In today’s wildly turbulent marketing world, it’s rather impressive that this particular channel has not only proven its staying power but is arguably more valuable than ever before. We’re talking, of course, about email marketing.
Email marketing continues to triumph in providing high ROI to marketers, and we couldn’t be more thrilled. (Email strategy is kind of our thing.) However, as with every corner of the marketing landscape, running a successful campaign requires a high level of technical expertise, an air-tight strategy and good, clean data.
Through conversations with our clients, prospective clients and peers, we’ve identified some key areas that B2B businesses can focus on for improved email deliverability beyond generic surface-level tips and tricks. Ready to dig in?
Whisper the words “email marketing” around here, and these two will be on deck stat. Jo Tovee, Director of Customer, and Jasmin Shields, Platform Specialist, have a combined 20+ years of hands-on B2B email marketing experience and are here to share their best-in-class advice in this two-part blog series (when they got talking, well, things escalated).
Regarding email health and deliverability, there are two crucial relationships to manage: the relationship with your Mailbox Provider (or ISP, Inbox Service Provider, and not to be confused with your Internet Service Provider) and the relationship with your customer (i.e. your audience or end-user). In part one, Jo and Jasmin weigh in with hyper-relevant advice to knock your technical set-up out of the park and foster a positive relationship with your ISP to ensure future email marketing success.
“Email isn’t dead. But these things will kill you.”
— Jasmin
What email address will your email marketing campaigns send from? This might seem simple, but there’s more to consider than many people realise.
For example, you would never use the active email of your company’s CEO to send out email marketing messages. Doing so would create many issues and probably wouldn’t make you too popular with the big boss. However, sending out an email from a recognisable company stakeholder can be a strong B2B strategy—enter subdomains.
Subdomains allow you to maintain brand trust, as email recipients will see a sender name they recognise. They will also ensure your campaign data and primary domain security remain intact. Subdomains can also be particularly helpful if your organisation deals with a high volume of marketing messages since you can separate that from the one-on-one internal communication system (such as Gmail, for example).
On the subject, Jo says, “If you have a subdomain, it also protects your primary domain. If you end up having incredibly poor email health, get loads of spam reports or get reported, you can end up on the blocklist, which can also impact your website domain. So having a subdomain will protect your overarching web domain, too.”
Pro tip: If you’re already a HubSpot user, you can create a subdomain for your email marketing in a snap. Each subscription has different limitations, which you can find more information about here.
With phishing scams and AI partnering up as the ultimate evil duo that nobody wants or needs, it’s no surprise that domain authentication has upped its game as well. Email Service Providers (ESPs) aim to protect your brand and the end users, so these beefed-up security requirements make it harder for those bad actors to swoop in and pretend to be you.
Completing your domain authentication properly and thoroughly will ensure you build the best sender reputation to place more highly in your recipients' inboxes. The three primary authentication methods recognised by major email inbox providers are DKIM, SPF, and DMARC (here’s a breakdown of these elegant acronyms for reference).
Jasmin says, “These are different techniques of authentication, and over the last decade, there's been a lot of changes to security and authentication in the email world. It used to be that you only really needed one or two of these. But as of this year, leading inbox providers require all three to get the best reputation and prove you are who you say to be.
“There are also more than just the big three; there are so many more additional authentication measures—such as BIMI and ARC—which can further enhance the sender reputation.”
Pro tip: Navigate the basics of email authentication within HubSpot using this handy guide.
As Jasmin says, numerous factors play into your sender reputation and inbox placement, but your IP pool is both a reflection of your behaviour—good or bad—and a determining factor of your future performance.
Jo is on deck to explain precisely how IPs and email performance correlate. “So a typical email platform (like HubSpot) will have shared IP pools and will allocate senders to a pool based on their sending behaviour. This means that if you're a ‘good’ sender, you're put in a ‘good’ pool; if you're a ‘bad’ sender, you’re put in a ‘bad’ pool. There are often multiple pools, so you could be somewhere in between. There is a certain science to deliverability, but fortunately, most email platforms have dedicated specialists in this field who will monitor and manage this on your behalf, so it’s not something you need to worry about. (See how HubSpot manages this here.)
“That said, it will play a significant role in your inbox placement and your performance. The only way to move between pools is to behave yourself by using all of the authentication available, sending on a good regular cadence to the right people and to those who have opted in, engaged and that you have quality data on.
“The alternative to this pre-determined IP pool is using a dedicated IP, which usually comes with a bit of cost, plus more technical setup and management. If you still perform badly, the IP isn’t to blame. So, if you're naughty, you'll be put on the naughty list. Your dedicated IP that you've paid a fair amount for will get blocklisted, and you'll have to start all over again.
“So there is definitely benefit of having a dedicated IP if you're a high volume frequent sender, but it also means that you need somebody—either a partner or a deliverability consultant or someone knowledgable—to protect the reputation and manage any issues. I've seen both sides of the coin, where businesses have had an excellent sender reputation, and they've ended up in bad shared pools, then also dedicated IPs who have been very quickly put on an ordered list and they've had to start all over again.”
Pro tip: Are you curious to know where you stand? HubSpot’s email health tool will give you all the gossip about your current and past email sending reputation.
As we mentioned earlier, email health and deliverability encompass two relationships: the one with your mailbox provider and the one with your customers. These relationships go hand in hand, and the imaginary Venn diagram shows a fair amount of overlap between them.
Jasmin says it best: “You can have a beautiful email, but if you have a poor sender reputation or you're not properly authenticated, then there's no point in having a great email that your customers would love because they're not going to see it. And by reverse, if you have all the right technical things in place but your email won't convert, then you're not serving that customer relationship anymore.”
Stay tuned for part two, where Jo and Jasmin discuss how to keep that customer relationship happy—from email engagement, automation, and everyone’s favourite: data hygiene. See you soon.
Get your email marketing on the right track with Aamplify’s award-winning team; get in touch here.
Before the first day, you might also consider leaving a note on your new hire.
