By Julia, Deliverability Expert

“I don't want no scrub, a scrub is an email that can't get no love from me.”

Here at Campaign Nucleus, we want to make it as easy as possible for our users to produce the most successful email content possible. With that our team has done some research and put together some information we’ve found helpful in creating our own emails.

Let’s start simple – what are the things that every recipient is going to notice about your email?

1. Your sender
2. Your subject line
3. Your content

Now let’s talk about how we can utilize all 3 of these factors to create the MOST TOP NOTCH EMAIL possible!!

Sender:

When you see an email in your inbox, what is the first thing you see? Likely, the sender’s name. Are you more likely to open an email that appears to be sent from a specific person or one that declares a corporation. Likely, a specific name.

Well, your audience feels the same. This means you can improve your user engagement simply by using a more personalized sender, such as a team member, to make your communications seem more “human”and less “AI generated.”

For example, an email being sent from Julia from Nucleus may perform a bit better than one being sent from the Biden Administration (although that may have more than one reason for performing poorly…).\

With that, consistency is also always key – it’s a good habit to keep one sender and domain affiliated with each type of content being sent.

Subject Line:

Following the sender, you likely immediately notice the subject line affiliated with the email.

When it comes to subject line, there are a couple things to keep in mind:

• Topic – always make sure your subject line sticks to the point. No one wants to open an email that has nothing to do with the subject line… it appears deceiving

• Length – your subject line length can actually drive your engagement. Short subject lines (below 50 characters) & longer subject lines (above 70 characters) actually have been found to receive more engagement than average-length subject lines.
  

Content:

The last thing the recipient will see but generally the most important portion of the email for them to see.

There are lots of considerations to be made when designing our content & every audience type responds differently to different copy types.

We encourage individuality in your sends but here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Be concise – the average human has a reading attention span that ranges from 10-15 seconds… that isn’t very long.

• Consider your call to action – it’s good practice to include multiple links within the email & our system makes it easy to determine where your audience is engaging the most within your email.
  

• Always check variables – we want to make sure we do not address our recipients as “Hello %recipient.first%.”

• Make your email readable – this includes but is not limited to:
  • Having a nice layout – easy to read & pictures should never outweigh text
  • Using color and branding wisely
  • Ensuring pictures are high enough quality that they engage your audience (although too much data can slow your email load time & that isn’t great either)

For more information be sure to contact our team for training or insight and visit your Nucleus Resource Library!

OR

Disclaimer: We encourage “rolling” in the case of fire… Just not emails

By Julia, Deliverability Expert

Similar to the response time one may have to being engulfed in flames, I will make this insightful tidbit brief and to the point.

When it comes to block mitigation and server communication, we cannot control how the server responds… or even IF they respond. What we CAN control is how WE respond to the block.

To help make this as simple as possible, our email team has developed a memory tool from the simple and commonly-known (well, I hope it’s commonly known…) phrase “Stop, Drop and Roll.”

STOP

Stop sending completely

Pros – The issue will not progress/worsen; may help to refresh or recover IP/domain reputation

Cons – Domain/IP warming progress may be reversed (in some cases to the point of restarting)

DROP

Drop sending volume

Pros – Can halt a block or prevent further damage; may help to defend our sending practices in server communications

Cons – Can just prologue the inevitable (block) or prevent throttling limits from ever increasing

ROLL

Roll with it (proceed as you would if no issue occurred)

Pros – In rare cases, this issue resolves itself with no loss of volume or engagement for future sends

Cons – In many cases, this worsens the block, making it harder to resolve in this case and future cases for an indefinite amount of time

In contrast to one who may be caught on fire, our team actually discourages “rolling” in response to emailblocks and deliverability errors in most cases. As in the game of poker or the investment of stock, your risks should always be calculated.

Having reviewed that information, keep in mind that every case is different, and nothing is ever definite in the world of email marketing.

If you think you may have encountered a deliverability issue to any capacity and are considering how your team should respond, do not hesitate to reach out to your point of contact for further assistance.

For more information, contact our team for training or insight and visit your Nucleus Resource Library!

By Julia, Deliverability Expert

Have you ever heard the term “seed list” used? Well… we’ve been using this term a lot over here at Campaign Nucleus & we are excited to introduce seed list usability as one of our newest in-platform features.

So, firstly, what is a seed list? This is a list of emails that you have internal access to in order to be on the receiving end of your email sends.

Our email team has found that generally seed lists are not a great representation of inbox placement – this is because, after a few sends, the inbox will start to replicate personalized behavior rather than that of other inboxes with the same server. With that in mind, our team has found a lot of value in using email lists comprised of internal team members to help kickstart our email engagement with new or struggling domains/IPs.

Team members can be instructed to positively engage with these emails. In doing so, we can begin building up a good domain reputation from the very first day of sending so that we are able to find more success with deliverability and inbox placement.

For instructions on how to enable this feature in your tenant, please visit your Nucleus Resource Library!

OR

INBOX PLACEMENT VS. DELIVERABILITY

By Julia, Deliverability Expert

I’m sure you’ve wondered, at one point or another, what we are really monitoring during our domain warming phases.

Well, I’ll tell you…

The two main things we are watching while determining how quickly or slowly we can increase our sending volume is:

1. Deliverability
2. Inbox Placement

I am sure you’ve heard both of these terms used by our email team; let’s discuss what they are, why they are important, & how we can be tracking them.

The WHAT

Deliverability implies to the rate at which your sends are getting through to the server

Inbox placement refers to where your email lands – whether it lands in spam, your promotional inbox (‘other,’ ‘promotions,’ etc.), or your primary inbox.

The WHY

Deliverability is a key player in your email ‘delivering;’ it simply means the rate at which a server is allowing your messages through to the recipient. This does not ensure where the email will land within the inbox, just that the server did not fully block the message.

Inbox placement is, arguably, even more important because it determines where the email lands within the inbox. Since many of us are not regularly looking through our junk mailboxes, I think we can all agree the email will reach the most recipients when it is visible in the general inbox.

The HOW

When it comes to tracking your success with deliverability, we are looking at our deliverability rate. The closer the deliverability rate is to 100%, the better!

In terms of our inbox placement, we will be monitoring our open rate. While it can be impossible to precisely measure our inbox placement, a higher open rate means that more people are likely seeing the email, meaning it is more likely to be landing in our recipients’ general inbox

The graphic above shows us a couple of different servers & their deliverability and open rate. It is a great example of how our deliverability & inbox placement can reflect on each server differently.