What keeps email marketers up at night? Sure, there are lots of worries. What if my copy has a typo? What if I get flagged as spam? What if people unsubscribe in droves?
But what they should be worrying about is a big word with an important meaning: deliverability.
That means that emails messages are actually getting to the recipients mailbox. The Delivra blog has covered this topic quite often recently, discussing an overall email marketing deliverability plan as well as focusing on reputation management.
But there's another side to deliverability, and it can be the scariest of all:
© Flickr user orderlyschism
What happens if messages aren't making it to the inbox, but you don't know about it?
This is one of the most painful elements of the reality of modern email marketing. A message that is "not opened" might be sitting in an inbox, or it might have been silently filtered away as spam.
So what should you do in order to increase open rates and ensure increased email deliverability?
Ask your customers if they are receiving your emails.
That's it! Of course, you can't do it over your same email marketing platform. You have to at least use a different source IP, or direct emails sent from individuals (or via a non-ESP method like mail merge.)
Or, you can work it into other interactions. For example: "Are you receiving our email newsletter?" can be part of your sales script. You can even make your direct mail campaign cross reference your email marketing campaign so you know who should be getting your emails.
Don't fear the email deliverability monster. Instead, recoginze that you need to know if the mail is getting through.
And if you need help, call a professional email marketing agency like Delivra.
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Rush rush rush, many marketers are faced with an ever expanding job description, print, web, social… EMAIL! When will you get it all done with so little time and less resources? That is a question that many of my clients face every day. I hear so often after sharing my recommendations of what the program could be doing, I love that feature but I just do not have time to implement. You are not alone! Remember back to yesterday's post I wrote about the ROI of your email program. Understanding your ROI will help determine if you should be focusing more time on email and allocating more resources that way. Once you know if your email program is accomplishing your financial goals it would be easier to decide, do I need to spend more time myself on our program or should I partner up with my ESP to have them deliver strategy and implementation of some of the recommendations I don’t have time to implement but know could enhance my ROI?
Many programs send all the time with little strategy or justification for the send, other programs is the exact opposite. I see this more and more with newer clients who are starting out for the first time building their lists, and creating their first email campaigns. The hang up here is often the fear of hitting send and wondering if they have everything perfect. Don’t get me wrong, an email without grammatical errors is great but an email that never goes out because the content is stale is detrimental. If you never send it your audience will never know it existed. Are you one of those companies that know email is a good idea but just can’t seem to get it out the door? Start with a content calendar! It can go a long way in helping you get the email out the door.
It is great to be cautious but don’t miss out on an opportunity because you are striving for perfection! Your readers are more forgiving than you think! Learn from your experiences and begin to use that to tailor and grow your email program in to a fine tune machine!
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