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Email Deliverability - Are Your Emails Making it to the Inbox?

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#12
I will start with saying I am new to this site. This is quite an old post and I am not sure if anyone will see this but I have a little in put on the subject if I may.

1. Email Blasting: Anytime you do an email blast as a company you want the campaign to be hosted WAY AWAY from your in house addresses and website. You actually want no affiliation other than the content of the email. You want your name, your address, your number, your product ads (EX: Newsletter, illustration, or text), and a VERY CLEAR unsubscribe button.
  • Reasoning: You can only be spammed so many time before your address will be black listed. If the address is black listed any and all addresses connected to it are black listed as well. This means your company will never be able to send another email that doesn't go into junk or spam ever again under the same name.
2. Getting Around Blacklist: The way around this is simple. You acquire hosting under a totally different name on a totally different server. You will run your campaigns through this separate IP. You will need multiple IP addresses in this new account if you wish to send at any rate of speed. I recommend 4 to 6 to be exact. This will allow you to send around 100,000 (some more some less) every 24 hours or so. Which is plenty in most markets.
  • Reasoning: When you burn this address (and you will) you simply close the IP's connected to it and get new ones. You never have to miss a beat with your campaigns.
3. Getting around being Spam: This is really simple guys. When you send out your emails you need to be as personal as you can be. When you receive an email most of time it will have your name on it or your buddy's, it will have FWD: RE: and then the subject in front of it, and the sender if from a vendor will always be from a info@ or service@ etc etc. This is detrimental in getting through the system. It looks for these things. When you send it out and it has FW: RE: (Forward Reply) and the customers name (Mary Smith), and the inside is labeled with there name as well most times you will get through.
  • Reasoning: When the system sees the FW: RE: it knows they get those all the time and it looks to have been opened and resent to you, then it sees there name and it knows that its there account, then there name is inside of the message as well it becomes personal and goes through. They get emails like that all the time. It's not "out of the ordinary" so the system most likely won't catch it. It really is all about personalization.
4. Getting them to open the email: The email is worthless if they don't open it and see your message. When you send it to them you again want it to be personal. Put the FW: RE: then there name.
  • Reasoning: If you get an email with your name on it that has been replied to and forwarded to you most likely you will at least open it and see what's going on.
5.The right message: This is an art. You can do this easily by tracking. Send out an email to a specific group of 100,000 (made that number up). Send the group individual emails of each one of your products. (EX: Focus, Fusion, F-150 etc etc ) Track through out each campaign who opens it. Then which product they actually clicked on. (EX: Mary Smith at [email protected] clicked on the fusion and the focus)Then you put that person in the car group. If they clicked on trucks do accordingly.

  • Reasoning: You can now send Mary Smith any and all information about cars because you now know that its what shes interested in. You can send Paul Smith information about trucks because you know that about him now too. This is a way to really get interactive with your customers and do directional advertising. Not only making sure you get the message to the customer, but getting the RIGHT message to them.
I could go on and on but I don't want to over do it. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me at 361-676-9166. I am the Owner / Partner of Patriotic Marketing.
 
#16
I'm thinking overall it's about the same. As @umer.autojini suggested way back when - this is still great advice: Checkout Return Paths SendScore.org provide a quick blacklist check... email yourself from your CRM - a one to one and campaigns, since they are usually on seperate IP's. Most CRM's are using several email IP's so be sure to obtain all of them and then run it through SendScore.org.

We are seeing a hand full of industry CRM's place some restrictions on who a dealer can market to via email. Be sure to check out https://forum.dealerrefresh.com/threads/does-your-crm-have-the-right-to-hijack-your-data.5625/
 
#17
Welcome back Alex! Great bump on a great topic.

Matt and Brandon, you have some helpful advice. Here are a few quick updates for 2018.

1. You can run, but you can't really hide.
If you try sending all of your emails from a fresh service/IP/etc., thinking that you can leave your old sending reputation behind, it won't always work. The reason is that email companies (Yahoo, Gmail, etc.) look at the email content as well as the sender's email. (That's why the word "Via*gra" gets flagged no matter who sends it.) If you've managed to trash your sending reputation with bulk emails that link to YourDealership.com - emails at your new service that link to the same site will often have problems as well.

2. Sending relevant email content to people who are interested never goes out of style. Great advice.

3. Adding FW and RE to a subject line was an option to improve open rates, but now it is considered deceptive. Studies have shown that the first time you use it you may get a lift, but the second time it kills your results because people are on to your ploy.

For those of you who want to see what your email sender reputation, check out the free rating service offered by senderscore.org - just plug in your IP address, and it will give you a rating.
 
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#19
I am going to "try" to be as short as possible.

1. Check your emails (especially one-to-one out of your CRM) by making dummy email accounts on major email providers (aol, yahoo, gmail, etc.) and this should be repeated monthly (and always make a new inbox). This should be done on all templates - We have noticed large ebrochure emails that are heavy with images and links will always be filtered into SPAM/JUNK/PROMOTIONS.

2. Get yourself a dedicated IP for large email campaigns. Most email marketing companies offer this as an add-on (Mailchimp/Mandrill, etc.). Make sure you monitor your IP reputation score and that it never falls below 98%.

3. Day/Time - This is a big part of your success. You don't want to be sending emails when everyone else is doing the same; this will increase the percentage of deletes (without open), SPAM flagging, etc. Open up a dummy email account and sign up to companies that you believe your customers may get promotional emails from such as Priceline, Orbitz, Home Depot, Loews, WalMart, Macy's, Saks, Neiman Marcus, Fry's, Gap, etc. and make sure you time your emails to be sent during the lightest part of the day; this will increase engagement and open rate and will ultimately help with your reputation.

Here are some points from a company that we work with that has a lot of knowledge on email marketing campaigns:

1. Low Open Rate - If your emails are not being opened or are being deleted without opening this will affect your campaign.
2. Spam Complaints - Once users start marking your emails as SPAM then your emails will begin to automatically end up there or be blocked entirely. This is why you MUST have your own IP and outgoing email server so you can monitor the amount of emails being marked as SPAM, Bounced, etc.
3. Your Email List - Inbox's monitor your campaigns and if your emailing bad addresses this will hurt your reputation and will cause your emails to end up in places other than the INBOX. Make sure you are cleaning your email list from people that have not engaged in awhile or have inactive email accounts, bad emails, etc.
4. Physical Address/Unsubscribe Link - Make sure these are in all of your emails.
5. HTML vs TEXT - If you are using text emails then you have nothing to worry about (outside of a lower engagement rate). For those who use HTML formatted emails you better make sure your html is (1) code is simple & clean (2) max width of 600x800 pixels (3) mobile optimized (4) image to text ratio is good (don't send a bunch of images with no text) (5) Images are optimized for mobile (6) don't use crazy fonts
6. "Bad" Words - Don't use these words in your emails as they are flagged words considered to be possible spam.
  • amazing, cancel at any time, check or money order, click here, congratulations, dear friend, for only ($), free or toll-free, great offer, guarantee, increase sales, order now, promise you, risk free, special promotion, this is not spam, winner
Here are some sites to check your IP and Email Rating:

http://www.emailreach.com/
http://isnotspam.com/
 
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