Stay off of e-mail blacklists. Keep in mind that being blacklisted doesn't necessarily mean that your company has committed an illegal act. When your e-mail domain is blacklisted, your e-mail will be blocked by most ISP. The result is your intended audience will never receive your e-mail because their ISPs will block your e-mails from arriving to their inboxes.

Your first line of defense should be monitoring ISPs by making sure that your e-mail is delivered to inboxes. One way to do this is to have several e-mail accounts on the largest 15 or so ISPs, and check to see if your e-mails reach the inboxes. This is an expensive a time consuming task. The fast and inexpensive way to check is to use a service such as http://www.deliverymonitor.com. For a fairly small monthly fee, they will monitor the largest ISPs to see if your e-mail is reaching the intended inbox or lands in the dreaded spam folder. If you find that your e-mails end up in the spam folder, you can directly contact the ISP to find out the reason.

Proper management of e-mail lists is essential. As we review bulk e-mail statistics, we are armed with the knowledge required to improve delivery. The knowledge gained from e-mail statistics enables companies to prune e-mail lists. For example, bounced e-mail addresses should be removed. A bounced e-mail is usually the result of an incorrect e-mail address, or a nonexistent e-mail address. As bounced e-mails are removed from lists, the delivery rate will improve. In addition to a more accurate list, removing bounced e-mail addresses from lists will result in savings due to smaller number of e-mails sent.

Let's face it, some people will subscribe to your e-mail list but will never become a customer. Removing old inactive e-mail addresses is another essential list management practice. Inactive e-mail subscribers should be required to re-opt-in. Hanging on to old inactive e-mail addresses will help us grow our lists, but they will also lower e-mail delivery rates.

If you prune a tree and cut the dead branches, the tree becomes much healthier. It now has free energy to sustain the leaves and branches enabling the tree to grow. Keep your e-mail lists healthy.

Only send bulk e-mail to people that had subscribed. Don't pre-check the subscribe button on the website forms. Pre-checking the subscription form may result in more subscriptions, but the quality of subscriptions will diminish. Customers expect reputable companies to ask for permission instead of assuming it. If you include a pre-checked sign-up box people may either forget to uncheck the box or just miss it in their haste to complete the form. How people got on your list is a major driver of their likelihood to delivered future e-mails. Subscriber list must only include e-mails of people that have specifically opted-in. It is better to have a smaller but higher quality list.

If your e-mails offer real value to people, you will have no problems getting people opt-in, and if there is no perceived value to subscribe, you should have all the power to create value. Original useful content always attracts subscribers.

Bonus Secret: Ask people to add your e-mail address to their friends list as they subscribe to your e-mail list. This way, you will reduce the chance of landing your e-mail in the subscriber's bulk folder. You should do this on the subscription form page or on the sign up form's thank you page.