By M+R AKA: Pride and Prejudice and Deliverability*
We held an action-packed (and Austen-packed) webinar a couple days ago covering what’s changed and what hasn’t when it comes to email deliverability.
ICYMI (or if you just want to relive the good times) Here’s the recording!
M+R’s Managing Production Specialist Anne Paschkopić and Trust for Public Land’s Josh VanDavier covered how email providers like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have tightened the rules for getting into inboxes along with best practices around list hygiene, handling inactives and suppressions, and so much more.
As expected the chat was 🔥🫖✍️😂
And the Q&A was extensive (warning…it gets real nerdy real fast!):
- Is it a good tactic to send to highest engaged users first for more engagement and send to less engaged people later for better placement?
A: Generally yes! Though, we wouldn’t necessarily advise doing this type of prioritization unless you’re having issues. - If your email provider/crm tracks machine opens separately, is there any bleedover that get counted in the number of actual opens? i.e. a machine open could be/is counted as an actual open?
A: I think that would largely depend on CRM / email service provider! I’m not aware of bleedover being a large issue though! - We’re currently seeing issues with open rates on Microsoft email clients. This year our open rate with Microsoft domains is considerably lower than in previous years. Has anyone else experienced this, or have any advice on how to address it?
A: I’ve found Microsoft domains to be incredibly fickle this year across a variety of clients, so you’re not alone! When you’re having domain specific issues, it typically means you need to narrow your audience to include fewer less-engaged recipients for that domain. - Would it be best to monitor email provider open rates by email types or by email types and overall email average?
A: I’ve found that it can be helpful to monitor email provider open rates by email types! But as long as you’re aware that something like a fundraising email will likely have a lower CTR than something like a newsletter email, it’s not strictly necessary. - How important is something like BIMI or Apple Business manager for deliverability?
A: It can help, but it’s not critical! BIMI and Apple Business manager can help build upon authentications like DMARC, SPF, and DKIM, but if you have those things already set up, it’s likely not going to solve any major deliverability issues. - How do we know what our reputations are?
A: It depends on the domain, but you can find Google Reputations on Google Postmaster and Microsoft via Microsoft’s SNDS! - If your CTOR rate fell, do you suggest doing a list hygiene exercise to get rid of any inactive emails?A: Click to Open Rate can tell you a lot about an email’s engagement, but there are too many outside influences outside of deliverability to use it as an indicator metric. I’d suggest taking a look at opens / clicks/ and bounces by domain, which will give you the best picture of everything that’s going on deliverability wise. If you’re seeing repeated, low Open Rates / CTR’s that are limited to one or two domains, it might be worth taking a look at those specific domains closer and implementing some stricter hygiene criteria for that domain. If it’s all email domains, it’s likely worth refining your audience more generally to include fewer inactive emails.
- Can you speak to the impact of continuing to send emails to non-engaged recipients (those who don’t open any of the emails you send) on deliverability?
A: Continuously sending to non-engaged recipients will definitively harm your sender reputation and overall deliverability. ISPs interpret this behavior as sending unwanted mail, which can lead to your emails being filtered to the spam folder or blocked entirely. But it largely depends on how long they haven’t opened for! For some domains we include recipients who haven’t opened for 3 months in our audiences while other domains stay on for 9 months or longer. By and large, if you’re not having deliverability issues, it’s fine to send to a mix of engaged and non-engaged audiences.
No email provider is expecting 100% engagement from any given audience, but they won’t settle for 0. If you are having deliverability issues, it might be worth taking a look at narrowing your audience to reduce the number of non-engaged recipients. - Is there a cost for Scout Quest?
A: There is — lots of info about cost here! https://quest.mrss.com/frequently-asked-questions/ - How important is the consistency of the sender name? Should we stick to one?
A: This is ever evolving. Google is starting to move towards preferring the use of named sender, as opposed to using vanity senders like “Midnight Deadline” but they haven’t MANDATED it yet! Read more about that here. - In our platform we can see non-human open rates, however it affects our total open rate. Making it look better than it is. What is the best way to see the success of the open rate?
A: We like to track both when we’re able! We tend to find that “human open-rates” to be more helpful in diagnosing deliverability issues. But both are helpful in tracking trends. If you experience a sudden drop in open rates, it’s likely worth investigating further. - That’s a good point about people wanting to separate bulk emails and individual emails. As marketers, is it fair to frame it that it’s actually a good thing to end up in the promotions folder then?
A: We think so! While no one likes being in the promotions folder, some users may expect our emails to be there. Being sorted to Promotions may mean that users are less likely to mark an email as SPAM if they’re able to choose when they engage with it. - In our platform we can only see total open rates rather than being able to split by human/machine – we can’t also segment by this. Would the recommendation be to use Googleposter etc?
A: Total open rates are still useful for analyzing trends! It’s tough to not be able to segment by opens! While we advise not over-relying on any one metric for deliverability tracking / diagnosing, it is a useful tool for your Gmail audience —which is likely a large part of your audience. Clicks and Bounces are also a part of keeping an eye on your organization’s deliverability.
What are you waiting for? Go, download the recording already. What else were you gonna do on your Friday night?