Best Practices for Sending to Yahoo

Best practices for getting your email delivered to

On Yahoo's site they give us a GIANT secret on how to get your email marketing campaign delivered to their users:

The mission of Yahoo Mail is to deliver messages that users want to receive, and filter out messages they don't want. The simplest way to ensure that your messages are delivered is to avoid looking like a spammer.

They also go on to let us know in pretty good detail exactly what they're looking for from you as a sender in order to land in their users inboxes. Below you'll find their overall recomendations. They range from adhering to a double opt-in process, being CAN-SPAM compliant, give you email content rules and even more.

Send email only to those that want it

Use and honor an opt-in method of subscription for your mailing list, where subscribers actively verify their intent to receive your mailings.

Honor the frequency of the list's intent.

Honor unsubscribe requests quickly.

Be CAN-SPAM compliant

Regardless of where in the world you're sending your mail, make sure that you adhere to the requirements stipulated by the CAN-SPAM Act.

Consistently manage your lists

Monitor hard and soft bounces as well as inactive recipients. Persistent emails to these addresses are a surefire way to get your connections deferred.

(The MyBizMailer system takes care of this for you so you can use your time to craft amazing emails that entertain and engage your subscribers)

Refresh your list periodically.

Consider removing or sending a reconfirmation email to inactive subscribers.Sending mail to users who are not reading them, or who mark them as "spam," will hurt your delivery metrics and reputation. (This is a very interesting point and one that I think needs to be addressed. Yahoo has just told us that if we continue to send emails to subscribers who are not actually opening them that this will hurt your sender reputation. I know we all get caught up in the size of our lists. Bragging about it to a friends and colleagues who actually know what we're talking about. But if none of your subscribers are actually reading your messages then what's the point. We'll Yahoo has just let us know that if these subscribers aren't reading you better stop emailing them. So it may be a good idea to work into your email marketing strategy an re-engagement plan. And if someone hasn't opened an email from you in the last 3-6 months it's probably a good idea to remove them from your list)

Check your email content

Test your emails' visual look with image placeholders. Many users won't see images in your email by default.  Link to domains, not IP addresses. Don't include HTML forms. Don't include JavaScript. Don't include embedded objects (like flash or ActiveX). 

Use a consistent 'From' address

Using a static From: address helps users who have set up filters to route messages to a specific folder.Using your domain consistently helps us and your recipients to distinguish your email from spam. (We recommend that you setup an email specific for your email marketing. i.e. newsletter@yourdomain.com)