-marketing software successfully. All it takes is a savvy spammer to compromise your email list by using a technical exploit or guessing an insecure login / password combination to mass email pharmaceutical ad’s to your trusting list of subscribers.
The Wrap Up
There are many things to consider before deciding to purchase, install and maintain a self hosted email marketing tool like Interspire over one of the managed email marketing services listed above. Hosting your own software can save you money, be more reliable and get more of your emails into more inboxes. In my opinion, it’s well worth the effort if you know what you’re doing. However, if you plan on sending emails to only a few thousand people per week it may be better to simply invest in a managed email-marketing platform.
