Interviews
An interview with Mikael Eliasson, London-based photographer
In this interview, Mikael, a London-based photographer, shares his passion for photography, his process, and the challenges he faces in the industry.
In this interview we talk with Brian Minick about email deliverability and preventing your messages from hitting spam folders.
Irena is an experienced Content and Email Marketer who loves animals, slow mornings, and all things Tolkien.
For anyone who relies on sending emails for their business, the battle to get your emails read sometimes seems impossible. Sending emails and having your emails read are not one and the same, and challenges range from ensuring accurate and active email addresses to testing, monitoring, and optimizing each send. This is where email deliverability comes in.
But never fear - there are proven strategies to improve your chances of winning the battle for the inbox and increasing email revenue. ZeroBounceās COO Brian Minick is here to share some of these strategies with you.
Thereās a bit of confusion around this term and you probably see it used interchangeably with āemail delivery.ā Hereās the difference:
Deliverability is not just the content or images you have in the message. It is not only how often you send. It is how good you look while maneuvering from point A to point B and also making sure that point B (the end-user) exists!
Itās not just āimportantā, it is probably the single biggest piece of email marketing. If you send 1 million emails and none reach the inbox, it was all a waste of time and budget. You have to do everything in your power for your messages to be delivered to the inbox.
To drive revenue from email marketing, you have to be seen first. Without inbox placement, your campaign cannot perform at its best. In making sure you land in the inbox, sometimes you have to evaluate your list and double-check that youāre sending to good contacts. Once youāre delivering, your open rates will increase and you can drive more revenue.
That having more subscribers is better. Having a list of 1 million contacts is great, and an accomplishment. But how long did it take you to accumulate that? Did you get the contacts in the right way? Most likely, out of those 1 million contacts, 20-40% of them are bad now.
Sending to 1 million with 20% bad contacts is much worse than sending to 800,000 clean contacts in the first place.
Itās because getting bounces, hitting spam traps, or getting spam complaints causes your sender score to decrease. Internet service providers use this score to direct your email to either the personās inbox, or the spam folder, or not to deliver the email at all. This is when your results plummet. Email senders canāt afford to have their reputations tarnished. And the easiest way to ruin your reputation is to ignore data decay.
Your list decreases in quality every single day. You add a new contact to your list today and tomorrow that email may not be good anymore. Itās frustrating. At the same time, keeping your email list fresh isnāt that hard. The reward is worth it: better reputation and inbox placement, higher metrics and a better ROI.
Build your list the right way. Collect emails by using double opt-in procedures, to ensure the person giving you the email address is real and actually wants your emails.
Make sure your sending reputation is in good shape. Check for your domain on a blacklist, or your IP address. Also, check your mail server configuration. If there are critical errors, fix them. Validate your list and remove the bad and risky contacts. Theyāre not worth it.
Give your customers good opt-outs/unsubscribes. If I donāt see an unsubscribe button, I mark you as spam. This is really bad for your reputation, and no, I donāt feel bad doing it. Itās fine that you sent me a message, but when you send me something that has no relevance and you donāt give me a way to stop getting it, I have no remorse. Unsubscribes play a crucial part in your overall engagement rates. The mail servers see it just as any other click. So, give people easy ways to opt-out.
Make sure you are using a reputable sender. They should also have good support and know-how to guide you to make sure youāre as successful as possible.
Send test emails and make sure that they are checking the boxes and getting into the inbox. If you have to pull your own emails out of spam, so do your subscribers. So, see if you should maybe find another provider.
Iād say: donāt worry. It doesnāt always work for everyone right away. Start looking at every little piece to understand what you might be missing. Is it your list ā maybe it needs pruning? Could it be your content? Or perhaps you didnāt choose the best email provider?
Whatever it is thatās holding you back, you can fix it. And if you canāt, ask for help! You can always reach out to me and our team at ZeroBounce. Weāre available 24/7 to guide you, not just on cleaning your list and landing your emails in the inbox. Drop us a line in the live chat and someone will help you right away.
Related: ZeroBounce CEO Liviu Tanase talks about his career and living in California.