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! 👀Request: Save Email as Template
I would love to have the ability to utilize emails I've created in campaigns in Canvases. But the only way to do that is to export the email out of campaign as a .zip file and then import it into templates. This then removes the best part of the email creation and editing process: drag and drop! So then I can no longer edit the email in the canvas without digging into the code. Anyone else have this problem? This is a feature I've been able to use in other email marketing services like hubspot! Would love a "save email as template" dropdown option. Or, when I'm creating a canvas, be able to select emails that I've created in campaigns.Black Friday/Cyber Monday are upon us!
Hey Bonfirers! I have been lax in my posting here and wanted to share a recent post I made on LinkedIn in case it helps! Everything is relative. Even sender reputation! Is yours strong enough to shoulder the (quickly approaching 😩) busiest season of the year? The ability to reach the inboxes of your subscribers depends on a ton of factors, some of which we can't even see and don't know about! FUN! In the absence of that information, we have to concentrate on the things we can control like list quality, mail frequency, volume, and content. When you regularly send to the same folks over and over again, you establish a reputation in relation to that behavior. But when you suddenly send way more than that, the mailbox providers grow concerned (and with good reason!). From a spam filtering & security standpoint, a marked increase in the amount of mail from your domain could mean that an intern made a mistake, or a malicious party has gained access to your credentials and is leveraging your reputation to send out spam or phishing attempts. Mailbox providers might delay delivery to recipients in excess of your usual amount traffic, and/or filter it as spam in an effort to protect your mutual customers. If you want to successfully reach a larger number of subscribers in a timely manner, these tips will give you a boost: 📝 Plan ahead. Create a realistic plan that allows ample time to reach your goals, especially if you'll be widening the audience to include less-engaged contacts. ⚠ Give everyone a heads up. If users will be receiving mail more often, let them know beforehand so they can update their preferences or opt out. Some subscribers may love hearing from you, but only occasionally. An unexpected or unwelcome uptick in messages could contribute to increased spam complaints or decreased engagement, both of which are barriers to continued inbox placement. You can also notify mailbox providers that you'll be sending more mail, which could be helpful context for future filtering decisions. 🐢 Go slowly. Increase your sends gradually, giving the providers and your subscribers time to react. 🖥 Monitor results closely. Keep an eye on delivery, bounce, open, complaint, and (if you have 'em) delay rates. Is mail being delivered? Quickly? Are recipients engaging? Positively? 🎓 Learn from those results. What do the outcomes mean about how you should proceed? Should you keep going, or should you reassess your goals? Let the data guide your decisions. 🍰 Have a treat. This isn't really deliverability advice, but holiday sending during an election year will definitely be challenging, so be nice to yourself and have a piece of cake or a cookie (or some garlic bread if you're a savory girlie/boyee).Personalized Year in Review 2024
Hi everyone! I'm curious to know if you're planning on gifting your users a personal 2023 wrap-up, like Spotify does. I normally send emails with Liquid to show the user's personal stats and highlights of the year, including their avatar, but I'm looking to elevate it to more than just an email. Any ideas or recommendations? Cheers, Francisco.BFCM Deliverability
What has two legs, a buttery sheen, and is stuffed? That's right, it's ME! We went out for a fancy dinner last night to celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary and I'm still full, please send help. 😫 If you were thinking more along the lines of a delectable turkey as pictured here, you're also right. There are no losers here (certainly not until January anyway, when the diet/gym emails go hard)! You know what else gets stuffed at the holidays, besides me, and turkeys? Inboxes! With gift-giving reaching its annual climax and retailers closing out Q4, inventory is moving fast. Consumers want deals, businesses want dollars, and mailbox providers want safe, secure inboxes for all. So, how can you satisfy everyone when you're not a tasty, tender turkey?! 🦃 Make a plan! Just like your feast needs a menu, your holiday sends need a schedule. Who will you be sending to? How often? Are you confident in the data and content, or should you test first? How much mail are you going to send, and can your reputation support it? You may need to gradually warm up to higher volumes, so build that buffer into your calendar. 🍠 Exercise caution when experimenting. One Thanksgiving, my dad debuted a new cranberry recipe. More relish than sauce, it leaned hard into savory territory, even containing horseradish. Guests were appalled, Dad was sad, and we were basically cranberryless. Don't follow in my dear ol' dad's footsteps! Your subscribers have more mail and less time these days; make it easy for them to recognize you, interact with your messaging, and move on. If you want to take a crack at new content, switch up subject lines, or get sassy with segments, do so sparingly. A misstep now could be costly, and take weeks to recover from. We forgave Dad, but we didn't forget. Even now, decades on we still ask if he needs any horseradish for his cranberries. 🫛 Give 'em the good stuff (and nothing else). Subscribers expect a lot from their emails, especially now! Send your biggest discounts, break out your brand's best jokes, and use those unique images! If you don't have anything new or exciting to say, then keep it short and sweet. Do you really need to send every day? Let alone multiple times per day? Email is asynchronous--if people don't see your message immediately after you send it, it's still there waiting for them to interact with! The more you send, the more opportunities people have to engage with or ignore you. Inbox placement is based heavily on prior recipient reaction, so if your mail is regularly discarded or disregarded, you could harm your reputation more than you've helped your sales goals. 🥧 Reconcile with your results. What did you try, and how did it work? Did increasing your volume hamper your open rates, or increase your sales? Both?! Did customers complain about receiving more mail, or did they contentedly click regardless of the increased contact? What does this teach you for the immediate future, or next year? _________ Want to talk turkey about holiday sends? See you tomorrow at our AMA!Email 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.Determining Engagement Recency
The older I get, the more my definition of "recent" expands. When I talk about something that "just" happened I might mean 2 days ago, or maybe 2 years. I remember being about 10 years old, and laughing when my Nana described an event from 30 years ago as something that occurred "the other day", but now I get how that much time can pass in the blink of an eye (especially because THAT convo feels like it just happened and was now 30 years ago itself. 🥲) As someone who often succumbs to bouts of nostalgia, I understand the inclination to embrace the past. And while it's fun to reminisce, the unfortunate truth is that when it comes to deliverability, we have to face the passage of time and the toll it takes on both people and their email addresses. Since inbox placement is rewarded based on positive engagement, it's important to send to users who interact with your emails, and eventually stop contacting those who don't. When determining who to sunset and who to stay in touch with, weigh what impacts engagement recency for your brand and customers: 🕰️ How & why do subscribers sign up for your emails? Are people opting in because they want your newsletters, or are they being enticed with a special offer? If they want email updates, their interest is likely to last longer than if they initially subscribed because they wanted a quick coupon. Do users go through a confirmed opt-in process (aka double opt-in)? If email addresses are eligible for mailing immediately after signup without verification, pay close attention to their early engagement. Users who do not engage may not be valid or valuable contacts over the longer term, so proceed with caution. ⏰ How often do people receive mail from you? How often do they purchase? The more you send, the more opportunities there are for recipients to engage (or not!). This means that a daily mailer will need a more aggressive sunset policy than a monthly mailer. If you sell cars, you'll want to send less often than a brand selling car insurance or accessories. ⏱️ How varied is the content? Conventional wisdom says that history will repeat itself, buuuut your content probably shouldn't. If your messaging seldom changes, it would be wise to send less often to avoid fatiguing your users. They need a compelling reason to open, click, and convert, and email has come a long way from the full-page ads of the past. Today's subscribers expect unique offers, compelling updates, and valuable product info. As users become familiar with monotonous messages, their engagement will become a thing of the past. ⌚ What about alternate channel engagement? SMS, push, and in-app messaging can work well in tandem with, or as an alternative to email, but engagement isn't universal. Mailbox providers can't see how users engage with your brand outside of email, meaning that someone who actively visits your site and logs into your app can still negatively impact your sender reputation if they're not interacting with your emails.
