For those of you who are new to email marketing, the first 30 days are the most important to your future success. You want to make sure everything you do is right. Here is a quick ramp-up check list to help you build a great sender reputation:

1) Set up your new IP addresses so they meet the proper authentication standards. You'll want to be set up for DomainKeys, Sender ID and SPF.

2) Ramp up the IP slowly. Send to your most recent clickers and openers first. A seasoned marketer must understand that sending to your entire list in the first few weeks can do more harm than good. You want to slowly "warm up" your IP address by sending email in small batches to avoid any blocks or deferrals.

3) Start with a fresh, clean list. The best way to ensure you have a clean list is to always get permission to send email first, preferably via a double opt-in process, and avoid buying or renting email lists.

4) Closely monitor your hard bounces. This should be done daily or right after an email send. Hard bounces are mainly dead or invalid email addresses. Most email marketing software systems have a bounce setting that you can set to automatically remove bounced addresses so you can be assured that you're only sending to good addresses.

5) Clean your lists regularly. Remove all bad addresses from your mailing lists including old, inactive addresses, unsubscribes, misspellings, and spam traps.

After a few weeks of sending, you should be fully ramped up and ready to conquer your next few months of email marketing.

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About the Author

Vip Patel is an account manager at Lyris. He is responsible for helping clients with their email campaigns, offering today's best practices, guidelines and measures to help them succeed in email marketing.

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