Kamasutra

of eMail Marketing
Deliverability

Ebook
Intro
Email marketing is still one of the most important parts of companies’ marketing strategy. Comparing to the more
traditional marketing tools, it is relatively inexpensive, has wide range of personalization capabilities, is easily
measurable and customisable. Thanks to its features, the companies are able to increase their customers’ engagement
and loyalty while also generate higher revenue. Instant delivery of individually targeted messages to each customer?
What’s more to ask for.

Did you know that 99% of us check our emails everyday and some of us check
them almost 20x a day? The Optinmonster conducted research that our first
check in the day is email in 58%, in comparison to social media (14%), search
(20%), news (5%) and company intranet (3%). Reaching your audience is akin
to love-making: when performed skillfully it can lead to the couple’s satisfaction.
But when performed poorly, may quickly doom the relationship.

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

Even though emailing is known to be more effective than social media, almost 85% of all emails stay unopened.
Basing on the SendGrid Global Email Benchmark Report, in the last 4 years statistics of aggregate open rate
fluctuated around 14% with a pick in 2018 (18%), aggregate click rate - from 1.9% to 1.6% and click-to-open rate
- from 13.6% to 10.9%. It leaves very big potential of email marketing not fully utilized.

The difficulty of conducting a highly successful emailing campaign can be likened to that of young couple attempting
to diligently explore the various positions of the Kamasutra. The amount of contortions required to successfully reach
your customers may surprise you.

However, even if it may sound simple, it’s not. There are various factors that determine whether the message will
eventually be delivered to the actual inbox. This guideline is here to help you with utilize this channel fully.

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Understanding deliverability: who’s involved
There are four parties involved in the email deliverability process - the senders, the ESPs, the ISPs, and the recipient.

SENDER ESP ISP RECIPIENT

Sender is the company Email Service Provider Inbox Service Provider The person who has
or the individual that schedules is a company that offers bulk is a company that offers opted-in to receive the email.
the email message. email sending services. Besides the email inbox services. Usually, the individuals
the infrastructure which is used The most popular free ISPs have to sign up to receive

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

Depending on the fact if for physical campaign send-out, are Gmail, Outlook, iCloud Mail messages from various
the original sender has it’s they offer also functionalities and Yahoo! Mail. companies.
own email infrastructure or not, that help design, personalize
the email message can contain and analyze the email Every ISP, no matter if it’s
different sender datas: campaign. a major or minor one has Recipients can utilise
their own anti-spam system private, individual inbox
Envelope “from” - this ESPs are companies such as: and blacklisting report in which or business one, while
address is displayed SALESmanago, Mailchimp, the “naughty” addresses also apply individual filtres,
in the recipients inbox. Sendgrid, Freshmail aka. senders with bad practices install adblock systems to,
or Getresponse. are being listed. or decide to unsubscribe
“From” address -
indicates the infrastructure in order to customize
Important part of the ESP’s Companies may have their own the inbox.
responsible for sending offer from the deliverability’s email infrastructure and don’t
out the message. perspective is the warmed up IP use external ISP. In such case
address with the good sending they use their own policies
reputation. to filter incoming emails.

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The journey of an email campaign
In order to perfect the topic of email deliverability, it is crucial to analyze in detail rules and good practices
on every stage, from building mailing list, through email creation and it’s delivery, to the final assessment.
Following this guideline will help you visibly boost your deliverability.

Building Email Email ISP

a mailing list creation delivery Feedback

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

reason to sign up create and design the role of ESPs on the role of ISPs on
the email deliverability the email deliverability
obtaining personal data personalization
dedicated or shared IP blacklisting
subscription confirmation message preview address
analyze the bounce
list segmentation warming up the IP rate & spam traps
address
different messaging
policies verification of Sender IP
feedback loops

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 Building
a mailing list

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

 Building a mailing list

Reason to sign up
While signing up, the subscribers should be aware of the added value for
them and further outcomes of the subscription. It not only gives them a reason
to leave their data, but also prepares them for the upcoming communication
appearing on their inboxes.

Inform the user what are the perks

of signing up, such as:

discount code,

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

being updated on news in the offer,
special offers,
receiving price alerts,
VIP access, whitepapers, etc.

It’s a good practice to inform, that besides the discount code,

they will receive offers tailored to their interests - they will not be
unpleasantly surprised after receiving emails from you, because
they knew they should expect them.

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 Building a mailing list

Obtaining personal data

Before sending any email campaign, first make sure if you are properly acquiring your subscribers. Building
a healthy mailing list is the vital element of the entire email marketing strategy. You want to avoid sending emails
to non-existing users, being marked as spammers and other issues which may occur if the email subscription
process is not designed properly.

When you are collecting customer data be

sure to follow few rules about the subscriber’s When signing up for the newsletter,
consent to receive your emails. It should be: the following consents should be collected:

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

public - the consent shouldn’t be hidden in any consent to the processing of personal data
means - it has to be easily found for marketing purposes

conscious - the consent should provide all consent to the sending commercial
the necessary information for the customer information by electronic means of
communication
voluntary - the user can’t feel forced to select
a particular consent These consents cannot be hidden in terms
and conditions or privacy policy, or marked
confirmed - the consent shouldn’t be “pre-ticked”, as agreed by default.
user has to be able to tick the box himself

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 Building a mailing list

Subscription confirmation

To make sure all subscribers signed up on their own, voluntarily, we

recommend using double opt-in procedure during the sign-up process.
Statistically, a double opt-in lists have 75.6% higher open rates than
single opt-in lists.

Double opt-in procedure requires a new subscriber to confirm that

actually he or she filled that form. After entering the email address
in the form, an automatically generated message with an activation link
is sent to the address. After clicking on it, the address will be activated
and the possibility of delivering emails to this address will be unlocked.

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

By choosing double opt-in, you can be sure that the person who has
been added to the list actually is willing to get your emails. It works well
for deliverability and affects the quality of the mailing list.

What’s more, sending a welcome email after finishing the sign-up

process can create a good first impression that will translate into
higher engagement in the future email campaigns. We recommend
including basic information about products or services, while also giving
a customer the possibility of prividing feedback - this way the customer
will feel actually needed and realize that his opinion matters.

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 Building a mailing list

List segmentation

75% of consumers are Almost 70% subscribers 760% increase in revenue

more likely to purchase from opt-out from emails due noticed by marketers who
personalized campaigns to receiving too many implemented segmentation
based on their individual messages. in their campaigns.
preferences. (Chadwick Martin Bailey) (Business2Community)
(Accenture)

Meeting customers at the point of their need is crucial in marketing strategy. Segmentation helps in targeting
mass campaigns to smaller groups of contacts with similar preferences, thus improves the effectiveness and their

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

retention. You can perform email list segmentation based on:

BEHAVIOUR PURCHASE HISTORY REACTION TO PREVIOUS

you can track when and what tailor the content of campaign CAMPAIGNS
articles, products and categories based on what products modify the frequency of
the customer browses on the customer bought earlier campaigns based on amount of
the website to adjust the content campaigns opened in given time
and frequency of messages

Because of this approach, we keep the customers’ interest longer, reduce the unsubsribe rate while also increase
basic ratios such as open rate and CTR. This is crucial, as positive feedback on campaigns improves the sender’s
reputation and therefore deliverability.

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 Building a mailing list

Different messaging policies

Based on the customer segmentation you can also change the frequency
of campaigns, not to overwhelm the customers with too many messages,
if in given time they are not interested in buying anything.

Depending on the customer segments, you can use different frequencies

of messages on weekly or monthly basis.

Don’t send the same emails to the new subscribers and old or inactive
address. The more you know about your audience, the better experience
you can give them, which leads to an increase in engagement.

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

Sample messaging policy which you can tailor to your company’s goals and needs:

if customers did not if there is no engagement

send 1-3 emails open any of them within the last 180 days ,
per week to new in last 30 days, transfer user into
contacts change the frequency re-engagement or
to 1/month re-permission program

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 Email
creation

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Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

 Email creation

Create and design

The other factor of email deliverability is creation and design of the single message or campaign. When creating
a campaign, it’s important to pay attention to its size and weight. ISPs control the subject and body of an email in order
to protect their customers and filter spam and any possible scam. Your content has to prove its valuability for the receiver.
That is why being able to resolve a filtering issue is crucial. In order to do so, we pinpoint the most important aspects of
email creation that will improve the rating of your emails:

Don’t use all CAPS Don’t use too much Pay attention to image/ Include a clear
and exclamation “super-hot exclusive text ratio and don’t use unsubscribe link
points!!!!! anywhere sale!” catch-phrases an overwhelming number and a physical mailing
in your email or its (clickbait) of images address in your email
subject line. It especially refers It is recommended to keep footer.

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

No one likes to being to the subject. When the 60% text and 40% According to the law,
yelled at, even if you you are deciding on image in email campaigns. every message has
want to emphasize the next “you won’t It isn’t a crucial aspect to include an opt-
something to highlight believe your eyes” email in the spam filters but out link. In the event
the message. It subject, spam filters it helps with maximizing that a person would
is considered rude will take a closer look email deliverability. Pay wish to unsubscribe
and doesn’t fit in email at it and possibly treat it attention to the email from receiving more
etiquette. The same as spam. weight - make sure it emails, respect that
thing applies to the red won’t exceed 100kb. and mark that contact
colour when drafting The dimensions should be with a special tag, that
your emails. adjusted to the average prevents them from
resolution and screen size, receiving any messages
i.e. 600 px. from that specific sender.

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 Email creation

Create and design

Be Careful With URL Score the subject line Use Responsive Web
Shorteners Use tools that help Design
Even though the URL analyze the subject line Keep in mind to always
shorteners are quite to predict if the phrases use RWD because
handy to convert you used lower over 50% of the traffic
the long url into a shorter or increase the Open in the Internet is now
version, they are also Rate of the campaign. generated by mobile
used to mask a link Such analysis is possible users and they
source. It doesn’t give based on the data tend to check their
any indication of its final on historically sent inboxes 3 times more

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

destination, because of campaigns and their often than desktop
that they are commonly subject lines. users. RWD means
used by spammers. automatic adaptation
of the email layout
according to the size
of the browser window
in which it is displayed.
Many ISPs verify if
the template will be
mobile-friendly, if
the message will be
opened on mobile - if
not, your email might not
be delivered.

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 Email creation

Personalization
After gathering the sufficient information about customers, you are able to deliver them relevant content - such
personalization of your email campaign will increase the customer’s engagement.
Personalization is not only putting the correct name in the subject line, but also adjusting the entire email content
and email delivery time. Basing on the Instapage statistics - introduction of personalized emails delivered six times
higher transaction rates.
How to perform it correctly?

Use customer past behavior Use the name and branding

Use the contact’s basic
such as visited or bought products in your “from” name. The users
information such as name,
and modify the content of are more willing to open

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

email address, or other
the email to make sure they will the email from Kate from
personal data to show that
see content relevant SALESmanago than Kate Smith
message is addressed
to them, what new offers may or katesmith291827. By including
to the right person.
interest them. company name within this section
you will minimize spam complaints
and improve open rates,
Use dynamic content as received emails will be easily
Utilize personal data efficiently.
and show product recognizable with company.
Everyone loves to hear a few
recommendations based on nice words on your birthday
an abandoned shopping cart, or receive a gift - why not to use
or last visited products - you that and send a personalized
are sure then that they get birthday message consisting
what they were looking for. a discount coupon.

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 Email creation

Message preview

Most of the ESPs offer email designers really good

optimised to display the templates in almost every
email client and inbox properly. However, there
is always a possibility that for some reason email
won’t load correctly.

In such cases a last resort solution, the message

preview link, might be handy. Clicking it opens
the email directly in the internet browser, where

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

the display problems are less likely to appear.

It shouldn’t really matter on what device

the customer is opening your email. Test every
possibility - mobile, desktop and web screenshots
for exceptionally accurate results. Adding message
preview link won’t negatively affect the design
of your email, but for some users it might be the only
way to see your message correctly.

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 Email
delivery

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Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

The role of ESPs on the email deliverability
ESPs are delivering technology for enabling building email lists and sending messages.

ESPs deliver infrastructure for sending emails Besides the email delivery ESPs offer also:
- they own IP addresses which are used email automation
to physically send out the message and they
lead capture forms
are signed as actual message senders, despite
the “from” envelop the sender may use. customisation of dynamic content with personalisation features
user activity & website tracking to obtain more information
A/B testing (email subject lines, email content, entire automations)
As a sender, the ESP enables you to send segmentation based on subscribes preferences
messages to more than a few recipient without template creation or using pre-made ones
hitting the limits of ISP or email provider (like statistical reviews of each email and whole campaign

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

Gmail, Yahoo! etc.) or even getting blacklisted. rendering test platforms
The role of ESPs in email delivery is to
pre-screen sender’s account before sending
in, to protect a good reputation with email
providers. Whenever they let spammer account
send thousands messages, it also has an
impact on their account. This is the reason why
most of ESPs have a constant interaction with
email services - every time someone marks
a message as a spam, they will be reported
back and flagged.

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 Email delivery

Dedicated or shared IP address

The identification and reputation aspects are the most likely to be the reasons
why your email makes it to the customer’s inbox or spam folder. Each delivery issue
is connected with your infrastructure like faulty email addresses, possibly being
blocked, having illegal email practices, or even that your subscribers
aren’t interested in your content. The topic of email delivery couldn’t be analyzed
without the introduction of IP addresses.

Internet Protocol (IP) address is a signature tag of a computer connected

to the internet. IP reputation is based on the IP address where the email originated
from, either dedicated IP address (easiest to whitelist the IP address) or a shared
IP pool (email volume is increased, protects smaller senders from costly mistakes).
Personally, we recommend a second option of the shared IP - it’s cheap (sharing costs

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

as well) and there is no need to set it up. What’s more, shared IP pool can be assigned
based on the overall quality score, the engagement of customers, or the type of
industry they operate in.

Adding to that as a sender you need to monitor the reputation of your sender’s IP
address.
Reputation is a basic score whether you are worth being trusted as an email sender.
Each Inbox Serive Provider (ISP) has its own way to evaluate it however analysis
of positive subscriber behavior is the best way for boosting the reputation. Using
dedicated IP addresses limits the amount of IPs in use - it makes a company more
vulnerable if the reputation for some reason will drop - there is no easy way to quickly
replace the bad IP with the better one.

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 Email delivery

Warming up the IP address

At the beginning of conducting mailing campaigns, it is important to focus on
more frequent shipment to smaller groups of recipients instead of individual
large shipments to the entire contact database.

This process holds the name of “warming up” the used IP address.
This method allows you to gradually gain the position of a trusted sender
in the eyes of ISPs, which translates into a decrease in the likelihood of your
emails hitting the “Spam” folder.

When the ISP notice a large amount of messages sent from completely new
or “cold” (possibly inactive for some time) IP address, it starts to analyze

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

whether these are spam emails. It is the number of emails send which
is the the key factor monitored by spam filters.
What should I do then? The better strategy is to slowly warm up your
shipments, while also gradually build a positive reputation. Your future
mailing strategy, especially the frequency of shipping should stay at the same
level. In other case, after a month of inactivity you will lose your “position”
and reputation and become a cold address once again.

If you are using shared pool of IPs you don’t need to worry about warming up
process - they are already in use and warmed up.

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 Email delivery

Verification of Sender IP

SPs verify if the emails are sent by the owner of the domain marked as sender to protect
their users against fraud. Lack of verification of the domain from which you send
correspondence or newsletter may cause that the subscribers inbox recognize the email
address as spam. In order to be sure and positively reduce number of spam emails you
need to configure:

Sender Policy Framework (SPF),

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM),
Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC).

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

The most basic one - SPF is guaranteeing that you are the owner
of the domain and gives the possibility to contact people using
the domain name to selected IP addresses owned by ESP. Combining
it with DKIM gives you not only ownership authentication, but also email
validation. However, DMARC is the most advanced among others,
it adds an extra check - ‘alignment test’ which gives the extra tip why
an email hasn’t passed it. Thanks to these authentication methods you
will become a more reliable sender.

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 Email delivery

Feedback loops

In the interest of both ESPs and ISP is to minimize

the number of spammers. ESPs try to avoid SENDER
blacklisting at all cost, while ISPs exposing their
users to spam. Reliable email delivery is important
for each of them, that is why they introduce
a feedback loops (FBL).

Feedback loops are one of the functions of ISPs FEEDBACK

that notifies the sender in the moment of marking LOOP RECIPIENT
an email as a spam by subscriber.
PROVIDER

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

Some of the providers send information every time
the complaint is being generated by a recipient,
others are concentrating on data aggregation.

By analyzing feedback loops you are able

to control sending emails to the subscriber
who has generated a complaint.

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 ISP
Feedback

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Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

The role of ISPs on the email deliverability
As we have already mentioned, ISP is responsible for the biggest part of the delivery process. As the effect
of an accelerating increase of email traffic, ISPs are introducing more and more advanced filters which makes it even
harder to earn the place in the customer’s inbox, such as:

Sending limits Email bulking

Every sender has its own limit - the number/weight Sending emails to the junk
of messages that can be sent by one sender. These or spam folder by default. Pay
established limitations vary from one email provider attention to open and click rates
to another. It also depends on your email volume send in reports. If you don’t want
regularly. Sending too many emails will soft bounce to experience email bulking,
all the emails afterward until the limit resets. In order analyze open and click rates
to avoid reaching the limit, slowly increase email volume in reports, using a seed list.
at least 30 days before the big campaign.

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

Blacklisting Blocks
A stricter block that hopefully, you won’t meet. Basically, After receiving too many spam
an email sent from a blacklisted server or domain complaints or having too many
doesn’t have any chances to land in your dream place hard bounces. Basically keep your
aka the inbox - it’ll land in junk or not at all. mailing list clean.

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 ISP Feedback

Blacklisting
In the topic of blacklisting, ISPs have possibilities of choosing their blacklisting tools.
We can divide them into:

ISP custom spam filters - every Public Blacklists - these services work in cooperation
ISP has their own custom set with many ISPs with whom they exchange the information
of blocking rules. Usually they about senders. The most popular ones are SpamCop
assess gathered information with and SpamHaus. The first one is basing its activity on
a content filters in a “weighted” measuring the ratio between spam complaints and volume
system with sufficient spam of messages, while the second one except of blacklisting,
points for every instance of bad runs Register of Known Spam Operations - the list of users

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

behaviour. marked as spammers three or more times. The benefit for ISP
is not passing the spam messages to their users, the blacklist
benefits by receveiving more feedback on spam messages
that were reported by ISP-es users.

As we mentioned before, if the spam score gets to high, the emails will
immediately land in the trash folder or even be bounced back to the sender.

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 ISP Feedback

Analyze the bounce rate & spam traps

Sending the email doesn’t mean that it would land in the customer’s inbox successfully.
There is always a possibility of message bouncing back. The bounce rate indicator can be
divided into 2 types

Hard bounces = Soft bounces =

permanent delivery temporary deliverability
failures, for example failures, such as a full
when email doesn’t inbox, too large email
exist, it’s invalid, file, sudden increase

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

or server doesn’t exist. in sending volume or too
high frequency for
engagement levels.

There is also a subject of spam trap. It’s simply an old, recycled email created by ISPs or public blacklist providers
which isn’t actively used by real person. It is used in order to detect email senders that try to send emails to not
verified, inactive users. Each sender has to make sure that the spam traps are not present in their mailing list,
in other case it can heavily decrease their reputation.

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How to improve health of your database?

You already know how to configure your email infrastructure

and what email sending practices are welcome for ISPs. The only
thing that still can go wrong is the quality of your database, which
may decrease in time if you won’t pay attention to it. But it’s not
that hard. Here’s what you can do to keep your email lists healthy.

Kamasutra of eMail Marketing Deliverability

1 2 3 4 5 6
Use double Give the recipients Adjust Don’t use Automatically Use feedback
opt in a way to resign the frequency unverified remove hard loops to block
from your emails of campaigns emails lists bouncing users marking
to the customer’s (spam traps risk) addresses from your messages
engagement your list as spam

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 Kamasutra
of eMail Marketing Deliverability
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