Our recent manual on Building Healthy Email Lists should set you on the right track for building a sustainable house list. But for those of you who are no longer green at email marketing, now more then ever is the time to be diligent with your contact lists. If you want to boost your email deliverability and steer clear of the spam filters, follow these lessons to the letter:

• Make sure you have not gathered addresses in your new list that are more than 6 months old.
• Never use an email address from social networking websites. Just because someone’s email is listed on their profile page does NOT give you permission to contact them with a solicitation.
• Remember those permission reminder emails? Send one out every 6 months (at least) and keep contact lists fresh and valid.
• Send relevant, targeted and personalized messages. By now it’s a known fact that the more relevant and personalized an email is, the more effective it will be. Not only will better-targeted, more personalized emails achieve better conversion rates, they will also improve deliverability due to fewer complaints and better sender reputation.
• Have a sound balance of code, images and text within each campaign.
• Lastly, check your reporting data. Make sure you are not gathering complaints and ruining your sender reputation. Also, change your email marketing practices if your complaint rate is too high or your open/click is not up to the level you want.