Author: Angelos Georgakis

Interview with Adobe Deliverability Expert Jon Burke

Email Deliverability

Last weekend I had the honour to host Jon Burke who is an Email Deliverability Consultant at Adobe. Did you know that Adobe could be your ESP? Yep, there isn’t only Mailchimp guys. 🙂

We covered a lot in this Q&A with Jon (he crushed it) and the video could have been longer if I had remembered to press record when he had to call me back due to connection issues. Damn me! Anyway, we’ll do another video with Jon in the near future.

Highlights of the video: 

  1. You have to build your own reputation when sending bulk emails. No Adobe, Amazon, Drip (they claim they have 99% deliverability or something), or any ESP can save you. If you send spam or if you send emails that people don’t bother to read, the IP reputation will not get to their inbox.
  2. Domain Authentication is required to show that you are a legitimate sender sending from your own domain or your ESP sending on behalf of your domain. By the way, remember that if you receive emails with SPF or DKIM authentication doesn’t mean that they are not spammy emails. Spammers can also set up authentication for their domains which may resemble other legitimate domains just to get your attention (spoofing). This is an awesome article which shows what spammers can do, brilliant!
  3. The List-Unsubscribe header is very important for your campaigns. Check out with your ESP on how you can implement this. Most ESP’s set this up by default. Make sure you give priority to the mail-to header as per Laura on WttW.
  4. Place an Unsubscribe link on the top of your content because they reason you’re getting complaints is that people can’t probably find your unsubscribe link down there in tiny 6 font! Make it easy for people to unsubscribe, how many times do I have to say that? Jon said that lately Hotmail and Microsoft penalise senders more when somebody marks their emails as spam. Laura said that too not long ago.
  5. Check your emails with different email clients (seed lists) to see how the email is rendered if you’re using HTML code, where does the email land, ie. inbox, spam, etc. For testing purposes, remember it’s better to use real peoples’ addresses rather than brand new email accounts as the ISP filters use machine learning algorithms to learn how to classify emails according to a specific user’s previous actions (based on experience in machine learning terms).

Enjoy the video with Jon.

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Tips and Tricks for those who use Aweber

Email Service Providers

Do you use Aweber? Just a few killer tips here.

Delete Duplicate Subscribers from your List

I know some of you have the same person (email address) in more than one Aweber list. Why? Because you probably use more than one opt-ins and offer different resources/downloads as part of opting-in. So, after they opt-in they get added to a separate list with different follow-up series.

In certain cases, you have a reason to keep them in multiple lists because each list has a totally separate funnel journey. In other cases, having them on the same or multiple lists makes no difference so you may consider removing duplicate addresses. Remember, Aweber charges for the total number of subscribers in all your lists without looking at duplicates.

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List Cleaning Secrets

Clean your Email List

This article is more of a list of notes in my head rather than a structured article. Below, you’ll find information that took me some time to confirm. All this stuff is useful if you want to clean your list without paying fat fees to third parties every time before you hit SEND. Because that’s the thing. You have to be scrubbing your list regularly, especially if you don’t send emails very often.

The very first thing you need to do to scrub your list is to remove inactive subscribers. Don’t send to folks who don’t open your emails because that’s affecting your reputation and ability to reach the inbox.

You don’t only have to keep a list clean for ISP’s but for your ESP too. If you get high bounce rates, it’s the ESP that will dump you first as you’re damaging their IP reputation.

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How to Increase Email Deliverability – Complete Action List

Email Deliverability

Below is a list of things you can do to increase your email deliverability, ie. your inbox placement rate (emails got into your subscribers’ inbox/emails sent out). This article could be a whole book or series of books so I’ll try to be updating it as often as possible.

Re-engage with Inactive Subscribers

Subscribers who are not engaging with your emails (not reading, not clicking, not replying, not forwarding, etc.) have a negative impact on your email marketing campaigns. Inactive subscribers is a sign to the mailbox providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc.) that your emails don’t provide value.

A good ISP has to protect the mailbox of their clients, right? So, a good ISP thinks: If my people don’t even bother to open these emails every week, why shall I keep sending these emails? Dump the bloody emails into the spam folder.

It’s very easy to increase your deliverability right now: Send only to the dudes that open your emails and you’ll see your open rates skyrocket! 🙂

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Let Amazon Send your Emails

Email Service Providers

Imagine we pick an email marketer at random and we ask him: “Hey, bro! Which Email Service Provider (ESP) do you use?”

Yep, an ESP is the service you use to send your emails and newsletters to your subscribers every week.

What do you think some possible answers will be?

MailChimp, Aweber, GetResponse, Drip, Active Campaign, ConvertKit, right?

And then a dude comes and says: “I use Amazon.”

Whhhhaaatt??? Amazon??? You on drugs mate?

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Difference between ISP, ESP, inbox/mailbox provider

Terminology

In this short article, I’ll explain the terms ISP, ESP, and inbox service and why people usually get confused using these terms.

The ISP (Internet Service Provider) is the company that gives you access to the Internet. For example, Comcast or Verizon in the US, BT or Vodafone in the UK, etc. People usually call their ISP’s providers, ie. “Who’s your provider?”

The ESP (Email Service Provider) is a service used by marketers who send bulk emails to their subscribers. For example, Aweber, MailChimp, Drip, Get Response, etc. These services also provide campaign insights, ie. how many opens or clicks you get.

Now, some ISPs also provide an inbox service (mailbox) to their customers and here is the confusion:

People often mean “Inbox Service Provider” when using the acronym ISP.

For example, “your ISP can kill your email deliverability by sending your emails to the spam folder.” Obviously, it’s not your Internet Service Provider that sends your emails to the Gmail spam folder; it’s Gmail that filters your messages into the Gmail spam folder. 🙂

That’s why I prefer to use the term ISP for companies such as Comcast or Verizon, and the term mailbox or inbox provider/service for Gmail.

I hope you got the answer you were looking for. If you’d like to read something different from me, check out my best articles:

  1. How to find your passion (with tips from neuroscience).
  2. My complete guide to overcoming anxiety and stress.
  3. (The truth) Why I lived in Russia.
  4. How to solve impostor syndrome forever.

Loving you, Angelos

 

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