If one dares to look, one can find that two things that are seemingly unrelated can actually be connected and teach us quite a bit about each other. My work and my kids are huge chunks of my life, so they easily inspire my thinking and get intermingled. Just watching how my kids prioritize and focus or don’t focus on things got me thinking about gaps in email marketing that can easily lead to deliverability issues.
Issue identification starts with program awareness.
One thing I find so endearing about kids is how little external awareness they have. The yogurt circle around the mouth. The marker on the forehead. The knotty hair. The inside out shirt. The sticker stuck to the bottom of their pants.
It gets me in the feels every time. I want to capture it, bottle it up! It’s a time in their life where they’re wonderfully focused on the things that truly matter to them and aren’t bothered by the little things that aren’t giving them happiness or joy to those around them. And as soon as they are done with a toy or theme of play, they are quick to move forward and on to the next big thing.
On the downside, their lack of external awareness becomes apparent and barreling into view when something urgent, alarming, or painful happens. It can be a disruption and a short period of heightened sense for an adult. But for kids, it’s disarming and shuts them down. WHAT DO I DO?
I feel there is a similar comparison to email, where the joy in numbers and design and the next big thing and ‘dolla-dolla bills y’all’ is the center of a marketer’s hyper-focus. What’s done is done, but what’s next is where focus goes. Deliverability support and a time for reflection is brought after issues have already come tearing through town like a tornado.
Deliverability is the result of action and inaction.
Deliverability, in this Yahoogle age of deliverability, is a ‘get what you give’ philosophy. Meaning your actions or inactiosn as a sender have direct impacts on what your customers are experiencing. And their responses have direct impacts on your program and how it will be seen by the receiver and filters: one that is deserving of delivery and inboxing or one that belongs in the spam folder or blocked entirely.
Identifying what’s impacting your deliverability starts with having a great sense of awareness about your program. The majority of clients I’ve been working with lately have their issues more deeply rooted in the program and the data.
The hardest part of identifying these issues is digging into each aspect and questioning if it’s really set up the way one believes it is, especially if things were running smoothly for some time. But if deliverability issues arise, it’s time to start questioning each campaign, each segment, each flow, each registration, and revisit those “themes and toys” that were discarded.
When I’m discovering deliverability for a client, most of my time is spent asking questions. A lot of my clients have done their “reading” and they know the best practices, but something is still missing. Those questions often lead my clients to revelations that answer the “why” behind their deliverability issues.
Yes, there are times where deliverability issues can stand up and slap you across the face after one bad decision, but, in most cases, it’s a slow leak (or many), unnoticed until the program is speeding along with a flat tire bending the rim of the wheel.
The questions I use to begin identifying deliverability issues focus on the program strategy. I less frequently discuss the technical items (although I do review them).
- What is your send strategy?
- What made you believe there is a deliverability issue?
- When did you notice?
- What is your performance now and what was it 6 months ago and 1 year ago?
- Have there been any changes to your program?
- Who are you targeting?
- Are you using automations?
- What is your data retention?
- How and when do customers fall off your list?
- Have you gotten any feedback and what did it focus on?
- Have you changed how your emails were collected or did you get new lead sources?
- Where are all the places emails can come into your program?
- What language do you use on sign up?
- How long have you been mailing these customers?
- Have you done any analysis of your audience against their value: who you are mailing, how often you are mailing?
- Are you using the same forms and streams today that you did a year ago?
- Have you signed up lately to your program? Are you monitoring your mail from the perspective of an active user versus an unengaged user?
- Do you have new partners?
- Are you using affiliates?
- What are your program goals and what are your strategies to achieve them?
- What are your biggest concerns when developing your program and deciding what to mail?
- Tell me about the brand and website and if you have multiple brands, are they connected?
These questions help me learn about their side of the email. Then I will go experience it for myself.
Take a walk in their shoes.
I often find there is a difference between being an architect/designer of a home (email program) and a homeowner living in that home (email recipient.) The architect focuses on the structure, but also the aesthetic. They often bring in functionality, but without living in the home, they may never realize the beautiful design conflicts with how one actually lives in the house.
Shaker cabinets are clean and beautiful. An entrance into a kitchen is warm and welcoming. However, for a family of kids and dogs, those shaker cabinets are going to be impossible to keep clean because they just collect dust and dog hair. A direct entrance into a kitchen tracks mud and tossed backpacks that end up in the middle of the floor. Being able to live that life would bring up a different design. Perhaps flat panel cabinets and a mudroom!
When you are diagnosing your deliverability issues, and here is the ‘single step’ click-bait, become the customer.
- Does your experience mimic the design?
- And do you like it?
- Can you imagine customers who don’t and where they may sit and how you can better communicate or address those concerns?
I did this recently with a client and immediately found that although I signed up to receive their blog, I was only subscribed to marketing and product updates, but NOT the blog I thought I was signing up for.
Digging in further with another client asking about feedback, it came to light that their customers were also subscribed to 8 brands at the start, but when they received those communications, they didn’t even recognize they belonged to the same company.
Although putting yourself into the “flow” as a customer will uncover gaps, it won’t uncover all of them because we are still only looking at it from one angle. Bring in others for their thoughts, even if it’s close friends.
Don’t rely on timing alone, but timing can be a crucial clue to identifying issues.
Ask yourself if there is a correlation between when issues arose and when changes were rolled out. There may not be because the issue could be building slowly, but sometimes it can give you a place to start. “We saw performance drop in November. One month prior we brought in paid social media for leads.” Then pull on that thread. What does it look like to come in through that means? Was consent collected? Were they promised the mail you are delivering or something else?
If you are authenticated, it’s likely not a technical issue.
There is no doubt that technical settings can play a heavy impact on deliverability. When technical issues are at play, it’s usually something that’s been a thorn in a marketer’s side from the start. Or there is a specific bounce message coming in that doesn’t point the cause to an email address being invalid or unknown.
But, in most cases, especially for senders using reputable email service providers to send their mail, the technical aspects are sound. There are cases where individual receivers make updates to their filtering that may require a change to how PTRs are named or what is no longer accepted from the technical standpoint. HOWEVER, that is more of an exception than the rule. Yahoo and Google’s announcement is an example of an exception that moved the whole email industry (although technically those requirements have been around for ages.)
When it becomes difficult or you’ve run out of questions, reach out to deliverability professionals, they may be able to help you find that missed angle you were looking for.