Deliverability is critical for marketing

It is increasingly clear that successful email marketing programs measure and emphasize deliverability. No longer is deliverability the crisis management team called when everything breaks. They’re part and parcel of an effective email marketing team.
Today I watched a bit of the EIS livestream where acquisition marketers were discussing their processes. Everyone of them talked about things that are critical for deliverability as core to their business.

  1. Engagement is key. Sending mail to folks who want the mail and who will interact with the mail is vital for delivery success.
  2. Focus on quality of addresses not the quantity of addresses. Sending mail to every address that shows up is a recipe for failure.
  3. Each address represents a person. An address itself is a bunch of electrons, the value of an address is the person who reads it.

These are all delivery fundamentals.
It’s nice to hear the marketers are starting to understand how important deliverability is.

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Thinking about deliverability

I was chatting with folks over on one of the email slack channels today. The discussion was about an ESP not wanting to implement a particular change as it would hurt deliverability. It led me down a path of thinking about how we think of deliverability and how that informs how we approach email.
The biggest problem I see is the black and white thinking.
There’s an underlying belief in the deliverability, receiving, and filtering communities  that the only way to affect sending behavior is to block (or threaten to block) mail.

This was true back in the ancient times (the late 90’s). We didn’t have sophisticated tools and fast CPUs. There weren’t a lot of ways to handle bad mail other than to block. Now the landscape is different. We have many more tools and the computing capacity to quickly sort large streams of data.
At most places these days, blocking is an escalation, not a warning shot. Many places rate limit and bulk folder questionable mail as a first strike against problem mail. Sometimes the mail is bad enough to result in a block. Other times, it’s not bad enough to block, so it disappears into the bulk folder.
There’s a corresponding belief in the sending community that if their behavior doesn’t result in blocking then they’re acting acceptably. This isn’t true either. There are a lot of things you can do (or not do) that don’t help delivery, but will actively harm delivery. Likewise, there are things you can do that don’t actively harm delivery, but will help. All of these things add up to reaching the inbox.

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Inbox challenges and dull email in the tabbed inbox

Getting to the inbox is becoming a greater and greater challenge for many marketers. According to Return Path, 22% of opt in mail doesn’t make it to the inbox.
The challenge to marketers is that a lot of opt in mail isn’t important to the recipient. Sure, they’re happy enough to get it if they notice it, but if it’s not there then they don’t care. They’ll buy from an email ad, but it might not be something they’ll seek out. Recipient behaviour tells the ISPs that the mail isn’t all that important, and a lot of it is just background noise so the ISP not delivering it to the inbox doesn’t matter.
Email marketing is like the Girl Scout of the Internet. If the Girl Scout shows up at your doorstep, you’re probably going to buy those 3 boxes of thin mints. But if she doesn’t, that’s OK. If you really want the cookies, you’ll find the co-worker who is taking orders for his daughter. Or you’ll find the table outside the local coffee shop. The Girl Scout showing up on your doorstep makes it more convenient, but she’s not critical to get your fix. Of course, the bonus of the Girl Scout on the doorstep is that a lot of people who won’t go find the cookies will buy when she’s on the doorstep.
A lot of email marketing triggers purchases that recipients would make anyway. They think they might want a particular product, and when they get that coupon or discount or even just a reminder they make the purchase. The email triggers the purchase of a product the buyer intends to purchase anyway. Some email marketing trigger purchases of things the recipient didn’t know existed, but is so enticing after one email they can’t live without. Some email marketing triggers an impulse purchase. In most of these categories, if mail doesn’t show up in the inbox, the recipient really doesn’t miss it.
Many marketers, despite loud protests that all their mail is important and wanted, know this. That’s why so many marketers are having conniptions about the new Gmail tabbed inbox. They’re losing access to the impulse.
From the data I’ve seen, tabs are effecting email marketing programs. Some programs are seeing more revenue, some are seeing less. I think it really remains to be seen what the long term effects are. For many recipients the new tabbed inbox is a new way to interact with their email. Change is hard, and there is a period of adaptation whenever an interface changes. We really don’t know what the long term effect of tabs on sales will be. Sales may go back to previous levels, sales may increase over previous levels, sales may decrease from current levels or sales may stay at their current levels. The full effect isn’t going to be obvious for a while.
It does mean, though, that email marketers need to step up their game. Email marketing in the age of a tabbed inbox might be less about the impulse purchase and more about cultivation and long term branding.
 
 
 

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Conversations with spammers

It’s amazing how many spammers try and fool deliverability into accepting a questionable list. All too often they fall back on a story. The basic points: a company you’ve never heard of collected millions of email addresses on a website hosted on a low end VPS.

I’ve never heard of your company. We’re just that much better at marketing. This list is guaranteed 100% opt in. Subscribers are desperate to hear from us. The mail is vital and important. We had some problems at our last ESP, but that’s just because they don’t understand our business model. And we had a brief problem with complaints. But they weren’t real complaints. Our competitors are signing up for the list and complaining to hurt out business. It’s not a list problem, it’s that we’re so dominant they have to subvert us. That’s just because we’re that much better at their jobs than anyone else.
You’re looking for deliverability help. Well, yeah, sometimes Gmail delivery is bad, but that’s simply because we won’t pay Google money for advertising. Google is so afraid of us they deliberately filter all this spectacularly wanted email into the bulk folder. They have problems with us as a business. Oh, and we might, sometimes, occasionally have a minor problem with Yahoo. But, again, it’s because we threaten them and they don’t want to have to compete on a level playing field.
If they’re a potential customer, I tell them about our services and offer a proposal. Once some company I’ve never heard of tells me their bad delivery is because global companies are afraid of them, there’s really nothing I can do. They’re unlikely to listen to me explain reality to them.
Sometimes, though, this conversation happens because I’m consulting for an ESP or an Agency. They’ve brought me in to discuss deliverability with a customer or vendor. In those cases, it’s my job to keep going.
Your site doesn’t actually have a signup form. That’s because we’re in the middle of an upgrade cycle and had some problems with the back end. [Alternative: We stopped collecting new email addresses because of their deliverability problems and removed the form.] Your site has a signup form, and I signed up, but never got any mail from you. We disconnected the signup form while we handle our deliverability problems. [Alternative: That shouldn’t happen. We can forward you some messages instead.] I have received spam advertising your company. We had a rogue affiliate that we discovered was spamming and we cut them off.
No, this is direct from your IP space. Oh, well, you must have opted in and forgotten about it. [Alternative: We had a rogue sales guy, but we fired him for spamming.] Your company has only been in business for 3 years, this is an address I haven’t used since the ’90s. Oh, we probably bought a company that you opted into and so have permission that way.
That’s not really permission. Of course it is!
OK…. How can I help you. We want you to call Google / Yahoo / Hotmail and tell them we’re really a legitimate company that’s sending content and we shouldn’t be in the bulk folder.
What have you changed? Nothing! Why would we change anything? We’re great marketers. We have all these plans but need to get back to the inbox before we can implement them.
Um… there’s no filter setting for “laura says they’re a good sender.” They’re going to look for new sending patterns so let’s change a few things. Well, we recently removed 2/3 of our database, but it made no difference so we don’t know what else you think we can do.
Let’s talk about your technical setup.

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