ContributionsMost RecentMost LikesSolutionsEmail Deliverability: Legally Mandated Mailings As we bid adieu to '22, my inbox seemed to bulge with countless emails from brands notifying me that their terms & conditions had been updated, privacy policy amended, or another modification had been made to some fine print I never bothered to read the previous version of. These messages, useless at the best of times, seemed especially intrusive when flanked by the flurry of year-end wrap-ups, post-Christmas sales, and urgent requests for one final donation. If the notice was from a brand I'd interacted with recently then I deleted it without reading (if I need to find the terms of using a website, I can just...look at the website), but if I couldn't remember making a purchase, or knew I previously unsubscribed, then that message was reported as spam. Plenty of great advice has been shared about sending "legally required" emails with minimal impact to your sending reputation, which I'll share in the comments. But as an anti-spam advocate and an email user myself, my take is that a brand's "need" to send an email should never override subscriber preferences or generally accepted best practices. In my experience, the email is often not truly mandatory, and doesn't really need to be delivered via email. There are several other compelling reasons to reconsider sending that "mandatory" email. Often, the list of addresses you're "required" to contact may contain bounces, unengaged addresses, spam traps, and other undesirables that can tank your deliverability. Even if engagement history is taken into consideration, a healthy list of active subscribers can still report the mail as spam, having a deleterious effect on future messaging and negating the hard work you've already done to establish a place in the inbox. If subscribers who are otherwise engaged mark the message as spam or unsubscribe, they may be removed from your list forever, resulting in the reduction of email revenue over the long term. Outside of email-specific outcomes, brand trust is diminished if people feel that their data is being retained for too long or used improperly. Email is an owned channel insofar as you can take your mailing list with you between ESPs, but mailbox providers and subscribers ultimately own the delivery outcomes. 🛑If you're being tasked with sending an email that doesn't facilitate a specific transaction or provide value... ✖️If you're considering contacting people who did not specifically opt-in, or have previously opted out... ⛔If you have even the tiniest inkling that an email won't be received positively... 🥇Reassess! Consider using another channel that fulfills your obligations without risking your reputation. Mailbox providers and blocklist operators don't take "but it was a required message" as an excuse, and neither do subscribers. The ease and ubiquity of email don't negate best practices. If the email isn't wanted or expected, it doesn't need to be an email at all. Consent: Why it's critical to your deliverability (and how to get it right!) Hey everyone! I was featured in Spamhaus's blog today and wanted to share with my favorite senders--Braze customers! Please give it a read, and let me know what you think! Re: AOL Deliverability issues Hey Florian! You can reach out to them via the Yahoo Sender Hub>>Contact>>Problems Delivering Mails. That being said, I wouldn't put a ton of emphasis on inbox placement tools, and it's unlikely that mail is going to spam for a technical reason that they could repair. More likely, it's due to sender reputation which takes things like bounces, complaints, and engagement into account. Are you generating spam complaints at Yahoo? If so, what rates are you seeing? How do people sign up for your emails? Single or double/confirmed opt-in? When do unengaged users get excluded from mailings? Looking forward to learning more! Re: List-unsubscribe header with preference center page Hey Cat! Can you clarify the question for me? They should be set to unsubscribed, but our Product team can provide more detail if there's something else you're looking for? Re: How to prepare for the upcoming Yahoo and Gmail changes AMA starting! Hey there! The one-click unsubscribe is a different functionality from a preference center, but if you're using something custom it'd be best to check with your CSM or a support representative to see where that data is stored. Re: List-unsubscribe header with preference center page Hey Ryan! This is a great question for our Product Team to take a look at, but here's what I know: The preference center page is totally fine for the required unsubscribe option in the body of the message, but the list-unsubscribe header needs to be a true one-and-done unsubscribe option that happens seamlessly within the mailbox UI and doesn't require any additional user input. You can read more about it in RFC8058 if you're feeling especially nerdy.🙂 Hope that helps a little! Re: How to prepare for the upcoming Yahoo and Gmail changes AMA starting! Hey everybody! I'm a Deliverability Principal at Braze and post deliverability tips on LinkedIn. Happy to be here and answer your questions! Re: Microsoft deliverability HeyLori-Merchan! Thanks for the tag,MaggieBrennan! While I certainly can't purport to know more than a person who actually works at Microsoft (omg hiDavidO! How cool!), I would start by digging into your spam complaints. Complaints are the people who got your email in the inbox and clicked the "spam" button, so they're extremely damaging to your reputation but also very revealing! I like to perform spam complaint audits in which I put myself in the recipients' shoes and try to think about why they may have reported the mail as spam. Some common reasons are: The recipient did not sign up. Maybe someone else entered their email address accidentally or on purpose. Perhaps your signup form is collecting invalid addresses and needs to be secured with a captcha and/or honeypot. Maybe they did give you their address but did not want emails from you, and there was no way to opt out of messaging prior to receiving some. Asking people if they want your emails, allowing them to say no and still interact with your app/site/product, and double opt-in will solve the vast majority of deliverability problems! The branding/content is different from what would be expected based on the signup method. Is your "from" name correct and obviously you? Is the subject line relevant to the recipient? Is the entire look/feel of the message consistent and easily recognizable? The unsubscribe link is missing, hard to find, or broken. People will report mail as spam when they can't opt out because it's the only option and it's available 100% of the time. You can segment out a portion of complaint reporters and review their engagement history while taking the signup method and list hygiene processes into consideration. If someone is reporting mail as spam quickly after signing up, then it sounds like they're not really signing up, they're just giving an email address because it's required. If people engage for a while but eventually report mail as spam, then it may be difficult to opt out or the opt-out mechanism is unclear in some way. It is also possible that the content or cadence has changed, resulting in mail that is no longer relevant, or sent too often. If you perform a similar exercise with all types of outcomes (bounces, unsubscribes, conversions), you should get a better idea of what's working and what's not, or what types of recipients respond best to which style/frequency of messaging. Hope that helps! How the heck do you check your email reputation?! You've probably seen an iteration of this question or asked it yourself: "How do I tell what my deliverability score is?". What seems like an easy inquiry is deceptively complicated to answer. Sure, there are sites you can visit to check your domain or IP reputation if you really want a grade. Problem is, that score doesn't necessarily reflect what mailbox providers (MBPs) are using to inform their decisions, nor does it give you any specific guidance on what to change or maintain. Each MBP calculates its own version of your reputation as they see it, so there's not just one score but several. It's possible to have a positive reputation at Gmail but not at Comcast, or to hit the inbox consistently at Yahoo, but get bulked at Hotmail. An average score can disguise a glaring issue that affects just one provider, or highlight minor variables that have no discernible impact on your results. Since MBPs don't actually furnish a score, you'll have to gauge your reputation by reviewing the following, ideally per-domain or provider: 🚚 Delivery Rate: This should be close to 100%. If under 98% of mail is being delivered to a particular domain/provider, dive into your bounce logs to review the rejection reasons. Low deliveries can be a sign of a mounting reputation problem. 🏀Bounce Rate: Both temporary (often referred to as "soft") and permanent (generally called "hard") failures can contribute to and/or indicate a diminishing reputation. Among other reasons, soft bounces may mean that you're being blocked by a particular provider. Hard bounces tend to denote that there's a data quality issue, either during subscription or due to a lack of ongoing list hygiene. Risk tolerance varies, but bounce rates (either soft or hard, or both) over 2% are worth investigating. 😡 Complaint Rate: Complaints are extremely damaging to your reputation due to being the strongest negative feedback that recipients can provide. Perpetually under-reported since Gmail, iCloud, and more don't use traditional FBLs to facilitate complaint reporting, a healthy complaint rate should not exceed 1 complaint per 1,000 emails sent. Low complaints aren't always cause for celebration; if coupled with a low open rate, assume that most of your mail is going to the spam folder—a hallmark of diminished reputation. 📭 Open Rate: Most useful as a directional metric, the "open" rate is more like a "pixel load" rate. An open event may not mean that a human being laid eyes on your email, but it's probable that the message did at least hit the inbox, where images are often automatically loaded, triggering the "open". Opens are far from being obsolete, providing valuable insight for segmenting and sunsetting. A higher open rate tends to point to higher inbox placement and a better reputation with that MBP. Don't get complacent, though. A high open rate in tandem with elevated complaints can portend a reputation decline, so stay vigilant! 👀