Don't forget the strategy

We’re two days out from the beginning of the Holiday Shopping Season here in the US. Three days out from one of the biggest retail shopping days of the year in the US. 5 days out from one of the biggest online shopping days of the year.
I’m sure everyone has their mail campaigns planned. Most of the messages are finished, just waiting for a tweak or the exact right image.
The challenge, during this time of year, is to actually think strategically about marketing. The challenge is to pay attention to what subscribers and ISPs are telling you. The challenge is to adapt to conditions on the ground, rather than just executing a strategy planned months ago.
I often joke that my job gets quiet around this time of the year. Most of my clients and customers are busy executing their strategy, not planning it. So much mail is being slung around that no one really has time to do any thinking about it. That is, of course, a gross exaggeration, smart email marketers are always considering strategy even as they’re in the middle of the holiday mailing season.  They still pay attention, they adapt to the conditions, they get the mail through.
Just remember, 2016 is almost over. But we still have a lot of email to send first.

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Changing deliverability thinking

Almost every email marketing program, at least those sending millions of emails per campaign, have delivery problems at one time or another. The problems seem random and unpredictable. Thus most marketers think that they can only address delivery problems, they can’t prepare or prevent them.
On the delivery side, though, we know deliverability problems are predictable. There are situations and events in a company’s marketing program that increase deliverability risks.
I talked a little bit about this with Derek Harding at a recent conference. I started talking about my ideas that deliverability is not random and that companies need to stop treating it as unpredictable.  He pulled together a great article from our discussions. Head over to ClickZ to read about it: Take control of your email deliverability.

The predictability of deliverability is something I’m going to be writing more about in the coming months. This is, I think, the next challenge for email marketers. Figuring out how to incorporate deliverability into their overall marketing strategy. Successful programs need to take ownership of getting to the inbox. Deliverability isn’t an emergency, because it’s been planned for and managed throughout a program.

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Holiday mailing advice from mailbox providers

Christine Borgia has a post on the Return Path blog where she interviews a number of different groups (spamfilters, DNSBLs, mailbox providers) about their filtering strategy for the holidays. Overall, no one changes their filtering during the Holiday Mailing Season. On the other hand, many marketers do change their marketing strategies in ways that trigger more filtering and blocking.
The take home message? Pay attention to what is being sent and who it is being sent to. This is nothing new, but many marketers seem to forget it in the effort to get into their customers’ inboxes.

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Tell me about your business model

talkingforblogI posted Friday about how most deliverability folks roll their eyes when a sender starts talking about their business model.
The irony is that one of the first things I do with a client is ask them to tell me about their business model and how email fits into their business plan. Once I know that, I can help them improve their email sending to meet the requirements of ISPs, blocklists and recipients.
While most deliverability people don’t care about your business model, for me it’s essential that I understand it. I want to hear about it, all the details. Tell me about what you’re doing and together we’ll craft a strategy to make email work for you in your unique situation.
We have one goal for every client: their email gets to the inbox. But no two clients have the same problems so we tailor our advice specifically for their unique situation. We don’t have a 3-ring binder that we read a standard answer from when clients ask for recommendations for their email strategy. We use our own knowledge of email and our history in the industry to craft unique solutions to deliverability problems.
Your business model is disruptive? Great! We can help you get those disruptive emails into their inbox.
You have a niche social platform that uses email as part of your growth strategy? We’ll make sure users and future users see your email in their inboxes.
You have a SaaS platform and you want customers to be able to use email to communicate with their customers? We’ll help you craft the right policy for your business.
You’re a retail company and struggle to reach the inbox consistently? We’ve helped dozens of companies navigate email challenges. We’ve helped clients figure out how to effectively capture addresses at point of sale in brick and mortars. We’ve helped clients restructure their entire data flow.
We can help you too.
You bring us your business model and we’ll create a comprehensive strategy that gets your email into the inbox. What’s more, we’ll help you understand what factors relate to inbox delivery and train you how to handle most issues on your own. Once we’ve got you set up, a process that takes 3 – 6 months, you have everything you need to run an email program. Even better, when those rare, complicated issues come up we’ve got your back and can get your emails delivering to the inbox again.
 

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