You've crossed all your marketing t's and dotted all your best practices i's with a relevant, enticing offer sent only to subscribers who opted in to your campaigns. You're anxious to see how well the offer performs, but then you learn a major ISP has blocked your IP address because of spam complaints. An entry at the Email Experience Council blog details just such a scenario, as experienced by a client of Pivotal Veracity.

"We got Comcast to remove the block," says the post, "but when the client mailed their entire house file again, they triggered Comcast's filters again. Pivotal Veracity again had the block lifted, but, as you can imagine, something had to be done."

The first step involved trimming the client's list to subscribers who demonstrated any post-signup activity, such as making a purchase or clicking on a link. You can guess what happened next: another block.

Finally, the client decided to focus only on subscribers who had made a purchase. "This strategy has consistently yielded 100% inbox delivery," says the EEC.

"Emailing 'less' was the difference between $0 and generating a return on investment from their Comcast subscribers, which are a significant portion of their file," the EEC concludes.

The Po!nt: Trim that list. In today's world of email marketing, be prepared to routinely face the pragmatic choice between reaching some customers—and reaching no customers at all.

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