Managing brand through email authentication

If you're keeping an eye on brand stability through social metrics, it is a good start. But marketers should also note how their brand is faring through email, which is why many brand marketers are now authenticating or certifying their email messages.

by Kristina Knight

"In email reputation is a term of art that typically refers to things like consumer complaint rates," said David Atlas, senior vice-president of sales and marketing for Goodmail. "In a larger context, reputation – like brand – goes to the values a consumer imputes about your company, and its email."

Which means that simply denoting a message as safe or wanted by noting who actually sent it. Consumers also want to know what is known about that brand: do they follow best-practices, do they keep their email lists up-to-date and do they removes users upon request?

According to a recent Datran Research report email ROI will be responsible for more than double the ad dollars than other online advertising options.

The first step in ensuring that your brand fares well in the coming year, then, is to make sure that company email practices are set up to succeed. Authenticating your email messages now will increase the chance that those offers are read. Email marketers also need to make sure that the message sent is the message that was expected to be sent. If a consumer signed up for a monthly newsletter or weekly coupon offers, make sure that they are only receiving the messages they signed up for. If consumers begin seeing more messages, they could report those "extras" as Spam or could simply delete all of your messages without reading.