Protecting Your Emailing Reputation So Your Emails Don't End Up in Spam Folders.

Undeliverable emails or emails landing in your subscriber's spam folder is a problem for most small business owners. 

You may think your email campaigns and nurture sequences are being delivered to your subscribers, and it's exciting opening up the dashboard in your email service provider (ESP) software to see how many of your subscribers read your latest email.

Unfortunately, when you send email direct marketing (EDM) campaigns from the ESP you use (e.g. Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Mailerlite), your ESP's software statistics for your email open rates are incorrect because they're inflated. 

Email open rates are exaggerated for two primary reasons. 

Firstly, an update by Apple in September 2021 prevents an ESP (email service provider) from obtaining correct data on email open rates. Apple accomplishes this by pre-fetching and downloading emails, including tracking pixels and images, effectively registering the email as "opened." This artificially inflates open rates for individuals with Macs and iPhones who opted into this new feature. 

Secondly, an email may be opened and immediately deleted, yet it is still counted as an email that is actually opened, read, and (hopefully) enjoyed.

The good news is that Apple didn't, or can't, block your email service provider's ability to count click-through rates. So if your subscriber clicks on a link in your emails, this indicates that your email was opened and read.

Look at the link clicks statistics for an accurate picture of your email deliverability. 

If you have designed an email sequence to resend an email if the recipient doesn't open an email during a certain time frame, change the setup to resend the email if a link isn't clicked. 

You can also segment the most and least engaged subscribers based on their link clinks, and send re-engaging emails to the least engaged subscribers. 

One way to re-engage these subscribers is to incorporate interactive features, such as polls, quizzes, and survey questions. The goal is the make them click on an irresistible call to action (CTA). 

Understanding the open rate KPI is only part of the email marketing puzzle. 

The real problem lies in the actual deliverability of your emails.

According to the email service provider Sendgrid, "Inbox service providers (ISPs), such as Gmail and Yahoo!, use the IP address to determine whether to deliver your email to the recipient’s inbox based on your sending reputation. If you have a good reputation, your email is more likely to get delivered. If you don’t, then you might not have much luck getting inboxed or delivered at all."

This problem arises because when you use email marketing software and especially if you have a free account, you share the same internet protocol (IP) address with other business owners. 

This means you share their emailing reputation too. 

If there are spammers, this will harm your emailing reputation, and your IP and domain will be sent to blacklists. 

What you want to avoid, at all costs, is being listed on blacklists.

If you are on an emailing blacklist, the chances of your emails being delivered are zero to none. 

Wouldn't you just kick yourself if you spent years building a bountiful subscriber list only to discover you've been blacklisted?

Blacklist Check >

If you are on a blacklist, shock-horror, don't despair. 

Send the blacklist operator a request asking for your IP address to be removed from the list and marked as whitelisted. It's important to avoid sounding defensive when sending the request.

Some blacklist operators may remove your IP address immediately, while others may require you to take certain actions, such as sending a re-permission request to all your contacts in your database, before removing you from the blacklist into whitelist bliss. 

Protecting your emailing reputation.

Now that I know about blacklisting and knowing 100% that I don't ever want to go on one of those gawd awful lists, I spent a considerable amount of time looking for a reasonably priced email marketing software company that offers dedicated IP addresses so I could have full control over my emailing reputation. Sendgrid was the obvious choice but then I decided to move out of Mailerlite and into Pabbly. Apart from the great price, I'll discuss why Pabbly Emailing Marketing software is so good in a minute. 

If you love Mailerlite, you can inquire about owning a unique IP address. Perhaps you love Mailchimp? If you do, dedicated IP addresses are available as an optional add-on for an additional monthly fee of $29.95.  Whichever ESP you use (Mailerlite, Mailchimp, Convert Campaign, Sendgrid, Klayvio, to name a few), check to see if you can have your own IP. If you use Kaviyo, I can report that sharing their IP is not all doom and gloom. 

But, it could be. 

Kalyvio state on its website, "Most small businesses, or those just starting out with Klaviyo, will be on shared IPs. Depending on your email practices and volumes, this should suffice for your sending and reputation needs. Klaviyo automatically assigns shared IP addresses to most new accounts. With shared IPs, you can benefit from other senders keeping the IP pool reputation up and warm with overall volume. Klaviyo constantly monitors these IPs and removes any harmful senders." 

Sadly, the damage to your emailing reputation could occur anytime, because Klayvio doesn't state if they remove the senders before or after these senders send spammy emails. If you're confused by this, just know .....

"You are judged by the company you keep," and no one knows who the naughty person is in the room, I mean IP pool, until they've been naughty!

And this is precisely why I signed up with Pabbly Email Marketing. 

The Pabbly Email Compliance Team read your emails and checks your domain reputation and notifies you if you pass their tests. Then and only then, can you send your email campaigns.  

What to do sooner rather than later.

Before sending your next email marketing campaign, I strongly suggest you delete Bounced and Undeliverable email addresses completely from your database so there's no chance you'll accidentally send emails to these addresses.

Set up the double opt-in feature in your ESP account. When you do this, you force all new subscribers to locate your first email to them and click on the "verify your email" button. Remember, you can track clicks. And when the recipient locates, opens and then clicks on the link, this tells their inbox service provider (Eg. Gmail) that they WANT to receive your email, and your email reputation will be enhanced.

I suggest you send out an EDM campaign this week and send emails to your subscribers all the time. The jury is still out on how often you should send emails so it's up to you to ask your subscribers how often they would like to receive your "news".  

Don't do what I did.

Because we know that "the money is in the list" I created lead magnet after lead magnet to build my database, but I let my database lay dormant for a long time. I didn't send any emails! I concentrated my efforts on acquisition and not retention. 

Sometimes I really do lack the smarts!

But I now know that if I suddenly start sending out emails, no matter how valuable the content is, it's likely my emails will be filtered into spam folders and if this happens .... well, we know where our reputation will end up!

So I've been using software created by Pabbly to test the email deliverability of my thousands of subscribers BEFORE sending mass emails because I'm doing everything now to protect my emailing reputation. 

Warm up your list.

If your domain (website or landing page) is new or if you recently created an account with an email service provider, or if you haven't sent EDMs for a while, please know you need to warm up your emailing infrastructure.

You do this by sending EDM campaigns to a small number of your subscribers who you KNOW will click on a link in your email campaign. To double protect your reputation, you can run their email address through Pabbly Email Verification Software, as I do. This software sends a ping request to your subscribers' inbox email servers, and you will receive a report back from Pabbly within 24 hours letting you know which inbox email servers are ok to send to .... and the price of the service is nothing compared to the opportunity cost of repairing your email reputation.

A final note:

Continue to send emails all the time that people love. Delight your subscribers with thought-provoking information and encourage them to click on your offer. But before you send your next email campaign, test their email addresses so you can be confident your wonderful information arrives exactly where you want it to ... in their inbox.

Written by Karley Beadman

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References and Further Reading:

https://martech.org/study-finds-ios-15-is-inflating-email-open-rates/

https://sendgrid.com/blog/shared-and-dedicated-ips-which-should-you-choose/

https://www.benchmarkemail.com/blog/ip-gets-blacklisted/

https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7315-future-of-email-marketing.html

https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/benefits-email-marketing/

https://www.mailerlite.com/features/dedicated-ip

https://mailchimp.com/developer/transactional/docs/authentication-delivery/

https://hminvestimentos.com.br/MZXKDuOo/emarketer-study,-the-median-email-marketing-roi-is-122%

https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/guides/email-marketing-new-rules/

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