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What Every Brand Should Know About Email

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Yes, we’re an email marketing and automation agency, but there’s so much more about email than marketing. 

Email is a powerful digital channel for communication—we already know that—, and that’s why we should ensure that our brand respects it.

If you’re reading this, then the chances are that you’re a marketer. But it’s your responsibility as your brand’s digital branch professional to ensure that you protect your brand from being blocked from this channel.

This article will explore every ramification that may improve or damage your email’s deliverability —marketing, transactional, or business ones.

Are you ready to get started? Grab your seat and buckle up for the ride.

 

Why should I care about what happens outside Email Marketing?

Yes, you’re responsible for your brand’s marketing activities. It means that usually, you only worry about if your newsletters or email campaigns are delivered.

I must remind you that email is a universal channel that needs to respect the rules of that communication channel. What happens on one version of your emails will also occur with the rest of your emails.

In other words, whatever happens with your regular business emails your colleagues send by Outlook or Web client, will reflect on your email marketing efforts. The reverse will also occur.

Imagine if your CTO knocks at your door and gives a speech on how your actions have determined the blocking of all your brand’s emails. You won’t be happy, now will you?

 

Why can Mailbox Providers block my Emails?

Your emails may face a general block or filter of the majority of mailbox providers primarily because of these reasons:

  1. Too many people have tagged your sender as a spammer;
  2. You’ve sent too many emails that were against each mailbox provider’s rules;
  3. Malware or bad people are using your domain as a phishing or spoofing source;
  4. Your website has a virus or malware detected by security bots, and they tagged as a malicious source;
  5. They noticed an unusual behaviour coming from your domain name, like an unusual volume of emails in a short time.

 

It’s possible that you may find more reasons, but these already cover most of them.

Why do the Mailbox Providers take these Actions?

Because they want to protect their users from abuse, AND they want to protect their infrastructure and costs.

It’s easy to understand if you think about it. Mailbox providers can only grow and avoid churn if their customers are happy with their service. 

To make them happy, they need to be able to filter as much spam as possible.

The same happens with malware programs or phishing attempts. It’s in their best interest and their users to avoid clicking or activating these malicious systems.

To have a profitable business, we need to focus on making the most of our resources and growing our revenue. If your brand sends tons of unwanted emails or too many of them, you’re abusing their rules. Each mailbox provider has a set of rules that each email sender must obey. 

An example is how many emails they allow each sender domain to send per minute. Obviously, if it’s a manual email, it can’t be possible to send more than a few emails per minute unless you’re the fastest typist in the world. 😅


What can You do to have Excellent Email Deliverability?

This is a question that craves that typical answer: it depends. 😅

But we’re not doing that to you.

We’re really covering each situation with you.


Things to be careful about in Email Marketing.

A short description of everything you need to make sure you follow to avoid ending up in some filters.

  1. Permission all the way —Make sure that everyone on your list has made an opt-in or double opt-in;
  2. Respect each mailbox provider’s rules about how many emails to send per minute and weight limit in case you’re sending an attachment (if possible, avoid it altogether);
  3. Be careful with the frequency of emails you send. Unless people know you’re sending one email daily, you might get a higher churn rate when subscribing;
  4. Avoid over-sending too much when it’s sales season, like Black Friday or Cyber Monday;
  5. Keep your email list cleaned up, removing the long-time inactive and with a careful eye into bounces;
  6. Careful with the links to external sites that might have a suspicious or malicious tag;
  7. Send relevant content and not something that may seem non-interesting to your present audience;
  8. Use an actual email sender. Don’t use the obnoxious “no-reply” email sender;
  9. Facilitate the unsubscribe. If possible, highlight it to avoid a spam complaint;

 

These are the main ones, but there’s much more you can find within our blog posts.


Things to be careful about with Business Emails.

A short description of things you should alert your colleagues to avoid while sending emails through your brand domain name.

  1. Never, ever send emails in bulk through their email account. If they want to send bulk emails, use an email marketing platform for that;
  2. Avoid sending heavy attachments. It’s better to store it in the cloud or your web server and then share a link;
  3. Avoid sending too many cold emails to the same person or company. If they haven’t replied yet, the chances are they’re not interested. If they continue, it might result in a spam complaint;
  4. Avoid adding too many CC or BCC email addresses. Not only can it be considered bulk emailing, but it also might fall into a privacy concern for the people with their email addresses disclosed;
  5. If people say they’re not interested in what you have to offer, don’t try to be pushy and change their minds. The first thing they’ll do is to click on the spam button;
  6. Use a different, lighter email signature when replying to someone. After a few replies on and off, it will increase your email weight considerably and eventually trigger some red flags or be filtered.
  7. Ensure you have the appropriate authentication for business emails from your domain name server. Sometimes, the server ones get deleted while authenticating for the email marketing.
  8. Ensure that everyone uses strong passwords for their emails and the encrypted SSL/TLS connection to avoid being the entrance door to a hacker getting access to your SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) functions.

 

If they follow these tips, you eliminate most of the most common issues.


Things to be careful about Transactional Emails

In a way, we could consider business emails as transactional ones too, but it better explains what you need to take care of. 


What are transactional emails?

Transactional emails are messages your platform, website, CRM, form, and e-commerce send automatically when something is triggered. For instance, purchase order emails, package location tracking emails, and thank you messages after filling in a form. 

  1. Again, authentication is key to ensuring that your emails don’t fall into a strict filter and consider a phishing or spoofing attempt;
  2. Use a real email sender that you can receive replies from your clients or recipients;
  3. Don’t forget to place an easy way for people to cancel further messaging if they want to;
  4. Regularly monitor your sender’s reputation to ensure your automated emails reach your audience’s inbox;
  5. Place easy ways for people to reach out to your customer support. Sometimes your link connections might not be working, and the only way you have to know is if people reach out to you;
  6. Don’t use transactional emails for marketing unless it’s something very light, like relevant suggestions at the end of the emails;
  7. Regularly revise your entire transactional templates and emails. We can’t number the times that the brand still used completely outdated designs and information without the marketing team knowing it;
  8. Don’t use the same IPs and sender emails as the marketing emails. This way, you don’t damage one delivery because of the other;

 

Have you built your checklist using these suggestions?

Let us know if you’re interested in a thorough checklist for your email marketing workflows.


Everything is connected

As marketers, we only focus on what our team does, but everything can affect our work. 

If one of your sales colleagues messes up, sends a few dozens of emails from his email account, and gets flagged in some mailbox providers, all of your brand’s emails get affected.

It’s up to you to educate your colleagues about the best practices using this great one-to-one channel.

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