EFFECTIVE PERSONALISED PRINT AND E-COMMUNICATION SOLUTIONS DESIGNED WITH YOU IN MIND DSTSYSTEMS.CO.UK DST EMAIL Product FAQs version 01 Thank you for using our products. DST UK www.dstsystems.co.uk
DST Email Key Facts and FAQs What s inside? What kind of email can DST create and send? What email services does DST provide? Where does the client email data reside? What format does data need to be provided in? How is data handled? Is email secure? Can email be encrypted? Will emails look like they come from me? How does DST send automated emails? What is a retry? What is the retry process of the DST Email platform? What is a soft bounce? What is a hard bounce? How is an email status determined after sending? Are there constraints and limitations to email delivery? What is a Spam score? Does DST sell or provide mailing lists? Can I use bought mailing lists? What is the DST email client engagement process? How much does email cost? p3 p3 p4 p4 p5 p5 p6 p6 p7 p7 p7 p8 p9 p9 p10 p13 p14 p14 p15 p16 Do you have questions about DST Email and how it works? This document looks in-depth at some frequently asked questions about the DST Email platform and email communications. DST Email is a platform you can trust to deliver your email campaigns and support your customer communication strategy with expertise and precision. p2 DST Email Product FAQs
What kind of email can DST create and send? All email communications fall broadly into three categories: Ad-hoc and regular marketing bulk mailings. Automated triggered communications. Transactional messaging. DST can develop and manage customer communications by email in all of these categories and in combination with other kinds of communications to provide you with end-to-end support of your customer communication strategy. Emails are personalised, targeted and dynamic, with further options for attachments and encrypted attachments. What email services does DST provide? DST provides a full range of professional development and creative services to support email delivery from one-off ad hoc email campaigns to fully automated closed loop integrations with print output and archiving. For large scale deployments, developments, and integrations, technical consulting, project management, and creative design services can be provided. This includes advising on deployment options and documenting requirements. Creative Services: Artwork and HTML for emails can be provided by the client or an agency or DST creative professionals can work with clients to develop collateral. Project Management: Depending on the scale of the email requirements, DST can support development and implementation through complete project management. Analysis: Where a complex bespoke product integration needs to be implemented, an architect will work with you to understand your email business requirements and document these in technical specification, to the development team. Development: All development and orchestration for email systems is undertaken by DST developers and supported by full quality assurance testing and development operations involvement. DST Email Product FAQs p3
Where does the client email data reside? Where required, data used for creating the emails and the data in the composition and tracking engine is housed in the EU. For certain kinds of large volume marketing mailings the service provider may send data outside of the EU. How is data handled? Marketing/ad-hoc What format does data need to be provided in? DST email handles data for two types of email: marketing/ad-hoc and transactional. Marketing/ad-hoc Marketing mailing list data can be provided as a delimited file using commas or vertical bar separators. The data is mapped in the sending engine and on-going updates and imports to that data can be made automatically. Fields can be added and removed by a DST email system administrator to incorporate new and changing requirements. This data can be presented directly from client systems or, if required, can be first conditioned in a bespoke data transformation process to create the appropriate format. Transactional Transactional emails are usually handled as part of the DST output production process. That process will include data transformation into the email handling system s proprietary format. You can provide your data as usual for output processing and the processing application will ensure the data for email is formatted appropriately for the workflow. Data for marketing channels is handled mainly in two ways: ad- hoc upload and automated ingestion. For automated ingestion the data format is set up in the DST email system, data is dropped in a secure FTP location where a process for ongoing imports and updates to that mailing list will pick it up and present it to the email system. Data can be appended, refreshed, or completely over written depending on the settings for the recurring import. p4 DST Email Product FAQs
How is data handled? (continued) For ad-hoc ingestion the data is provided via secure FTP and is picked up by an email operator and uploaded directly to the email system. If you have different formats to accommodate various communications this can also be accommodated in the DST email system by creating different data sources for mailings. Transactional Transactional data is provided to the email system as part of the output processing workflow. Data created for email by the output processing applications is dropped in a secure location for onward email processing. If the data needs to be transformed it will first be dropped in a secure location to be run through a bespoke transformation application before being sent to the email processing pick-up location. Is email secure? Regular email is not considered to be a completely secure form of communication. DST works with you to understand what kind of information you want to send as part of an email communication and can give advice as to how suitable that information is for sending by that channel. DST will always recommend that information in emails is kept to anything that would do no harm if aired in the public domain or is already in the public domain. EG: names, addresses, phone number, insurance premium. Information that is not suitable for email is anything that could be abused or used for unscrupulous purposes should that email be intercepted. EG: credit card numbers, passport numbers, medical records. This does not exclude emailing customers about their credit card statements. It means that those emails cannot include the full credit card number. DST Email Product FAQs p5
Can email be encrypted? Email can be made more physically secure through encryption. It must be noted that handling encrypted email adds a level of complexity that most of your customers may not appreciate, and increases costs without being of great benefit. EG: There is no particular reason to include the full credit card or bank account number in an email going to a customer. This information can be excluded or partially redacted in the email. This is far more cost effective and customer friendly than implementing a system for managing passwords. The documents themselves can be encrypted as PDFs and the PDF can be attached to the email. The customer can be made aware of their decryption credentials in a number of ways which can be discussed as part of implementation. Attachments can result in deliverability issues due to the suspicion with which email service providers and servers treat emails with attachments and also due to the size that some attachments may present. With over 50% of customers opening email on a mobile device, large attachments eat into mobile data plans. Any encryption will require the management and communication of keys and passwords which can result in increased support requests from customers who have lost or forgotten passwords and increased costs to build and manage systems to handle the encryption. There are third party email encryption services that require integration and account sign up by the end customer. This is usually viewed as inconvenient by customers and can lead to poor adoption of edelivery services. It is a far better approach to remove any security concerns by limiting or masking the information communicated through an inherently insecure medium. Will emails look like they come from me? Yes, your customer will see the email as coming from the email address and name of your choice. This is known as domain spoofing. This allows you to be in complete control of your branding and customer facing communication design. When email templates and campaigns are created, you can specify the FROM name and FROM email address that customers will see when they receive the emails. You can specify different FROM names and FROM email addresses for different segments of your data for one email run as long as there is something in the data that identifies the segment for a particular recipient. DST architecture and development services can work with you to understand your data and advise you on how this segmentation is best managed. p6 DST Email Product FAQs
How does DST send automated emails? The data is presented to the email system by DST s workflow orchestration. This can be dropped directly for ingestion or may come from another DST process. The emails are created and assigned a unique ID. This is indexed with other information relevant to sending the email and reconciling it with a reversion process if that is required. This information must be present in the data being handed off to the composition engine. EG: Any variables to be used in the email body such as Name, Brand, etc. used for populating the email. Where data has come from another DST output process all of the required reversion data is provided and stored as part of the email process. EG: Address, document IDs. Before the emails are sent the email addresses are checked to identify any that are not formatted correctly and would be impossible to deliver. These are given a particular status that identifies them as Not Sent. EG: missing an @. After this check, emails are sent out through the DST email gateway. What is a retry? A retry is functionality built into the DST email system. It is there to manage errors sent back from receiving domains that could be temporary in nature. EG: An inbox might be full but will later have spaced freed up to receive more email No intervention is required to retry an email that has encountered such an error. The DST Email server software has an in built process for dealing with retries. Where delivery consistently fails the email is then flagged with an error. What is the retry process of the DST Email platform? After the initial soft bounce error being received, the email is placed in a deferred queue. After 15 minutes, the system attempts to deliver the email again. If that attempt fails, the system doubles the time of the last wait period. Retries occur 15, 30, 60, 120, and 240 minutes after the first deferral. If the expiration time is reached without a successful delivery, then the system marks the message as failed and adds the information to the records. DST Email Product FAQs p7
What is a soft bounce? A soft bounce is an error issued from the receiving domain that could, after a certain amount of time, be rectified. It s also equally possible that the receiving domain will not fix the issue after the set amount of time for retrying (four hours) has elapsed. The email record will retain its soft bounce error code but remain undelivered. Errors that are valid for the deferred queue and retrying are: Mailbox Full: Space may or may not be freed up within the four hour window. Inactive/Disabled Account: The account could be reactivated within four hour window. Greylist: Greylisting is determined by settings on the receiving domain so that it only accepts email from domains with which it has established trust. One of the ways of establishing trust is to reject an email and see if it re-sends. Server Too Busy: The receiving server could be less busy within the four hour window. Other: This covers what are low incidence errors. If this code is returned in high volumes then DST will instigate a consultation with their service provider to determine the cause. What is a hard bounce? A hard bounce is any error returned by the receiving domain that cannot be rectified or remediated by retrying the message. These are permanent errors that fall into several categories: Block, Hard Bounce, Technical, Invalid. Block Block errors are the result of the receiving domain rejecting email communications because of the sending domain s reputation or other indications, maintained at a server level, that an email is not to be trusted, could be spam, or looks like phishing. Email can also be blocked if previous recipients have complained about emails from the sender or sending domain, the volume of emails is suspiciously high, or the sending domain has been black listed. The best remediation strategy and defense for these errors is good email and data practices. p8 DST Email Product FAQs
What is a hard bounce? (continued) Hard Bounce A Hard Bounce error code indicates that a particular email record is undeliverable due to address or domain errors or status. These sorts of errors are usually caused by poor data practices. Making sure that email addresses are accurately recorded and keeping mailing lists up to date is the most important part of making sure an email gets to its intended recipient. Technical and Invalid Technical and Invalid error codes indicate that something went wrong with the internal network, there was an issue with the data, or other backend configuration issues. Once the cause is rectified, provided it is a sending domain issue, the emails can be sent as normal. Block errors: Blacklist ISP block Content filter Spam URL Excess traffic Security violation or virus Technical error Block List practices Authentication User initiated block Hard Bounce: Unknown user Bad domain Address error Close account Other How is an email status determined after sending? The receiving domain (where the recipient receives their email), can accept or reject each email based on rules particular to the domain itself. Where an email is rejected or cannot be received, the receiving domain communicates this back to the DST email gateway as part of the email protocol handshake process, and the email record is updated with a bounce back status. There are instances where the receiving domain itself is found to be unavailable or invalid. This is also communicated back to the DST email gateway and the email bounce back status is updated. There are particular errors which will tell the email gateway that it may be possible to try delivering the email again after a particular number of minutes or seconds. These are knows as temporary errors. After a pre-set number of retries the email gateway will give up trying to send the message and the error will become a permanent status. When the recipient performs an action in an email such as downloading images or clicking a link, this is communicated to the DST email gateway by the receiving domain and the email record can be flagged as opened. DST Email Product FAQs p9
Are there constraints and limitations to email delivery? Like postal delivery, there is no 100% way of knowing that the recipient of an email has received the email and read it. There are many factors, many analogous to postal delivery, that contribute to how deliverable an email will be and how likely it is that the recipient will get it in their inbox and read it. Cleanliness of data Just like a paper letter, an email must have a valid and existing address in order to get to the customer. The email address must be valid and in a valid format. The domain the email is going to must exist. The email address itself must also exist. Engaging and relevant on the outside A customer is more likely to open and read (and thereby indicate a delivered status) an email if the sender and subject are familiar, engaging, and relevant. In postal delivery this could involve making sure the name in the address block is personalised and correct and that the envelope indicates who the material is from. This can provide a compelling reason to open it and read the contents. Email communications have the added bonus of, unlike a paper communication, being able to tell the sender that the communication was actually opened and, in some cases, read and interacted with. Sender reputation There are other factors that are unique to the email to bear in mind if choosing to communicate with customers in this way. Sender reputation is something that email servers and domains use to determine if the entity sending the email on your behalf is known for good email practices. They also check if the domain in the FROM address is not in the habit of sending Spam (unsolicited mass marketing email). Royal Mail, for example, does not check the FROM address or ask who produced a particular letter before they deliver it. Email is not the same. There are strict laws governing when and how marketing emails especially can be sent to people and also how an email sender can obtain and use email addresses for these purposes. Senders are identified based on their IP addresses. IP addresses are the internet s way of identifying machines that are connected to it and when an email is sent, the machine from which it originated is identified as part of that machine communication process. p10 DST Email Product FAQs
Are there constraints and limitations to email delivery? (continued) Sender reputation These addresses can be checked by receiving domains to ensure that they send email on a regular basis and send only solicited email communications. DST, as an email communications provider, is very aware and protective of their IP address reputation and strives to ensure that it delivers only solicited and opted-in email communications to your customers. Sender reputation is a complex issue that is dependent on many factors. The biggest factor being that recipients of email never flag emails coming from a particular IP or FROM address as Spam. That is why DST ensures that it engages only in the delivery of legitimate and solicited email communications and works with clients to promote email best practices. Email service provider and domain rules Email service providers and domains (GMAIL, Hotmail, private company domains) manage how they treat incoming email on an individual basis. They set up rules that will ensure that Spam and malicious emails are blocked from inboxes. They may set up filters that can block any email that does not come from a pre- authorised source (rare for public email service providers) and email that comes from a list of IP addresses in disrepute. This is why DST s reputation as an email sender is very important. It ensures that email service providers trust emails coming from our IP addresses. The paper equivalent would be leaving a note on your door listing all of the senders you don t want to get mail from for the mail delivery person to check. Email can also be rejected based on a more complex series of checks on email content and source that result in a Spam score over an acceptable threshold. That would involve letting the mail delivery person open your mail and make a guess as to whether or not you might want it based on a loose set of rules that you and Royal Mail agree on. And your rules may be different from your neighbours! This is why DST works with you to ensure email best practices are implemented. The landscape of email service provider rules is constantly changing and being updated so that those service providers can ensure the best security and experience for their customers. DST has mechanisms in place to monitor these and make sure that email communications are not disrupted. DST Email Product FAQs p11
What are SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records? In simple terms email domain servers like to check if the domain from which the email originated (this is invisible to the recipient) matches or is authorised to send mail on behalf of the FROM domain (what the recipient sees in the FROM address) and there are technical protocols (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) within email technology that deal with this. Email service providers and domains are very concerned with the origin of emails coming in to their servers. It has become important to providers to have a system whereby receiving domains can check that an email with a particular FROM address domain was sent by a third party that has permission to do so granted by that domain s owner. EG: InsuranceCompany.com would like to email policy details to their customers but do not want to set up an infrastructure in the InsuranceCompany.com domain to create and send emails. They ask DST to create and send emails with a policy@ insurancecompany.com FROM address. When an email service provider, such as GMAIL, sees the insurancecompany.com domain in the FROM address but can also see that the email did not originate from the insurancecompany.com domain, that provider can look up the FROM address domain and check if the originating domain has permission to send emails on behalf of insurancecompany.com. This is becoming critical to email deliverability and DST works with you to ensure that all of these settings are configured correctly to ensure maximum deliverability. Size Although higher speeds and faster bandwidth have allowed email communication to expand well beyond plain text and into media rich experiences, size can be still be a consideration. Inboxes do have limits and can be maxed out. Recipients don t want to use all of their mobile device data allowances on downloading large high resolution images or attachments. Some email service providers have email size limitations and treat attachments with suspicion. It is important to keep these points in mind when designing the emails that are going to be sent. DST will work with you to make sure that communications are optimised for the delivery channel. p12 DST Email Product FAQs
Engagement Email domain servers, especially big providers like GMAIL and Yahoo are evolving ever more sophisticated mechanisms and algorithms to ensure that their customers are only getting emails that are relevant to them. One of these factors is engagement. If many email recipients are getting a lot of email from a particular company or brand, the email server can tell how engaging those emails are through open rates and click rates. If one person interacts with email from a particular brand but another person never opens the same email then it becomes increasingly more likely that former will get those emails in their inbox while for the latter they will go straight to the Junk folder without that person having to do anything. The big domains will also monitor for overall engagement. If only three people from a total mail shot of 100k open an email then the domain is likely to treat another mail shot from the same company or brand (and possibly sender IP address) with suspicion. What is a Spam score? A Spam score is a number assigned by an email domain server to all incoming emails in order to determine if they are legally sent, solicited, relevant communications. Any communication receiving a score over an arbitrary threshold would be blocked. Spam scores used to be the only way email domain servers had of trying to filter out Spam and they were not particularly sophisticated or accurate. Spam scores are becoming less relevant with email domain servers preferring to use other more sophisticated mechanisms, such as SPF and DMARC, as well as IP reputation and engagement analytics, to make sure that only solicited and relevant communications end up in inboxes. Does DST sell or provide mailing lists? DST does not sell, or procure for the purposes for selling, data for email or other forms of communication. DST Email Product FAQs p13
Can I use bought mailing lists? The short answer to this is DST will process the data provided. A better answer is bought email data is not a good way of communicating with or procuring new customers. An even better answer is that such data opens the sender up to data protection questions about where and how the data was obtained and whether or not the individuals in the data agreed that they could be sent unsolicited emails. There is no way of telling, using bought email lists, if any of the individuals contained in the data are even remotely interested in a particular product or service. A better way of engaging and forging relationships: 1. Make sure you know your recepient and have a permission to email them. 2. Make sure there s a reason to send them an email about your product or service at that particular time. 3. Make your email targeted, relevant, and engaging to your target customer. 4. Give them the ability to share your content by providing links, forwarding, and sharing capabilities in your email. That is why DST ensures that it engages only in the delivery of legitimate and solicited email communications and works with clients to promote email best practices. What is the DST email client engagement process? The client representative or a business analyst will meet with the client to determine what kind of email is going to be sent: marketing, transactional, ad hoc, recurring, part of other output processes. In all cases, the high level process would involve the following steps: Client confirms that they would like to start sending email communications. Business analyst gathers high level requirements. Time is scheduled with the email development team to discuss data, creative, DNS configuration, and targeting requirements. A brief is written by the analyst detailing these requirements. If required, a high level design and estimate for development is given. A quote for projected volumes can be given. The client signs off the requirements and estimate. Development is scheduled. p14 DST Email Product FAQs
What is the DST email client engagement process? (continued) The client is boarded in DST Email and Channel delivery services if they have not sent emails with DST before. Creative materials may be supplied by the client at this point or they are provided by the DST creative team as per the brief. The development team executes the brief. Proofs and test emails are sent to the client and deliverability is assessed. The client signs off on the development. Emails are scheduled and sent as per the requirements. Reports are obtained by the customer representative and sent to the client or can be extracted as part of a larger automated workflow development. Where emails are part of a larger output workflow, reversion and follow up processes will also be executed as per requirements. How much does email cost? Many clients are pursuing an electronic delivery strategy due to the much lower cost in comparison to traditional paper communications. Email delivery is charged on a per email volume basis for the required type of email: regular, with attachment, with secure attachment. This is exclusive of data processing, workflow setup involving other systems, template setup, etc. For further information and advice on any aspect of the DST Email platform, please contact your DST client account manager. DST Email Product FAQs p15