It is always a good idea to send out re-engagement campaigns to your inactive subscribers every so often.

A re-engagement campaign generally means you send a re-opt in email to your inactive subscribers to see if you can get them to re-engage with you, (And more importantly to see if they want to re-engage with you)  The main thing is you don’t want to lose these subscribers right? So how do you re-connect with them?

There are effectively two types of re-engagement campaign:

1. Re-activation:
Send this campaign if your recipients are still opening your emails, but haven’t made any purchases or taken any actions.

2. Re-permission:
Send this campaign if your recipients are not engaged in any way and you want to confirm whether they still want to receive your emails.

These are both great ways to help build your reputation, keep your list attrition rate down, keep email subscriber engagement up, and keep your list up to date.

Click here to see some great examples of email campaigns that will get subscribers engaged and buying again.

But apart from running a re-engagement campaign, here are a few ways to increase engagement that you can do all the time:

1 Use preference centers
They allow subscribers to control and customise the content they receive, and they provide you with data which you can use to further tailor emails based on a recipient’s information and preferences. It allows you to give subscribers what they want, when they want it. It let’s the subscribers be in control, and when they have control, they are happy, and are more likely to engage. (Tip: Check out this post on using dynamic content to enhance email campaigns depending on subscribers preferences)

2 Include a feedback link in all your emails
Allowing your recipients to give you feedback establishes 2 way communication, and it allows you to hone your content based on the opinions you receive. For example, if you are a travel agent, send a welcome home email and ask the customer how their trip was.

3 Use good send settings
Consistently use a ‘friendly’ from email and from name.  Subscribers don’t open email from people they don’t recognise. And it’s also important to note that reputation and deliverability is in part based on having good send settings. And never use a no-reply address. Never. Click here to read a previous post about the importance of your from name.

4 Include an unsubscribe link
Always include a clear unsubscribe link in all emails you send out. (This is one of the criteria of CAN-SPAM so is a vital element of all emails) Here is a cartoon that we featured in a previous post, which sums up how subscribers can quickly go from happy to unsubscribe.

5  Use personalisation
The level of personalisation can vary depending on the sender and the type of campaign. Simply inserting their name in the email works well – people like that. However you can vary the level of personalisation and do much more with it, depending on how relevant and how effective it is for your brand and the particular campaign. Overall, personalisation has been proven to help with open rates, increase your reputation, and the subscribers appreciate it. Show they matter to you and that you ‘listen’. Check out our previous post on personalisation.

6 Include a safe senders link
Always include an ‘add me to your safe senders list’  link in all the emails you send out. This means recipients are more likely to add you to their safe senders list, so that you get delivered to their inbox, which in turn decreases your spam rate and increases your reputation.

Bottom Line:
Always create engaging messages that are based on your subscriber’s preferences.  Content that subscribers find valuable and helpful will always succeed, and emails that contain only marketing statements will always fail.

And remember – ‘Be wise – personalise!’

We say it with only a slight tongue in cheek – 100% of the emails you send that are not delivered will never sell anything.   So, since email-in-inbox is the start of everything – here they are – the top 5 deliverability myths de-mystified!

1. Thinking that sending legally compliant messages will protect you.
Not true! Legislation like the NZ UEM Act, and the USA’s CAN-SPAM is just the bare minimum threshold that you should adhere too.  We always say that if you are trying to hide behind fine print you are doing something wrong. Treat your database with respect by doing what you say you will do, increasing the relevance of your content to your subscribers, and working on all of your deliverability best practices to improve your reputation over time.

2. You think confirmed opt-ins wouldn’t click the ‘mark as spam’ or ‘add to junk folder’  button.
Not true! This action is viewed as a complaint by ISP’s and is taken really seriously by them.  If you have more than 1 in a 1000 of these ‘complaints’ you could see an impact on your email delivery.  Why do they do it?  It can be a quick way for subscribers to remove the email even if they have subscribed. A significant % of recipients do this rather than unsubscribing – one reason is they may not know the difference between the ‘spam’ and the ‘unsubscribe’ functions and not realise the effect it has on reputation.  We’ve seen reports that subscribers don’t want to ‘hurt your feelings’ by unsubscribing so they just sweep you out of the inbox.  For others hitting ‘spam’ is simply quicker than finding the unsubscribe button and going through that process.

3. You think if you make it difficult to unsubscribe that you will stop people unsubscribing.
Not true! It only makes people flag your email as spam (as in 2. above) if they don’t want your email, rather than searching for your unsubscribe link. Best practice is to have a clearly visible and simple unsubscribe link in all your emails, and allow subscribers to simply and easily opt out and don’t give them any reason to complain.  We recommend they are in the top and the bottom of most email campaigns, and prefer a one click instant unsubscribe method on our own clients emails.

4. ‘Free’ ‘Deal’ and ‘CAPITAL’ words instantly flag your email as spam.
Not true! Certain words aren’t great for sure, but they won’t do this if they are relevant and effective in the context of your campaign. Deliverability is measured on many factors, and these combined determine the reputation. So words such as ‘deal’! and ‘free’! used well in the right context will do no harm.  These days, most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) filter based on reputation, so content plays a much smaller role in that filtering decision. If you have a good reputation, it will usually override any content filter being used, and your mail will be delivered appropriately. However, that doesn’t mean that your content is never a factor in determining inbox delivery.

5. Compelling content is the best way to create engagement and retain long term subscribers.
Not true! Sending good emails and good content will make your emails welcomed and useful to your audience.  However if you send just one  email too many, or any email at all if you’re ignoring other deliverability best practices, this will affect your reputation despite having the greatest content in the world.  Also on content -  balancing ‘image to text’ by having as much of your email as possible in text, while leaving images in a supporting role, is important both to the eye and to the deliverability of your email too.

Yes there are many more things you can do to enhance your reputation and optimise your deliverability, these are just the top 5 things that you should be aware of and take into consideration.   If there is one thing we can be sure of – there’s no sure thing.

If you’d like more detail on deliverability or if you’d like to discuss concerns or ideas, give us a call any time on +64 9 360 6463.

Why is Reputation and Deliverability important? Why do you need to know about these things when you just want to send out some emails? And what do these terms mean anyway?

Reputation and Deliverability requires senders to meet strict international best practices for good reasons like anti-spam measures. You might wonder just what issues there could be around delivery. After all, you write an email, you click “send”, and the emails arrive seconds later. However when you send email that goes out to dozens, hundreds or thousands of recipients, not all of those recipients are going to get your email. And deliverability is the guy in-between acting like the bouncer at the club, and he determines who gets your email, or who doesn’t, and why.

So how do you ensure every one of your emails gets through? Appease the deliverability gods? Tip the bouncer? An easier option would be to talk to our deliverability guys who have provided the following expert advice.

1) Deliverability is strongly measured by sender reputation. And a good sender reputation starts with a dedicated IP address. We do recommend dedicated IP addresses for clients especially those who have B2C databases of more than a few thousand recipients.  This offers a number of benefits, including the ability to apply for ISP whitelisting, subscribing to ISP feedback loops, and to build your own reputation as a best practice email sender. How it works is each client is assigned an IP address configured for their exclusive use. This is not only a recommended best practice but also a requirement by many IPs such as Yahoo / Xtra for whitelisting.

Why is this important? Without a dedicated IP address a sender has no reputation and runs the risk of being blacklisted as a result of others that may share the IP that they use.

2) However deliverability is measured by much more and it’s not enough just to isolate the IP address. Domains also have their own reputation. It is also important that headers and links are configured for clients to use their own Domain.

Why is this important? This not only strengthens the banding of the email but also builds the reputation of the Domain.

3) SmartMail complies with the US CANSPAM law well as New Zealand’s Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act of 2007. And we constantly monitor any changes or new laws that might impact our senders and work closely with agencies involved in enforcement to ensure that our clients comply.

Anti-Spam filters examine content, behaviour and complaints to determine if a message is spam. These filters are completely unaware of your relationship with your customers, and as a result are often error-prone. Whitelisting is a service offered by a few Internet Providers to solve the problem of filters that incorrectly identify your messages as spam. We work with clients to achieve whitelisting approval.

Why is this important? When your IP address is whitelisted all your messages automatically by-pass the filters and get delivered into the inbox.

4) SmartMail complies with Best Practices when it comes to hygiene as a result of invalid addresses. We also seek to identify bounces that occur as a result of reputation issues or other Deliverability issues.

Why is this important? This careful monitoring allows us to assist our clients in managing their reputation and resolving issues before they result in damage to their long term reputation.

Every feature of our platform and capabilities is designed around meeting or exceeding these requirements. And as we have a team of deliverability experts right here at Jericho, if you have any queries about your deliverability, IP whitelisting, domain, reputation, or data handling, don’t hesitate to give us a shout.

Email attrition is where a proportion of a list is no longer usable due to the subscriber addresses being invalid. Addresses can become invalid for a number of reasons, such as the subscriber changes jobs, or when a webmail address has been inactive for a long time.

The attrition rates we see vary from list to list. We would expect the attrition on average to be about 15% per annum, but can be higher. For example we’d expect to see a higher bounce rate for first time deployment to a list that had no confirm or double opt in email.

The reasons why emails are junked is a huge subject and is always changing. There are three main categories in understanding deliverability. We briefly look at these three categories, and the key points of each:

1. Infrastructure
   o The set-up of your sender domain and IP address has an impact on delivery. Any issues are usually easily resolved and is part of our normal service.
   o Infrastructure includes (but not limited to) SPF records and domain keys, IP isolation and whitelisting.
2. Content filtering
   o Content may be filtered at several points along the path of an email – by a firewall or spam appliance, by the mail server or at the local inbox.
   o Content filtering varies between ISP’s, corporate mail servers and even individuals.
   o Testing eliminates most content filtering issues and should never be overlooked.
3. Reputation
   o Includes block lists which you can find yourself on if your list contains spam traps or if you exceed a threshold of complaints.
   o ISP’s evaluate subscribers behaviour towards a sender including the ratio of emails that are marked as spam, deleted without being read and whether recipients are even opening your email.

So, our advice? Send relevant, timely emails to subscribers who’ve asked to receive it.