Deliverability: the guide that explains how to increase your mailings’ deliverability
But there are a number of intermediate steps you must be sure to carry out in order to get there, and some metrics that deserve your attention. The first fundamental metric is called deliverability and refers to the ability to deliver email messages to the inboxes of the subscribers in a database, avoiding their Spam inbox.
In fact, reaching your contacts’ main inbox is not guaranteed: the roads that lead to the Spam folder are endless and insidious. A recent Return Path study reports that a quarter of emails sent don’t reach users’ inboxes.
How can you ensure that your Email Marketing strategy doesn’t lead you to the junk mail folder? By implementing a series of precautionary measures that will make your mailings as safe as can be.
To help you in this task, MailUp has prepared a guide entirely dedicated to the topic. The various chapters explain how to optimize your email campaigns and increase the number of successful mailings.
From developing integrations to strategic support, from creating creative concepts to optimizing results.
Databases: quality is better than quantity
ISPs (Internet Service Providers) decide which emails wind up in the Spam folder, as they are responsible for sorting incoming mail, dividing the important messages from the undesired ones. Do your contacts always open your emails and click on the links? Or do they inexorably delete all the communications you send?
ISPs receive vital feedback from this behavior. To make sure you’re properly filtered, you need to be fully in line with your database. That’s why this chapter discusses the importance of building a quality contact list.
You’ll find practical tips on database building and acquiring contacts correctly, as well as how to approach registration forms and best manage those subscribed to your lists.
The message: your business card
41% of consumers consider coherence and consistency fundamental values of a brand: in this chapter we explain how to ensure coherence between your emails, website and landing page, at both a communicative and visual level. Using templates is a good way to standardize your communications and make sure your emails are immediately associated with your company’s name. Learn the best practices that help you visually develop brand consistency.
But in addition to email design tips, you also need to know the rules for giving your emails an optimal structure. This chapter offers information on modular and responsive structures, which one has an edge over other solutions, how to arrange content, reading patterns and the most effective layouts, how to write email objects that convert, using bulletproof calls to action and how to customize the footer of your emails
Infrastructure: mailings from known origins
Sender reputation is one of the most important factors in the evaluation of ISPs. To avoid being considered a spammer, use a certified sending infrastructure and quality IP, and align all the domains in the message onto just one: this will greatly improve your deliverability.
This chapter explains the most secure email authentication protocols and how they work.
Don’t get caught off guard when your company wants to implement the new sender certification systems, i.e., the authentication method known as BIMI, Brand Indicators for Message Identification, which makes your brand logo appear next to the sender name displayed in the inbox of the different mail providers.
Statistics: each trace is a suggestion
One of the strengths of the email channel is that it can be entirely monitored. Those who work in Email Marketing have detailed statistics and data on user behavior that tell them what works and what doesn’t. It’s important to know how to leverage this information and measure the right metrics.
This chapter distinguishes between on-mail KPIs (openings, clicks, unsubscribes, bounces, measuring user interactions with messages) and off-mail KPIs (site traffic, average receipt, conversion rate, tracking everything that takes place elsewhere).
Engagement is also very important, as it offers a complete picture of the involvement of a database with respect to the messages it receives. Monitoring it at the campaign and strategy level reveals whether your content engages your audience or if you need to change tactics.
Integration: communications make relationships grow
Segmenting your database is a crucial point in any Email Marketing strategy. It allows you to send ad hoc content for different audiences and personalize your communications.
You will therefore find the information contained in this chapter very useful for adding value to the personal characteristics of each contact in your mailing list and sending messages in line with each type of user’s interests and purchasing habits.
Once you’ve collected data about the users in your database, use filters to segment your contact list and cluster it. Learn how to create segmentation rules with the utmost precision, set up subsets or groups in your contact lists, and diversify your campaigns based on the characteristics that are most significant for what you sell or want to promote.
And finally, marketing automation: what pushes brands to adopt automatic delivery systems? How can you take advantage of automation if you have an e-commerce site? You’ll find the answers to these questions here, as well as some examples of the most popular and effective workflows.