Deliverability Defined

No matter how much we plan and analyze, there will always be things outside of our control. When it comes to email deliverability, avoiding automatic clicks is sometimes the hardest pitfall to avoid. Nevertheless, there are ways to stand up to security systems and work around the (almost) impossible. 

In this episode, Alyssa and Melissa explain why automatic clicks are so common and what you can do to take back control. 

As email marketers, we don't have many metrics to determine our success. So we need to make sure the metrics we’ve got are showing us the full picture as often as possible.

Main Takeaways

• [11:23] Automatic opens and clicks are more common for B2B addresses with strict anti-spam policies, especially .edu and .gov addresses. If you are a B2B sender, ask recipients to subscribe with their personal email addresses. 
• [14:38] Determine which subscribers are auto-clicking links by adding a "hidden" link in your email. 
• [17:49] Only use HTTPS links. Using mixed-security levels in your links can look untrustworthy and lead to automatic opens. For example, ConvertKit's tracking links are HTTPS and if it reroutes to an HTTP site, that looks suspicious. 
• [18:57] Monitor content. Content quality plays a big role— not only at the link level but also image-to-text ratio and other factors. Avoid clickbait and “aggressive” email marketing. If you act like a spammer, you’ll be treated like a spammer. 
• [21:41] As with everything else deliverability-related, sender reputation can make or break your NHI (non-human interaction) levels. Senders with highly engaged recipients don’t get nearly as many NHIs.

Links

• Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
• M3AAWG
• M3AAWG’s Best Practices for NHIs 
• Deliverability Defined 103: Content: How Much Does It Impact Deliverability? 
• Deliverability Defined 102: Sender Reputation: The Road to Inbox Placement 

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Deliverability isn’t an exact science. There’s no hard and fast rule for success, and advice may vary from time to time. But of all the grey areas in email marketing, switching ESPs is probably the most confusing. 

If you’ve wanted to make a change in your service but haven’t pulled the trigger for fear of damaging your deliverability, you’re not alone. That said, there are ways to switch it up without ruining your rep, and we’re breaking them all down.

In this episode, we explain what to look for in potential ESPs, why small changes have a big impact, and how to navigate the No. 1 trickiest and most confusing part of making the switch.

Main Takeaways

• [3:58] The three most important things to look for when choosing an ESP are, 1) making sure they have all the features you need, 2) making sure they take deliverability and spam seriously, and 3) making sure you have access to expert deliverability support. 
• [8:23] Having access to deliverability experts rather than general tech support will save you valuable time.
• [15:40] When switching ESPs, it’s important to avoid emailing people who’ve unsubscribed. Either don’t import them into your new ESP, or import them and immediately unsubscribe them. 
• [17: 56] If possible, bring over any engagement data you can. Although your email data is starting from scratch with a new ESP, it’s not starting from scratch for email providers and blocklists. 
• [20:35] When you make the switch, keep your sender name and email address the same so the transition feels seamless for your subscribers. 
• [23:00] Depending on the IP you’re sending from, you may want to warm up your list before switching ESPs. Your new ESP should have a team on-hand to help you manage this process. 
• [27:59] When warming up your list, always start with the most engaged subscribers. But don’t scatter your emails by sending everything to your most engaged subscribers one day and your least engaged the next. Otherwise, your deliverability will drop when you send to all of those less than engaged subs. 

Links

• Join our email list
• Follow us on Instagram
  
  

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In an era of streaming services and a pandemic that’s pushed touring to the side, monetizing music has never been harder. While it may sound old-fashioned for a rockstar, emails can unlock your income potential. 

In this episode, we’re speaking to the musicians looking to monetize and turn casual followers into fans and superfans. Learn to stay strategic with your releases, use Instagram to build an email list, and personalize content to incentivize sign-ups.

If you’re listening to this, you probably know that reaching more listeners is what propels your career forward. More fans mean larger venues and, of course, larger paychecks. So stop renting your followers and embrace emails for full-time fandom.

Main Takeaways

• Focus on the music before anything else. No manager or fancy gear or release strategy will grow your audience faster than great content. 
• Always release a song with a marketing push. Start working on email marketing and growing your social presence at least six months in advance. 
• Email allows for a level of personalization that isn’t possible on social media. A combination of promotional and personalized emails boosts fan engagement. 
• Don’t rent your audience from a social media platform. An email list puts you in direct contact with your audience where you can build relationships. 
• Build a landing page and link it everywhere fans can find you. And give fans a reason to give you their email address. Drive urgency and incentivize fans with free, personalized content. 
• Send emails asking your audience to pre-save your songs before they release. This helps sway the streaming algorithm in your favor once you do release. 
• Create a paid newsletter to monetize your craft.

Links

• Creator Sessions: Musical Performance with Drew and Ellie Holcomb
• Deliverability Defined S02 E03: How Writers Can Earn A Living Through Email Marketing
• Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry
• The Tipping Point
• Kevin Garrett
• Mat Kearney
• Tim McGraw
• Song Exploder
• Lorde’s Iconic Newsletter
• Patreon
• Need Help With Deliverability? 
• Join ConvertKit For Free
  
  

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It's now free to use ConvertKit with an audience of 1,000 subscribers or less! Start building your audience and reaching their inboxes: convertkit.com/pricing. 

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To emoji or not to emoji? Can sending a test email actually harm deliverability? Is my title too vague? Too specific? Email marketing is an artform and mastering it takes more than a quick How-To. But even if you’re a pro at emails, you may be making minor mistakes that can have a major impact on deliverability. 

In this episode, we’re walking through 10 common email marketing mistakes to avoid, plus, a few bonus tips and tricks for prime deliverability. We also mention a few big brands that miss the mark.

Main Takeaways

1. Your “friendly from,” or sent from email address should be a name your subscribers recognize. 
2. Don’t use too many emojis in your subject line. Emojis can look cheap and spammy.
3. Don’t type out a full URL. Instead, add a link to a click here button. 
4. Don’t send too many emails in a short period. This leads to subscriber burnout. 
5. Proofread your emails before sending them.
6. If you’re setting up a DMARC, make sure you’re doing it correctly. 
7. Clean out your list regularly. Otherwise, you’ll keep emailing cold subscribers which harms your deliverability.
8. Think about your needs and carefully choose one ESP. Don’t bounce from one ESP to the next. 
9. Don’t put so much content and imagery in an email. The email may get cut off.
10. Use a double opt-in! Otherwise, you’re bound to have subscribers on your list who didn’t mean to subscribe. That’s a fast-pass for complaints and cold subscribers. 

Links

• Ask Your Deliverability Questions
• Deliverability Defined Episode 5: Avoiding Spam Traps The Right Way
• Emojis in Email Subject Lines: Advantage or Impediment?
  
  

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As writers, email marketing should come easy, right? You already know how to engage an audience, use your voice, and create a compelling read. But sometimes, your skills as a narrator don’t always transfer. And, like many writers, maybe you write alone for too long, hesitant to share your work with an email address outside your own.

In this episode, we’re battling the mother of all monsters: writer’s block. So let’s outline how to create content that helps you build an audience, reach an audience, and, ultimately, earn a living online. We’re also showing off a few writers who crush the email marketing game, and others who’ve left their engagement by the wayside. 

If you’re looking to publish but worry about writing into an empty void, these tips will help you drive an important and often forgotten step in the publishing process: finding readers.

Main Takeaways

• Start with a small audience and build from there. Authors with an existing audience have an easier time selling their published work over authors with zero followers.
• Send emails consistently and make sure your content format is also consistent. Consistency helps your subscribers know exactly what to expect, which fosters stronger engagement and therefore stronger email deliverability. 
• Make sure the content is right for your audience. Make it your own and make sure that it matches your subscribers’ preferences.  
• Ask for a reply! Ask your subscribers what they want, what their interests are, and how you can provide value. Aside from helping you know your audience, replies also help your email deliverability because they’re a sign of engagement.
• Create a newsletter. Newsletters are in-demand. People love digestible content in an age of content overload. 
• Cater your emails to your audience. Sometimes that means cutting the flowery language you love. Simplify your emails while including links to longer-form writing.

Links

• Nathan Barry’s Authority 
• John Grisham
• Harlan Coben
• James Clear
• Tim Ferriss
• The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less
  
  

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Realizing that you have a problem is the first step to solving a problem. And when you notice some of your subscribers starting to disengage, jumping on a re-engagement campaign is probably your solution. But like anything else, there’s a right and a wrong way to re-engage. In fact, if you're not careful, your campaign may do more harm than good.

So what’s the right way to win back cold subscribers? What content should you push and how much of it? Should you re-engage everyone all at once? And when do you finally cut the cord and let lost subscribers go? In this episode, we’re breaking down how to re-engage while saving your domain’s reputation.

Remember, before hitting send to everyone on your list who’s seemed less than interested lately, consider your audience, your numbers, and a strategy that won’t bust your deliverability.

Main Takeaways

• Your email subscribers determine your deliverability. Negative actions like reporting as spam or leaving an email unread will harm your deliverability rate. Think of deliverability like a credit score for your domain.
• It’s important to frequently clean out your list to avoid cold subscribers dinging your deliverability with negative responses. 
• Make sure the content you send adds value to your subscriber. Ask yourself why your audience subscribed in the first place, and deliver. 
• Don’t send more than three re-engagement emails per campaign.
• Don’t re-engage with everyone who has lost interest all at once. Re-engage in small batches and send emails to your engaged audience in between batches to offset negativity.
• Re-engage with your audience at least every three months to avoid lists filled with cold subscribers. 

Links

• Clubhouse
• Postmaster Tools
• Go Clean Co
  
  

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After spending Season 01 chatting all things technical, we’re kicking off Season 02 with some general advice for making a living and building an audience online. 

In this episode, we’re going to take a step back to define “creators”, help you push past the starting line, and make the task of asking your audience to subscribe a little less awkward. Even if you’ve nailed deliverability basics, growing an online presence depends on your marketing strategy just as much as it does your technical know-how. 

If you’ve made it this far but still haven’t hopped on the email bandwagon, just look at how many creators were forced to go back to the basics in 2020 when the world shifted beneath them. And because we know there’s more than one type of creator, every other episode of Season 02 will deep dive into advice for specific creators. From musicians to chefs to writers and artists, whatever you do, we’ve got you covered on this season of Deliverability Defined. 

Main Takeaways

• A creator is anyone who’s creating a product or a service that provides value. Everyone has a passion or a skill set in something, and we all have the opportunity to lean-in and become a creator. 
• If you’re struggling with where to start, ask yourself, what questions do people always ask me? If you’re a go-to person for two people, you can be a go-to person for 200,000. 
• Starting is the hardest part of establishing yourself as a creator. Don’t be discouraged by slow growth. Keep pushing and keep the consistency going.
• Instagram may feel fresh and colorful, but at the end of the day, Instagram will still own your audience. Email marketing is a way for you to reach your audience outside of a platform that changes its algorithm at random.
• Paid newsletters and email courses are great ways to make a living online and retarget your existing audience. 
• Don’t be afraid to sell your email services to your audience. If they weren’t interested in your content, they wouldn’t be following you. 

Links

• Career Capital
• Matt Ragland
• Drew Holcomb
• GO CLEAN CO
• Deliverability on ConvertKit
• Deliverability Defined Episode 6: Authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
  
  

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We’ve made it through the inaugural season of Deliverability Defined! Since we’ve covered so many important deliverability topics over the course of this season, we wanted to bring you our top takeaways. If you do nothing else, these strategies will help you significantly improve your deliverability.

We’ll be back in January with brand new content. Thanks for making season one what it was and we’ll see you all again soon! 

Main Takeaways

1. Permission is key. Sending an email to someone who doesn’t want it or didn’t sign up is a big no-no. Building your audience organically is hard, but the right way to do it. 
2. Engagement determines inbox placement. There are positive and negative interactions, and no-interaction email addresses should be scrubbed from your list. 
3. Provide value and adjust to your audience. Send content that provides value to your subscribers, but don’t oversend, or people may unsubscribe.
4. Authentication matters. Understand authentication, what it means, and how it impacts your email deliverability, even if your ESP handles a lot of this. 

Links

• Nathan Barry’s Blog
• Deliverability on ConvertKit
• Deliverability Defined Episode 2: Sender Reputation: The Road to Inbox Placement
• The Social Dilemma 
• Deliverability Defined Episode 6: Authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
• Dmarcian
  
  

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Everyone in the email world wants more subscribers – that’s a given. But how you go about getting those people on your list can have a major impact on your email deliverability, which, in turn, affects all your other email metrics.  

In this episode, we’re discussing some best practices on how to grow your list effectively so that you don’t get penalized for having subscribers on your list that don’t want to be there. We’ll also give you some tactics to avoid when trying to boost your numbers. 

If you’re looking to grow your list, then these guidelines will help you get there without all of the guesswork or trial and error. 

Main Takeaways

• How you collected your subscribers is one of the most important factors in your deliverability.
• Things you should do when building an email list:
  • Create a signup form on your website.
  • Provide a link in your Instagram bio with an email signup.
  • Add an optional step when purchasing something.
  • Make physical signup available (like at merch table, event, etc.)
  • Offer an email course or challenge that people sign up for.
• Things you shouldn’t do when building an email list:
  • Use purchased, shared, or scraped lists.
  • Add personal or LinkedIn contacts (ask them to sign up first).
  • Use trade show lists.
  • Add subscribers by doing giveaways.
• Do not add anyone to your list where the subscriber didn't consent to receive your emails directly and weren't forced to provide their email.

Links

• Billion Dollar Blog by Nathan Barry
• Linktree vs. ConvertKit
  
  

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We want to empower you to take as much control of your email marketing as possible and that includes addressing deliverability issues. A deliverability audit is a great place to start if you want to assess the health of your email marketing efforts. Throughout this episode, we take you through some of the things we check when doing a deliverability audit so that you can start doing them yourself.

If you’ve been struggling with your open rates or deliverability, these strategies for conducting a deliverability audit will help set you on the path to identifying and fixing your deliverability issues. 

Also worth noting, if you're a ConvertKit customer with a Creator Pro plan, you can get a complimentary audit. Just reach out to support and they'll connect you with us.

Main Takeaways

• Common reasons to request or perform a deliverability audit include low open rates, sudden drops in open rate, subscribers telling you that emails go to spam, or simply curiosity.
• Often, fixing sender reputations is a culmination of many little things that need to be addressed individually.
• Scrubbing your list is one of the best things you can do during your deliverability self-audit. 
• Here are a few things we do during a deliverability audit:
  • Check your spam trap hits (this is probably a step you won't be able to do on your own)
  • Run your list through an email validation tool
  • Analyze the volume and frequency of your sends
  • Check the authentication and content of your email
  • Look through your form sign-ups for signs of listbombing

Links

• Deliverability Defined 05: Avoiding Spam Traps the Right Way
• Deliverability Defined 10: List Validation 101 with Lauren Meyer from Kickbox
• Deliverability Defined 16: Pros and Cons of Inbox Placement Tests
• Glockapps
• 250ok
• ConvertKit
• Creator Pro: Deliverability Reporting

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