Bryan Eisenberg on email marketing: “Do massive Segmentation and opt out your list”

Bryan Eisenberg was one of keynote speakers at the Fusion Marketing Experience. The event had a very impressive line-up with experts from all parts of digital marketing. Bryan shared his email marketing tips:

With a presentation on the second day about one of his favorite topics “Always be testing” (also the name of his book). This time Brian referred to Adwords and Pay per Click testing, see that article here.

Email marketing: Do massive segmentation

I got to speak to Bryan a bit more about e-mail marketing. Bryan has been running his own newsletter for years with over 40.000 subscribers. Bryan: “Do massive segmentation. Once you think you have segmented, segment again. And if possible, segment again. In good e-mail marketing, you segment first, and then personalize within that segment.”

Segmenting is a very effective email marketing tactic

And he is right, several kinds of research have shown Segmenting as one of the most effective email marketing tactics. Even more: Testing with Target Audiences (in other words: segment testing) is also found to be very effective. 91% of marketers find segmentation testing effective. That is huge. Testing segmentation is the number one effective testing tactic according to research by Marketingsherpa.

Brian continues on massive segmentation: “For instance, you can personalize an e-mail to people who are interested in tv’s versus stereo’s. Segment your e-mail campaigns to previous customers versus subscribers and know what you will be sending to them. First segment and after that go a level deeper and do more personalization. Use a RFM (Recency, frequency and monetary value) formula to calculate the right TV or bundle to offer and what discount percentage to give.”

List hygiene also counts.

Bryan: “One of the things we did on our own newsletter was to opt a large part out. We had 40.000 people on our list and asked everyone that wasn’t active to opt in again. In 7 months the e-mail list was up to the same size, but much better quality. That means higher open rates and click through rates AND better deliverability. Not enough people do this list hygiene thing. At the very least put them [the inactives] on a separate list. There is a technical term for people that aren’t willing to keep their list clean: Pussies.”

He ends with one last tip: “Never forget old content is new content to new people.”


Image by Remy Bergma


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Millennials’ Email Marketing Dislikes Are (Mostly) the Same as Everyone Else’s

 Despite millennials having a reputation for being different from everyone else, their email behavior is very similar to that of older generations when it comes to the things that drive them to unsubscribe and report emails as spam.

Our Adapting to Consumers’ New Definition of Spam research, which surveyed more than 1,300 American adults, found that roughly the same percentage of millennials (age 18-29) and those from older generations (age 30+) have…

• Unsubscribed from a brand’s promotional emails because they received too many or irrelevant emails (66% for millennials vs. 67% for older generations)
• Unsubscribed from a brand’s promotional emails because the emails or website didn’t display or work well on their smartphone (52% vs. 51%)
• Unsubscribed from a brand’s promotional emails because the brand’s mobile app didn’t work well (41% vs. 40%)
• Marked a brand’s emails as spam because they didn’t knowingly and willingly subscribe to receive the emails (52% vs. 51%)
• Marked a brand’s emails as spam because they couldn’t easily figure out how to unsubscribe (50% vs. 50%)

Of course, millennials are different in a number of ways—but even in those instances, the differences aren’t all that meaningful when it comes to how marketers should respond. For example, here are the five biggest differences that we could find from our research:

1. MILLENNIALS CHECK THEIR SPAM FOLDERS MORE FREQUENTLY AND RESCUE BRANDS THEY DON’T WANT THERE MORE FREQUENTLY. TWEET THIS →

Millennials seem to be more aware of the imperfections around spam filtering. Fifty-five percent of them say they “very frequently” or “often” check their spam folder, versus only 46% of older generations. And 54% say they “very frequently” or “often” move promotional emails from brands out of their spam folder or mark emails in their spam folder as “not spam,” versus only 43% of older generations.

Only 18% of millennials say they never check their spam folder and only 25% say they never make a brand’s emails as “not spam.” In both cases, that’s roughly in line with older consumers (17% and 24%).

Takeaway: While it’s comforting to know that many consumers, especially millennials, are checking their spam folders regularly and correcting the mistakes made by spam filters, it doesn’t change marketers’ need to try to maximize their deliverability. That means:

• Having solid permission practices in place across all your subscriber acquisition sources
• Avoiding triggering spam filters
• Setting up your email infrastructure properly, including authenticating your email with Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC)
• Managing your inactive subscribers to keep engagement high

2. MILLENNIALS ARE MORE LIKELY TO TAKE ACTION BASED SOLELY ON AN EMAIL’S SUBJECT LINE AND OTHER ENVELOPE CONTENT. TWEET THIS →

When we busted subject line myths, our Myth #6 was: If an email isn’t opened, then it’s like you never sent it. Our latest research busts this myth into even small bits.

Not only do 39% of millennials say they’ve visited a brand’s store or website as a result of receiving—but not opening—an email from the brand, but 38% say they’ve made a purchase because of a received but unopened email. And older consumers aren’t very far behind, with 34% visiting a brand’s site and 32% making a purchase.

Takeaway: We suppose there’s a little extra incentive if your audience is largely millennials, but we recommend that all brands use a consistent and well-branded sender name, as well as detailed and actionable subject lines and preview text—as the brands do in the examples below. Avoid vague, intriguing, or overly clever envelope content that attract the curious openers rather than openers who are likely to convert. And we absolutely recommend steering clear of subject lines that could be interpreted as misleading.

3. MILLENNIALS ARE MORE LIKELY TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM EMAILS OVER A BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE EXPERIENCE. TWEET THIS →

Creating cohesive omnichannel experiences has been a marketing priority for years now, and that priority was born out of consumer behavior. While brands are often organized into silos, consumers just see the brand. They consider it a singular entity and expect one hand to know what the other hand is doing.

For email marketers, the downside is that failures in one part of the business can be taken out on the email program—and this appears to be particularly true for millennials. For instance, 51% of millennials say that they have unsubscribed from a brand’s promotional emails because they had a bad customer service experience with the brand. Only 39% of Gen Xers and above said that.

An interesting wrinkle to this is that millennials are slightly less likely to mark a brand’s emails as spam because of a bad experience, with only 43% saying they have versus 46% of those from older generations.

Takeaway: All brands should strive for stellar customer service, but clearly failures will occur. If you know of individual cases, consider temporarily suspending that subscriber from receiving promotional emails, depriving them of the opportunity to opt-out while their angry. And if a PR scandal, large product recall, or other negative event occurs, consider temporarily suspending promotional emails to all subscribers to avoid a spike in unsubscribes and spam complaints.

4. MILLENNIALS ARE MORE LIKELY TO TRIAGE THEIR MOBILE INBOX, SAVING CERTAIN EMAILS FOR LATER. TWEET THIS →

It has been thought that you have one shot with an email to engage the subscriber. If the email doesn’t look great on their mobile device, for instance, then they’re on to the next email and you’ve missed your shot.

But our survey indicates that consumers, especially millennials, are willing to save at least some emails for later when they get back to a desktop. Fifty-three percent of millennials say they “very frequently” or “often” save an email while on their smartphone to read later on another device, versus 44% for older consumers.

Despite that willingness to save emails for later, however, millennials are just as likely as older generations to unsubscribe because of mobile-unfriendly experiences. For example, 52% of millennials say they have unsubscribed from a brand’s promotional emails because their emails or website didn’t display or work well on smartphones (vs. 51% for older generations); and 41% have because the brand’s mobile app didn’t work well (vs. 40% for older generations).

Takeaway: Like everyone else, millennials have high standards for mobile-friendliness. So use a mobile-aware, responsive, or hybrid email design approach, and work with your web and mobile app counterparts to ensure that subscribers have good landing page experiences, too.

5. MILLENNIALS ARE LESS LIKELY TO FIND UNSUBSCRIBING FROM PROMOTIONAL EMAILS TO BE DIFFICULT. TWEET THIS →

Our unsubscribe process is competing against the easy-to-find, never-fail “report spam” button. So it has to be straightforward or you risk spam complaints, which hurt your sender reputation, unlike unsubscribes.

Half of millennials, along with half of those who are older, say they’ve marked a brand’s emails as spam because unsubscribing was difficult, which is pretty consistent across age groups. However, only 31% of millennials find it difficult to unsubscribe, whereas 41% of those in Gen X and beyond do, making the risk lower among millennial subscribers.

Takeaway: Regardless of your audience, we recommend that unsubscribe links be prominent in the footer and that you follow the two-click unsubscribe rule—that your opt-out process requires no more than one click in the email and one click on the landing page. However, if your subscriber base is composed of lots of millennials, then you should be especially unafraid to include opt-down or other options as alternatives to opting out, as cookie retailer Cheryl’s does.

Although there are some differences here in terms of how millennials behave, the risks that drive unsubscribes and spam complaints are fairly universal. That means that marketers shouldn’t really need to make any changes to accommodate millennials, which love email just as much as everyone else.

Of course, positively motivating millennials might involve very different messaging and strategies than you’d use with Gen Xers and others. But before you’re able to engage them, you have to avoid ticking them off.

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Back-to-Basics: 5 Email Marketing Fundamentals You Should Revisit

While summer may be in full swing in the Northern Hemisphere, back-to-school and the back-half of the year will be here before you know it. Before you ramp up your emails, there are some key email marketing fundamentals you should revisit:

1. Always keep a goal in mind
There are several reasons to send email: To share news, build loyalty, educate, invite people to events, drive traffic to your site, sell your product or service, etc. But what is your specific purpose?

Before you create an email, think about the outcome you want. Are you trying to grow your business or email list? Sell a product or get more donations?

Have a goal in mind and tailor your email’s information and call-to-action to that idea or plan. Are you trying to establish yourself or brand as an industry expert? Send a frequent email newsletter with educational information, tips, how-tos, and industry news. There are many types of emails you can send; keep them all on track to your specific goal.

2. Follow these basic email tips

• Mail regularly – You want your email subscribers to think of your business when they need the product or service you offer, so remind them of your presence with email. Mail at the least, once per month.
• Send what you promised at sign-up. If subscribers signed up for tips and tactics delivered twice a week, that’s what you should deliver. Part of keeping your email readers engaged is sending the information they actually wanted.
• Use images and links – Always include a mix of images and text, and include links back to your website, products or services.
• Make it readable – At every step of the email creation process, think of your readers. Use a sans serif (no curlicues or swishes on the letters) font such as Verdana, Arial or Times New Roman in black or dark grey for easy reading.
• Include a postal address and unsubscribe link – A postal address and unsubscribe link is required by CAN-SPAM.

3. Understand delivery
Getting your email to your subscriber’s inbox is important – if it ends up in a SPAM folder, all that hard work you put into it won’t be seen by anyone. Do you understand the basics of email delivery, and more importantly, how you can affect it?

Most business emails are made up of HTML; there’s usually a template involved, which includes images and links. HTML emails are multi-part MIME, which means there’s the nice HTML version, and a just-in-case backup that’s only text. If you’re using an email service provider, like VerticalResponse, you don’t need to think about this, we take care of it for you. Once you’ve created your email and hit send, the email moves through the Internet ether and through a number of authentication gates until it gets to your reader’s ISP (internet service provider). This is where your email gets a thumbs up (or down) and then moves on to your reader’s inbox, hopefully. The ISP gate is where the content of your email in part determines where your email will end up. Working with an ESP like VerticalResponse helps your email get to this gate; we make sure all the tech stuff you need is there, but you need to make sure the content is relevant and valuable. A few things to keep in mind when creating your email to ensure top-notch delivery:

• Have a good balance of text and images, and make sure your important information is listed in the text just in case images are blocked.
• Use links in your emails, but make sure you only link to trusted sites. Bad links can cause delivery issues.
• Keep your HTML code clean, or use a pre-designed template from your ESP.
• Send what you promised at sign up to keep your readers engaged. ISPs look at many things, and engagement is part of that.
• Mail only to people who have requested your emails.

For more help and information on email delivery, here’s our free guide To the Inbox and Beyond – The Ultimate Guide to Email Delivery.

4. Build quality lists
The better quality your email lists are, the more likely your email will get delivered. Only use “opted in” email addresses for your marketing – Those who have agreed to receive emails from you. You’ll see higher engagement, better inbox placement and fewer unsubscribes and spam complaints. Once you’ve been mailing for a while, segment your lists. Never consider buying a list – It goes against the rules for most ESPs and spam laws, plus it’s not the best way to start a relationship with your potential customers. Slow and steady list growth wins the race every time.

5. Use an ESP
An email service provider (ESP) can help your small business generate and send emails that are targeted to your customer niche, and provide results. We’re here to make it easy. We’ve put together a list of criteria you’ll want to look for in your search for the right ESP.

Have any email fundamentals you think are important to add to the list? Let us know below.


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3 Strategies for Maximizing Email Deliverability

Let’s get one thing straight: deliverability is sexy. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It’s the only way your emails get seen, opened, and clicked on. And if you can increase your deliverability by even just 1%, it can have a significant impact on your ROI.

But achieving high deliverability rates that could make even a mailman jealous doesn’t come easy. Think of it this way: as an email marketer, you’re like the friendly neighborhood mailman. Every house that you deliver email to has a guard dog (ISP). And on days when you have junk mail (spam) or aren’t friendly to folks on your route (poor IP reputation), these dogs will chase you away and only let you deliver some of your mail. To maximize your email deliverability, you need to be familiar with these three deliverability tactics:

1. Set Lower Bounce Thresholds

When you hear the word “bounce,” you might think about fun trampolines or bounce houses. But for marketers, when an email bounces, it’s like bouncing on a trampoline except without all the fun with about 100 times the danger. Okay, I might be exaggerating—but there are definitely some business risks involved. To understand why, let’s first define soft bounces and hard bounces.

Soft bounce: A temporary problem with email deliverability that can be due to an unavailable server or full inbox.

Emails that soft bounce over and over again should be retired from future campaigns. If an email continuously soft bounced 10 times in the last 10 campaigns, it might be soft bouncing for reasons other than a temporary server issue. To keep your deliverability rate high and the risk of that soft bounce becoming something more, it’s best to retire that email for good.

Hard bounce: A permanent failure to deliver an email, usually as a result of the email address being non-existent, invalid, or blocked.

The less hard bounces, the better. ISPs prefer senders to have low hard bounce rates because it shows that you take care of your email lists and keep them fresh. Furthermore, because a hard bounced email may be invalid, non-existent, or blocked entirely, it’s a great candidate for a spam trap, which is an inactive, deliverable email address owned by an ISP to catch spammy senders.

Hitting a spam trap will severely hurt your deliverability and sender reputation, especially with a specific ISP, and could potentially put your IP address on a blacklist, an online database of spammy senders. Once your IP is on a blacklist, you’ll find it awfully difficult to get your emails delivered.
So what should you do to improve your soft bounce and hard bounce rates? Employ a bounce management strategy! Here’s how:

Managing soft bounces: Whether you use an email service provider (ESP) or a marketing automation solution, you should be able to set a soft bounce threshold. Oftentimes, these are set to a conservative number like 10 soft bounces = a hard bounce or an email that should be retired from email campaigns for good. To see how we manage soft bounces here at Marketo, check out my previous blog.

Managing hard bounces: Retire all invalid address hard bounces immediately. Most email providers and marketing automation solutions do this for you, but not all do, so make sure that any email that hard bounces is removed from your list. And if you’re using an ESP where you load email lists into the campaign from an external data source like SQL tables or Microsoft Access, be sure to regularly export all of your hard bounces and add them into a suppression list after each campaign. Then, scrub them against your email database when running a list selection.

2. Don’t Buy Lists

Whether you’ve been doing email marketing for a while or you’re a brand new business just starting up, buying an email list and having a larger email database can seem attractive, but it’s generally a poor practice and it may be detrimental to your deliverability rates and sender reputation. Here are four reasons why:

1. Unsolicited emails: If your recipients have never heard from you before or never opted in to receive your communications, your emails could look like spam to them.

 

When an email recipient marks you as spam, your sender reputation will decrease and ISPs will be suspicious of your activities. With enough spam complaints, you could land your IP on a blacklist, ultimately making it harder for all your future emails to be delivered to the folks who actually opted-in to your communications.

 

2. Quality: You can’t always trust the quality of a list. You don’t know where the names came from, whether the email addresses are correctly formatted, and whether they’ve been scrubbed for spam traps or syntax errors. The email addresses could be old and the demographics can be all over the place. You just never really know what you’re getting yourself into.

 

3. Spam Rate: Email service providers and marketing automation solutions typically have spam rate thresholds in place so if you receive a certain percentage of spam complaints per email delivered, they may terminate your contract. This is because if you are using IP addresses associated with an ESP or marketing automation solution and you’re sending spam, it’s a bad reflection on them as well to ISPs. And they need to maintain good standing relationships with ISPs to properly service their other clients. I’ve heard that for some ESPs, if your spam rate goes above 0.5%, they’ll reach out to you to do a full audit of your sending behaviors and list hygiene practices. They don’t want to jeopardize their business reputation just because you had to buy some lists.

 

4. Bad Metrics: This one should be obvious. Your email metrics will plummet with bad lists! These people didn’t want to hear from you, so very few of them will open and click your emails. Is getting a few email clicks worth losing customer engagement? No, especially when you have to explain the reason to your executives.

3. Segment by Engagement

Getting an ISP to love you is no easy task. Getting all of them to love you is arguably more difficult than getting your celebrity crush to love you. Believe me, I know (you know where to find me, Adele). The number one thing ISPs love to see is high levels of engagement, which means lots of recipients opening, clicking, reading, scrolling, and engaging with your emails on a regular basis.
When you have high email engagement, ISPs will allow the majority of your emails to hit the primary inbox because the demand from your recipients is high. This is called inboxing, which is the percentage of emails that hit the primary inbox as opposed to the spam folder or junk folder. So how do you use email engagement your advantage to get more email inboxing?

Let’s take a look at four scenarios based on this mock situation:

Let’s say you send 100,000 emails that all get delivered. Of those 100,000 emails, 20k engaged within the last 90 days and the remaining 80k haven’t shown any engagement in more than 90 days (the numbers in the examples are made-up based off of my previous experience with campaigns of this nature).

Scenario 1: If you were to just send emails to the engaged group of 20k, the open rate would be 18%, the click-through rate would be 3%, and the unsubscribe rate would be 0%. I’m assuming the unsubscribe rate is 0% because typically when people just engaged, they aren’t likely to unsubscribe. So these are great metrics!

 

Scenario 2: Conversely, if you only sent an email to the 80k group of unengaged emails, the open rate would be 3%, the click through rate would be 0.2%, and the unsubscribe rate is a little high at 0.31%. Metrics that could definitely be better. Again, these numbers are just to illustrate a point.

 

Scenario 3: Now, if you send an email to all 100,000 at the same time, the open rate would be a 6% open rate, with a 0.76% CTR, and a 0.25% unsubscribe rate. This example is probably what most marketers do and therefore the metrics you’d expect based on this example.

 

Scenario 4: If you take a different approach and only send the email to the group of 20k engaged email addresses first, wait 30 minutes, and then send the email to the group of 80k unengaged emails, you’ll get better inboxing rates. This is because when you send emails to engaged recipients first, the ISPs will boost your reputation based on the high engagement on that email. So, when you send to the group of unengaged emails, you’ll actually get higher inbox placement just because you warmed up your sender reputation. In this example (and similar experiences I’ve had), by sending the 20k engaged emails first, inboxing for the group of 80k unengaged emails increased from 55% to 70% when email sends were staggered. The overall effect on inboxing was an increase from 63% to 75%, which definitely moves the needle!

 

Key takeaway: If you stagger your sends by engagement, you’ll see higher deliverability rates and much higher inboxing. This is a really cool strategy that not too many people use today, but it is extremely effective.

Deliver results

Get your emails delivered and placed in the primary inbox by following the three deliverability strategies I’ve outlined. First, set lower soft bounce and hard bounce thresholds to reduce your risk of hitting spam traps and hurting your sender reputation. Second, do not, I repeat, do not purchase lists. You can’t always control for list quality or cleanliness. Lastly, stagger your email sends by levels of engagement. You’ll achieve better inboxing and overall stronger email metrics.

Do you have any deliverability tips or tricks that work for you? Share them in the comments below!

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Email Marketing Services: The Deliverability Myth

I had enough.

Every time I review an email marketing service, there’s a smart guy who comments on that post like this:

“You might pay less per month with another service, but how well does it deliver your mail? Do they get through the ISP barricades? Does the email land in a spam folder before it reaches the intended party?”

Then they tell me that they use AWeber. Or GetResponse. Because the deliverability of the emails sent via these services is awesome.

It should be clear to all of us that there are good companies (usually AWeber and GetResponse) and bad or not so good companies (all the other companies). If you pay for the services of the good companies, the deliverability of your emails is guaranteed. You can live happily ever after.

I really had enough of this subtle crap some so called veterans (and other email marketing noobs) spread wherever they can …

1. AWeber. GetResponse. And Others. In My Spam Folder

Message sent via AWeber …

Message sent via GetResponse. By GetResponse! (Message sent to their affiliates on Dec 10, 2015)

I can keep posting such screen captures here. They aren’t the only examples.

And there are more companies whose servers were used to send emails in my Gmail’s spam folder. Not only these two. iContact, MailChimp, INinbox and others.

2. Are These Email Marketing Companies Lying to the Customers?

If you check these companies websites, you’ll see claims regarding a 99% deliverability. Or similar claims. Are they lying to their customers?

It’s easy to jump to such a conclusion. But it’s not fair. And not true.

These days any decent email marketing company has a deliverability team. And I’m sure that these teams work hard. But it’s not easy. And they aren’t Santa Claus, Superman or whatever hero some customers expect.

3. Why Are Some Email Messages Flagged by the Spam Filters?

Some email messages sent via these companies’ servers are flagged as spam. At the same time, I claim that these companies don’t lie in their deliverability claims.

It looks somehow confusing, doesn’t it? There’s a simple explanation though …

Almost all legit messages I got in my spam folder included one of these clarifications that you can also see in the screen captures posted above:

Why is this message in Spam? It’s similar to messages that were detected by our spam filters.

Why is this message in Spam? It contains content that’s typically used in spam messages.

What exactly do they mean? Let me give you a clue. I’ll show you an example …

Recently S.D. has launched an internet marketing product and he sent via AWeber more emails to his affiliates. Four of them landed in my spam folder though. Not the first four. Not the last four. In no particular order.

The same sender, the same email marketing company.

What was the difference? The text of the emails.

4. The Unpleasant Truth Regarding Email Deliverability

If you don’t know what you’re doing, veteran or not, GetResponse employee or not, the email marketing company you send your emails from … cannot always save your ass. Especially if you’re into a sensitive niche (examples: WAH, MMO).

If you include blacklisted domain names in emails or if you use a marketing language similar to spammers’ language, your emails will be routed to the spam folders. Irrespective of the amazing email marketing company you use.

In the end, here’s a tip:

Never ever choose your email marketing service based on the claims regarding the awesome deliverability posted here and there by all kind of “experts.”

Almost all modern services have a good deliverability. You’re the one who can ruin the deliverability of your emails.

P.S. If you want to have a good laugh, go to Warrior Forum. You’ll find marketers unhappy with AWeber’s deliverability that moved to GetResponse and marketers unhappy with GetResponse’s deliverability that moved to AWeber. Everyone is ready to swear that their open rates are better now :)

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7 Email Testing & Delivery Tools for a Biz on a Budget

You hear so many rumors about what you can or can’t include in your email if you don’t want it to land in spam. But a lot of those are exactly that, rumors.

Using an ESP, like VerticalResponse, is an excellent start to ensuring inbox placement, but spam filters look for various things in emails to determine where they end up. Are there too many links in your email? Did you use the word “Free” one too many times? To help dispel the myths, we put some email testing and delivery tools to the test using the same HTML code and subject line from one of our recent newsletters. Here’s what we discovered:

Puts Mail

Puts Mail is a basic testing application, but you can get some good information about your HTML using this tool. First, they send you a test of your email, so you can see it in your inbox. If you’re using an ESP, you probably have this feature already, but if you don’t, it allows you to see your how your email will appear in the inbox of your choice. Then the tool goes through your code and detects if there’s anything that could cause an issue and what that might be. Our newsletter checked out okay, though anyone using Lotus Notes or Eudora may have some issues with the CSS that was included.

CSS is something that can be tricky in different email programs; if you’re using CSS, be sure to keep it inline to ensure it will work across a variety email programs. For more tips on HTML for emails, check out our HTML Tips for Designing Your Email guide.

Email on Acid

We’re fans of this tool because of the various email program display views. It’s always important to know how things will appear for all of your readers and the different programs they use. Email on Acid offers a free version that shows what your email looks like in Gmail and Outlook 2003, plus they take a look at your HTML and let you know if there are any issues. The paid versions offer more inbox examples, more analysis, and check for spam filter triggers. Our newsletter looked great with the free trial test on these two programs, but as we learned from the previous tool, there could be some rendering issues on older email programs.

Email Reach

Email Reach takes a different approach to testing emails by providing a seed list of addresses to test. The nice thing about this service is that they can test email programs around the world and on mobile.

You just need to download the list they provide, upload to your ESP and then send test emails to that seed list. They’ll give you reporting on how your email works in all the different accounts that they monitor. They offer a 24-hour free trial and then a paid version once that expires. They also check for spam folder placement and will analyze content and HTML for possible spam problems.

Lyris ContentChecker

If you’re worried about specific content that could cause your email to land in the spam folder, this is the free tool for you. Lyris checks the HTML and the content of your email and gives you score based on where the email will end up. Zero is the best, anything over 3.0 and they recommend changing your content to help ensure your email doesn’t get marked as spam. They’re checking through SpamAssassin, a very popular spam filter, for anything that is usually associated with spam. Their website gives you a quick analysis and then they send an email with more info and links to help you understand email delivery and how you can improve yours.  Our newsletter got a zero; we like to practice what we preach!

Litmus

Much like Email on Acid, Litmus offers a limited free test and a paid version with more bells and whistles. The free test covers pretty much any email program your readers could be using, plus mobile ones. While the other tests are done in seconds, this one takes awhile, but for free we were willing to wait a bit. There is also a subject line checker, to see how your From label and subject line will look in different email programs, landing page links and again, HTML analysis. There is one test per email address, but the paid version allows unlimited testing for all the features mentioned. As with the test on Puts Mail, our CSS was trouble but otherwise the email looked good.

Email Spam Test

Email Spam Test is another free tool that provides you information about whether your email may go to a spam folder. They don’t provide much detail, but if there was a potential issue with your code or content they let you know. Our newsletter did fine, although they weren’t sure about the subject line.

When we actually sent this newsletter, the subject line performed on target and our opens/clicks stats were right on the mark.

Postmark

This is also a free spam test, but it requires a bit more info than you may have. Not only do you need to paste in the HTML from your email, but you also need to include the full headers as well. It makes for a much more thorough test but also more time consuming. Just like Lyris, they’ll give you your SpamAssassin score and let you know how close to spam your email is.

There are many applications out there to test your email; these are just a few to get you started. Continue to test different things with your email and content especially if you find any problems getting delivered to the inbox.

We also have free guides to help you, and for more anti-spam specifics, check out our webinar, How to Avoid the Spam Folder.

Have you checked out any recent email testing apps yet? Let us know in the comments.


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6 Email Subject Lines That Really Work

6 Email Subject Lines That Really Work. In this video Jesse Forrest shares how to write email subject lines that get opened. Email copywriting and email subject lines can get your emails opened and read.

15 Email Marketing Best Practices 2016

15 email marketing best practices 2016. Top tips for better conversions and more sales. 

In this video, you will learn about some of the best email marketing practices for boosting sales. The email marketing tips include things like shortening email lengths, using a tease in the subject line, subscribing to other top brands to learn how they email, etc. If you use all 15 of these, you will be much more likely to see a nice increase in email marketing ROI. Enjoy the video!

Email Deliverability: How to Make Sure You Land in the Inbox

No matter how amazing your email content might be, if it never reaches your subscriber’s inbox, all your work will forever go unnoticed. No one will find out about your products, you won’t gain that strong trust with your potential customers, and it will be extremely difficult to make a living with your online business. But finding your way into an inbox isn’t as simple as just sending an email. You have to take email deliverability into consideration.

When it comes to email marketing, email deliverability can be one of the most confusing concepts. So to help you know how to get your content from your email service provider (ESP) to your subscriber’s inbox, today I’m breaking down the basics of what email deliverability means, how it affects your sending, and how to increase your chances of good deliverability.

First off, there will be some words and concepts that might sound like gibberish to anyone new to this topic. If you fall in this category or just want a little refresher about what I’m talking about, here’s a handy cheat sheet of deliverability terms you can download now to reference as you read.

DOWNLOAD THE DELIVERABILITY TERMS CHEAT SHEET

What is email deliverability and how is it determined?

Deliverability is a partnership between your IP/domain reputation, your email content, and your subscribers' email provider. As an ESP, our goal at ConvertKit is to get you in the door, meaning inbox deliveries within email providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo. There are quite a few factors that determine how your email is filtered once it’s received by an Internet Service Provider (ISP), but your IP/domain reputation are likely the most determining factor on whether your messages are delivered into an inbox or a spam folder.

While your IP/domain reputations are determined through a combination of factors, research within our industry has shown that the most important factors are: Subscriber Engagement, Limiting Negative Metrics, Authentication, and Content. So let’s talk about how these four things come into play in terms of your email deliverability.

Subscriber Engagement

These days ISPs are paying close attention to how previous customers of that provider have interacted with email sent from your domain/IP. That means the future of your deliverability can depend on what your subscribers do with your emails right now.

For example, Gmail often will make assumptions on where to filter your email based on trends seen from their customers. That means if the majority of subscribers are deleting your emails without opening them, marking the messages as spam, or taking no action on it all, Gmail will make the determination to increase spam or promo folder filtering for your IP/domain and will lower your overall reputation with Gmail.

On the other hand, if a lot of people are opening and clicking (showing positive engagement), Gmail is more likely to deliver future messages from your domain and IP into their inbox. This makes it extremely important to make sure that subscribers are receiving email content they actually want and on an expected schedule established upon signing up for your email list.

Limiting Negative Metrics

High levels of user spam complaints and hard bounces can be the quickest way to go from good IP/domain reputation to bad. Spam complaints at high levels (> 0.3%) give email providers indicators that a marketer is potentially sending unsolicited content, which is a violation of CAN-Spam or CASL regulations . Marketers observed exhibiting this type of behavior will lose trust in the eyes of ISPs, which will typically result in very poor inbox placement levels.

When ISPs observe spikes in hard bounce levels this often raises questions about the marketer's list collection and hygiene (or cleaning) processes. Purchasing or using third party lists can often result in high levels of hard bounces based on the fact that many of these types of subscribers are un-verified. Many companies that provide these types of lists use web-scraping tools to gather email addresses from all over the Internet (many of which are spam traps), and they sell them to marketers that are looking to grow their client base. This is a huge ‘No-No' in the eyes of an ISP and will often result in drops in your reputation.

Sending to older segments of subscribers can also show spikes in hard bounce levels. A general rule of thumb is that if a subscriber or list hasn't been sent to in over a year, it's best to get rid of that group. While this can be a scary thought, as many marketers never want to throw away subscribers, we have to remember that ISPs value quality over quantity.

We have to always look at the big picture here. Sending to an older list may provide you with a small amount of conversions, but if it results in all of your Gmail subscribers receiving their email in their spam folder going forward, is it really worth it?

Authentication

ConvertKit offers assistance in setting up your SPF and DKIM records to align with sending through our platform. Whether you're sending your email through convertkit.com or through a custom domain setup (ck.yourdomain.com), we look to make sure that emails sent through your account show ‘Passes' for SPF and DKIM authentication levels.

Before an ISP delivers an email they first examine the email headers of that message, looking for permission for your domain to be sent across our IP addresses. If the SPF and DKIM records show failures within the message headers, your domain does not give permission for it to be sent across any of the IPs that are not stated within these records.

Here’s how it works:

By default when you get started with ConvertKit, you're sending on one of our sending domains. It usually looks something like ckmail2, 3, 4, etc. We have about five of these spread out among customers so multiple ConvertKit customers can be using the same sending domain. There are both benefits and disadvantages to how this affects you and your email deliverability.

If you're just starting to build your domain's reputation, using a sending domain other customers are using and have been using is a great thing. It quickly helps build up your reputation. However, it is possible that the consequences of another customer's poor sending practices can impact you negatively.

We have a lot of controls in place to prevent that from happening and we regularly redistribute our customers across our sending domains, but it’s still possible that a shared sending domain will negatively affect your deliverability.

For our customers who are most serious about deliverability, we offer a custom sending domain that allows you to rely solely on your own domain reputation. To find out more about custom sending domains and how to set one up, contact our Customer Success team.

Content

Your content plays a big role in how an email is delivered as well. Think of a typical newsletter you receive from a retailer, like Target or Bed, Bath and Beyond. They usually contain a ton of pictures with really complex HTML that almost mimics visiting their webpage in your browser. When Gmail sees messages like this, with primarily images and complex HTML, they will often filter it as a promotional email. At Convertkit, we put a major emphasis on simple emails like the ones you write to a friend, which helps us avoid those promo filters.

Simple, plain text emails are more likely to be delivered into a primary inbox, period. Even though we recommend sending plain text emails to improve your deliverability, there still aren't any absolute changes that can be made to guarantee inbox placement within the Primary Tab.

Recent studies have shown that the usage of Gmail Tabs has dropped to roughly 33% (a 66% decrease in users since 2013). The prevailing thought here is that this filtering will have less of an impact going forward because those Gmail users that are savvy enough to set this up are usually the same users that will routinely check these folders.

Now that you know what affects email deliverability, let’s increase your chances of hitting those primary inboxes, shall we? The four high level deliverability concepts we’ve covered can be broken down into actionable, daily takeaways. Here’s how…

10 email deliverability best practices

Email deliverability doesn’t have to be rocket science. There are very easy practices you can put into action every day and with every email you send to help increase your deliverability chances. Here are 10 (easily actionable) email deliverability best practices.

Don’t buy lists (Seriously, don’t be THAT lady)

Like I said earlier, purchasing and using third party lists will result in high levels of hard bounce based on the fact that many of these types of subscribers are un-verified. So while you have a big list of, let’s say 50,000 subscribers right up front, the trouble is that they didn’t choose to be on your list. A vast majority of those emails will go straight to the SPAM folder, many more will mark them as SPAM once they’re opened, and then another large number will unsubscribe immediately. So even if you’re left with a few thousand in the end, they aren’t people who are choosing to hear from you.

Create opt-in incentives that attract the right subscribers

Some opt-in offers are better than others when it comes to building an email list full of qualified subscribers. For example, because giveaways and freebies attract a wide range of people, you’ll most likely get a high volume of signups that will never open your later emails or might even move them to their spam folder. Their negative engagement can eventually end up sending your emails to other subscriber’s spam folders as well.

To combat this, make sure your opt-ins are always targeted to an audience that would be interested in your topic. You always want to be attracting readers who would likely open your emails and eventually become customers.

So if you’re planning on running a contest with giveaways, make sure you’re setting yourself up for the outcome. If you’re wanting to grow your list with a targeted audeince, create a giveaway that only that group will want. Or if you just want to get your name out there and build a large list, create a giveaway that will appeal to a wide audience.

Use simple design (Or none at all)

Like I said earlier in the content section, simple emails will always deliver better. Even when it comes to images or tables in your emails, too many will decrease your deliverability. You can read more about our theory on why text-based emails are the way to increase your email deliverability in our post Why Fancy Email Templates Aren’t the Answer.

Add alt text when you use images

Images in and of themselves are not bad. Everyone loves a beautiful picture or graphic and they often help convey a thought or point quicker than actual text. But when you use an image, make sure to write accurate alt text or title instead of simply using the image’s file name. This way if an image gets blocked for any reason, a reader will still know what your image is. This also helps prove that a human sent the email instead of a spam robot.

How to- After you’ve added an image to your email in ConvertKit, click the image again and then click the edit button that pops up. In the edit box, write a title for that image that describes what is happening in your image, ie- your call to action, the details of a promotion.

Watch out for these trigger words

Sadly, because of those spammers out there, there are some words that have developed a bad wrap. When used in subject lines for emails, these trigger words can signal the possibility of spam and usually will send an email straight to the abyss. Here are a couple of those words to avoid in your email subject lines (and your content, if you can):

• Free
• Financial freedom
• Make money online
• Credit card offer
• Cash bonus
• Apply now
• $$$
• Weight loss
• Order now
• Price
• Increase sales

Enable double opt-in for all new subscribers

Setting up the double opt-in process adds an extra layer of subscriber qualification for you. If a subscriber clicks through a double opt-in:

• You can confirm every subscriber so your list is more accurate. That means if there's a typo in their entry they won't end up clogging up your list with email addresses that will ultimately fail.
• They are confirming interest and are more likely to open your emails in the long run, which improves your deliverability rankings.
• You know they are not fake subscribers and spammers with false email addresses that can ultimately affect your monthly fees.

With ConvertKit, setting up a double opt-in process is as easy as clicking a button.

Set up a custom sending domain

Again, setting up a custom domain for your reply-to email address will increase your deliverability. That means your days of using freemail like Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo are over. Learn how to setup your custom sending domain with ConvertKit: contact our amazing Customer Success team.

Keep a clean list

No matter how exciting or targeted your content is, there will always be a group of subscribers who aren’t engaged with your emails. Since those unopens can affect your email deliverability, it’s a good idea to run a re-engagement email sequence every 90 days to filter out what we call cold subscribers. Cleaning out your subscriber list will help it be healthy and high quality (plus, you’ll save money).

Ask subscribers to move emails from their spam or promo folder to their inbox

Sometimes email to new subscribers end up in their spam folder for reasons beyond your control. If those subscribers end up getting in contact with you asking where the email went, ask them to check their spam folder and take a second to move that email from the spam folder to their inbox. It might sound like a silly request, but doing this teaches that ESP that your email actually belongs in the inbox. Doing this will not only help with that particular subscriber's emails, but it will also help similar users whose emails might be ending up in spam as well.

Optimize your email subject lines

The last thing I want to mention that often gets mistaken for a deliverability issue is the subject line. While a subject line could potentially impact deliverability, it has it's greatest impact on engagement. A subject line is the first and sometimes only thing a subscriber reads of your email. If it doesn't clearly communicate what the email is going to be about and entice them to open it, then they won’t. Subject lines are often the simplest thing to tweak that have the greatest impact on opens and clicks.

Tools you can use to help check your email deliverability

Ready to start increasing your chances of optimized email deliverability? To find out where you stand right now, there are a couple tools you can check out. MailTester and GlockApps both test against Spam Assassin to tell you how your emails are delivering.

Once you’ve got that information you can start putting all those email deliverability best practices I talked about into place. Then it’s time to watch those clicks and conversion rate numbers rise.

Deliverability Terms Cheat Sheet

Blacklist-This is a list of IP addresses of known spammers, or “spam friendly” servers. If your IP address is on the list, it won't let your email through.

CAN-Spam – Short for ‘Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003,' this law outlines rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, provides email recipients with the right to make you stop emailing them, and lays out consequences for violations of the Act.

CASL regulations- This is Canada’s anti-spam legislation. It’s similar to CAN-SPAM in that it protects consumers against receiving unwanted email but different in that it is much more specific about permission and what is considered “opt-in”.

Domain– Similar to an IP Address, domain names refer to locations of servers and devices connected to the Internet. Domain names can represent many different IP addresses.

Domain Name System (DNS)- DNS is an Internet service that translates domain names into IP addresses.

Domainkeys Identified Mail (DKIM)- DKIM was designed to prevent domain spoofing, or someone pretending to send from your email domain, when they really aren't. DKIM uses cryptographic authentication, which means the records we generate will be unique to you and your domain. Read more about DKIM here.

Double opt-in– With a double opt-in a user is sent an email with a confirmation link after they initially opt-in to your list. After the user clicks the link, they are added to the ongoing email communication. This is a recommended way to build a healthy email marketing list.

Email service provider (ESP)- ESPs provide platforms to send commercial and transactional email on your behalf. ConvertKit is an ESP.

Hard bounce–  A hard bounce means that the email address is invalid and should not be sent to again. The email might belong to an unknown user, the content of your email might have triggered their spam filter, or the server might have seen too many other contacts marking your email as spam. When a contact’s email returns a hard bounce, they will be marked as ineligible the next time you include them in a send.

Internet Service Providers (ISP)- ISPs provide mailboxes to end users as part of their paid services. These are generally your cable or Internet providers, such as Comcast and Verizon.

IP Address- A number that uniquely identifies any device connected to the Internet. “IP” stands for “Internet Protocol.” Similar to how a street address helps people find buildings, an IP Address helps computers find each other on the Internet.

Open rate- The percentage of recipients who opened your email message. When someone clicks on an email, an image pixel in the email loads and is counted as an open.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF)- SPF was specifically created to protect against sender address forgery – spammers pretending to send emails as you. An SPF record in your DNS Settings gives email providers something to check, to make sure the emails are really coming from you. Read more about SPF here.

Sender score/reputation- This is basically your rating as an email sender. Return Path’s sender score tool is a free reputation rating tool that rates your outgoing mail server IP on a scale of 0-100. It’s used by mail servers, allowing them to quickly sort email IPs and decide what to do with your email. A sender score that is + 90 is considered a good sender score.

Single opt-in– If an email marketer uses a single opt-in, this usually involves taking a user's form entry and immediately adding that person to a live email list.

Soft Bounce – A soft bounce means that the email temporarily failed to reach its intended recipient. The email will be resent for up to 72 hours or until it’s either successfully delivered or it fails more permanently. Recipients that return soft bounces will still be eligible for future email sends.

Spam complaints (Marked as Spam)- This is the number of contacts that actively marked your email as spam. Contacts that mark your email as spam are automatically unsubscribed from all of your email. Please be aware that Marked as Spam is not the same as an email going into a spam or bulk email folder.

Spam trap/Honeypot– A planted email address designed to catch spammers. For a time, email that hits a dead email address will return a hard bounce. When the mail server sees continued traffic going to the dead address, it can turn the email into a spam trap, accept the email, and report the sender as a spammer.

Whitelist– The opposite of a blacklist, this means your server is considered spam-free or is an “approved sender.” It’s often used by email applications to allow users to mark whether or not they trust emails from specific senders, this overrides some of the filtering that may exist from the ISP. You can also apply for whitelisting programs that a few ISPs offer. While not a guarantee to end up in the inbox, a sender may receive preferred delivery as long as they stay within the proper thresholds of the program.

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