HTTPS in the service of deliverability and your reputation

Security on the Web should be the rule, not the exception. This statement is quickly encouraging the adoption of the HTTPS protocol on more and more websites.

What does this mean to email marketeers? For sure, it has considerable impact on deliverability and brand reputation. Let's dig deeper.

HTTPS - an acronym for HyperText Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer - is an evolution of HTTP, the main protocol used to exchange information on the Web. An evolution designed to deliver greater data exchange security and reliability, through new encryption and control systems that protect against eavesdropping and tampering with communications.

The Send module natively supports HTTPS completely. Not only for message composition – for example, images within email templates have HTTPS paths – but also for other services, such as links in double opt-in confirmation emails, and tracking URLs, which register click rates and make the details available in campaign stats.

We also suggest to our customers that they ensure all the links they include in an email use, whenever possible, HTTPS. If not, the links may be reported as ‘insecure’ and even blocked by browsers.

This highlights the extent to which the lack of this secure protocol may consistently result in a negative impact on message deliverability and reputation. This impact is likely to increase in the future, because the adoption of HTTPS as a standard, is being pushed strongly by many companies and organizations. At the forefront is Google, whose Chrome browser marks any site without HTTPS as being 'not secure', in its latest releases.

For these reasons, it's very important to use secure URLs in your email communications, and Send helps you achieve this goal easily.