Increasing AOL E-Mail Delivery Rates

One of the major challenges for B2C email marketers is getting email successfully delivered to AOL users, who can make up anywhere from 20-25% of their email databases.

If AOL users make up a portion of your email base, Clickz.com has published a 2 part series on how to increase your delivery rates.

AOL User Preferences

According to a 2003 Lucid Marketing Study, AOL users share these preferences:

• 90% of respondents access e-mail primarily from home.
• 77% rank “message loads fast” as of primary importance for e-mail messages received.
• 53% prefer plain text messages over HTML.
• 58% always use a dial-up modem (this number declined since last year, of course, but clearly a significant percentage of subscribers connect via a dial-up).
• 62% always or sometimes access e-mail via AOL’s Web site.
• “Message loads fast” is at least 62 percent more important than “no scrolling” and “customized content” for users.

Helpful Tips

• apply for inclusion on the AOL whitelist
• AOL will block messages if they include improperly formatted links , such as using the IP address instead of a domain name in hyperlinks or using bad HTML or bad link syntax
• create an AOL specific message
• AOL has endorsed the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and asks current and prospective whitelist members to set up SPF records
• sending messages in plain text, RTF, or even HTML without images
• AOL allows approximately 16 characters in the sender field and around 50 characters in the subject
• As most AOL users open e-mail at home, optimum send times might be early mornings, evenings, and even weekends
• Because AOL includes a “report spam” feature, even the best permission-method marketers may receive AOL spam complaints.

» Read Article: Tips for Increasing AOL E-Mail Delivery Rates, Part 1
» Read Article: Tips for Increasing AOL Delivery Rates, Part 2

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