Do you know where your signups are?

laura
Industry
July 19, 2016

Here at Word to the Wise we sign up for a lot of email from our customers. There are multiple reasons we do this.

Engagement starts before the first email

These days the key to getting to the inbox is sending mail your users want and expect. We always recommend senders start the engagement process during signup. Why? Because it establishes the relationship even before email happens. People want to like the vendors and brands they interact with. A key part of that is making the recipient feel special and like they have value to you.
There are other benefits to engaging before email. The biggest is the opportunity for the recipient to look in the bulk folder for mail. When a user says “this is not spam” by moving mail to the inbox, that whitelists the mail for that user. Even better, that acts as a big positive for the email’s overall reputation. Positive signals feed into the machine learning engines and change reputation for the better.

Broken signup forms

One thing that always amazes me is the number of broken signup forms there are online. Even when the senders have effective email programs, sometimes there’s a problem with the signup.
We’ve found some recurring problems during our signup experiences.
Signup forms are hard to find. For some systems this is OK, the signups happen during checkout, for instance. But every company sending non-transactional mail to their customers should make it possible to sign up for mail without making a purchase. Make the sign up form visible!
“Rogue” signup forms. At some point site design changes and new forms are added. Occasionally an older signup form isn’t deleted and subscriptions sorta happen, but the welcome messages are sent from a system no one is aware of still being active. In other cases, the forms looked like they worked, but addresses were never added to lists. Check all signup pathways regularly!
Going through the signup process tells me a lot about an email program. Deliverability problems often start at the point of address collection.
When was the last time you signed up at your site?

The source of deliverability problems

Most deliverability problems don’t start where many people think they do. So very often people call looking for deliverability help and tell me all about the things they’re doing to reach the inbox. They’ll tell me about content, they’ll tell me about bounces, they’ll talk about complaints, engagement, opens and clicks. Rarely will they bring up their list source without some prompting on my part.

The reality is, though, that list source is to root of deliverability success and deliverability problems. Where did those addresses come from and what do the people who gave them think you’re going to do with them?
Outsourcing collection to a third party can cause significant issues with delivery. Letting other people collect addresses on your behalf means you lack control over the process. And if you’re paying per address, then there monetary incentive for that company to pad the list with bogus addresses.
Sometimes there are even issues with having your own employees collect addresses from customers. For instance, a retailer requires sales associates collect a minimum percentage of addresses from customers. The company even ties the associates’ evaluations to that percentage. Associates have an incentive to submit addresses from other customers. Or a retailer will offer a discount for an address and customers want the discount but not the mail, so they give a fake address.
All of these things can affect deliverability.
Address collection is the key to delivery, but too many companies just don’t put enough attention to how they’re collecting addresses and entering into the relationship with subscribers. This is OK for a while, and delivery of small lists collected like this can be great. But as lists grow in size, they come under greater scrutiny at the ISPs and what used to work doesn’t anymore.
The first step to diagnosing any delivery problem is to look at the list. All of the things ISP use to measure reputation measure how well you’re collecting addresses. Changing IPs or domains or content doesn’t change the reason mail is being filtered. It just means the filters have to figure out something new to key on.
Want great deliverability? Start with how you’re collecting addresses.
Want to fix deliverability? Start with how you’ve collected addresses, how you’ve stored them and how you’ve maintained them.

My panels from #EEC16

I had the privilege to be a part of two panels at EEC16, with some of the best folks in the business.
The first panel was “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Deliverability, but Were Afraid to Ask.”
We had a lot of great audience questions.
The first question, which was awesome (and I don’t think planted) was: “What is the most important thing we can do to improve our deliverability?”
All of us had really similar answers: pay attention to your data and your acquisition. Deliverability starts with your data: good data = good deliverability, poor data = poor deliverability. How you acquire addresses is vital to any email program.
I’ve had dozens of sales calls with potential clients over the years. Most of them tell me lots of stuff about their marketing program. I hear details of engagement, data hygiene, response rates, CTRs, bounce handling. But very, very few people spontaneously tell me how they’re acquiring addresses. That’s so backwards. Start with acquiring addresses the right way. Deliverability is all in the acquisition step. Of course, you need to nurture and care for those subscribers, sent the right message at the right time and all the good things we talk about. None of that matters if you don’t start with good data.
Another question was about spamtraps. The panel had me take this one. I’ve written extensively about spamtraps and what they do and what they mean. The important thing to remember, though, is that a spamtrap is a signal. If you have spamtraps on your list, then there is a problem with your data acquisition. Somehow, people are getting addresses that do not belong to them on the list.
Spamtraps are a problem, but not for the reasons many people think they are problems. Folks get upset when their mail is blocked because of spamtraps. Blocking isn’t the only damage, though. For every spamtrap on a list that is one less responsive addresses. It’s one customer who you are not reaching. If there are spamtraps on a list, it’s likely there are deliverable addresses that don’t belong to your customers, too. These recipients are going to view that mail as spam. They didn’t sign up, they didn’t ask for it, they don’t want it. They’re going to complain, hurting your reputation. Too many of these recipients and delivery will suffer.
Spamtraps are a warning that something is wrong. That something is usually your data acquisition process.
Questions went on through the session and ranged from things like how to get mail to B2B inboxes and is there value in certification. We also had some insightful questions about authentication.
The second panel I was on was the closing keynote panel: “ISP Postmasters & Blacklist Operators: Defending Consumer Inboxes.” This was where I got to show my incoming mail chops, a bit. I was a last minute fill in for the panel and I am honored that Dennis and Len thought I could represent the incoming mail folks. It’s not like I’m out there writing filters, but I do pay attention to what the filter operators are saying and doing.
I think it is important for marketers to get a feel for what’s really going on at the ISPs. They aren’t trying to stop real mail, they’re trying to stop malicious mail. Matt from Comcast talked a lot about how marketers and ISPs share customers and the ISPs are trying to keep those customers safe and happy. Jaren discussed some of the decision making processes his company goes through deciding whether to err on the side of letting spam through or filtering good mail. Tom discussed how his blocklist works with some brands to help stop phishing attacks against those brands.
Overall, I think the session was a great success. The conference was great and I am looking forward to going back next year.
Were you at either panel? What did you think?
+eddc

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