Debunking common email myths
When it comes to the success of your email program, understanding what’s not true is just as important as understanding what is true. There are countless misconceptions among marketers, which can cause serious problems if you’re among the misguided believers. Here are just a few of the most common “email myths.”
It’s my email service provider’s (ESP’s) job to fix my deliverability.
GENERALLY NOT TRUE: You, the sender, are absolutely in charge of your own email deliverability and reputation.
Your reputation is determined by the quality of your lists, number of spam complaints, message quality, and sending history, all of which are controlled by the sender—you—and not your ESP. Sure, your ESP might be responsible for some delivery issues if their infrastructure isn’t set up properly, or maybe they assigned you a shared IP address that has poor delivery. But those scenarios are the exception, not the rule. Unless you address the root cause of your poor reputation, no ESP can get you delivered to the inbox.
If I ever have poor deliverability due to a bad reputation, the simplest way to get back into the inbox is to switch to a new IP address and domain.
FICTION: Don’t do it! More than likely, you will find yourself worse off.
Hopping from one IP address to another is a common tactic of spammers. To combat this, mailbox providers will typically block or limit volume from new IP addresses until they can learn what type of sender the mail is coming from—hence our consistent advice to warm up a new IP address. If left unaddressed, your reputation issues will follow you to your new IP address and domain. It’s better to address and fix the underlying reasons for your poor reputation than switch to a new IP address or sending domain.
If the content of your message has spammy keywords, you’ll have inbox placement problems
FICTION: Content plays a very small role in filtering decisions today compared to sender reputation and subscriber engagement.
This is because content-based spam filters return too many false negatives, aren’t reliable, and are easy for spammers to work around. More often than not, a good sender reputation will override any content filter. But that doesn’t mean content is never a factor. If you’re sending third party content or templates used by others, your content might have a bad reputation by association. Keep in mind, too, that spammy content could very well trigger spam complaints from your subscribers—which will also cause inbox placement problems over time.
I have a low complaint rate, so my mail should be delivered to the inbox.
FICTION: A low complaint rate can be misleading if you aren’t paying attention to your inbox placement rate.
Complaint rates are calculated based on total number of complaints and total messages delivered to the inbox. So if your mail is getting delivered to the spam folder, you’ll have a low complaint rate because it’s not possible to mark a message as spam when it’s already in the spam folder.
Your complaint rate can help you measure how subscriber preferences and act as an early warning for potential problems. However, it should be analyzed in conjunction with other metrics to understand how your content is preforming.
Because of engagement-based filtering, deliverability doesn’t really matter anymore.
FICTION: You need access and understanding of both deliverability and engagement metrics to get the full picture on how your program is preforming.
Engagement metrics do exactly what their name implies: they look at how your customers are engaging with your mail—not whether they received it. Deliverability metrics look at where your mail gets delivered (inbox, spam, or missing) and serve as the foundation of evaluating the effectiveness of your email program. Looking at both deliverability metrics and engagement metrics is the only way to gain a holistic view of your email program, understand how it’s performing, and identify any potential problems.
