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.

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!

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Goonies Never Say Die when it comes to Spam Traps

By Julia, Deliverability Expert

You’ve heard us mention “spam trap emails” – but do you know what that is?

Spam trap emails can catch even the least spammy of emails. This is because these email addresses are utilized specifically to locate senders who are not closely monitoring their recipient lists.

The thought process behind is that, should one of these “fake” emails enter your recipient list, it would be less likely that you are maintaining your recipient list so well that every email on it is a valid & confirmed subscriber.

Sending emails too many of these “recipients” could lead to many blocks that can be detrimental to your domain reputation and overall deliverability.

So how do you know which emails are spam traps? You don’t. They can be previously active but now expired emails, random emails made by servers for this purpose, and really anything in between. The servers use this method to help protect their users from receiving spam content but it surely adds an extra obstacle to those sending mass emails.

At the very least, you are now aware of what we mean when we say “spam traps” & at the very most, you’ll do your best to keep your email list as healthy as humanly possible.

AND LUCKY FOR YOU… we have a few in-platform tools to help you do just that.

Here are a few pointers to keep in mind regarding your recipient list:

ALWAYS turn on validations when importing new lists, especially large lists that may contain emails you are not personally familiar with…

Be sure to review recipient engagement and behavior – this is made easy with our Automation feature. Creating an engagement series for recipients who have not recently engaged with emails allows us to unsubscribe expired or uninterested recipients and their emails.

Respect the wishes of those who would like to be unsubscribed from your list. This means including visible unsubscribe links in all of our emails & reviewing responses for those who may have intended to unsubscribe. This is not only a legal requirement but will benefit you in the long-run. Angry recipients generally yield more spam complaints…

For more information about spam traps and how you can be proactive about keeping your recipient lists healthy, be sure to contact our team for training or insight.

For more information, please visit your Nucleus Resource Library!

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Taking your unsubscribe to the next level

By Julia, Deliverability Expert

At Campaign Nucleus, we make it a point to never force industry-recommendations on to you while creating and sending your emails. We previously discussed the legal importance of including an unsubscribe link in every email we send. Since then, we have improved our system and now offer an optional one-click unsubscribe feature that you may choose to implement.

I’m sure you are wondering: What is the difference between this feature and the unsubscribe link we already use?

Well… currently, when a recipient clicks the unsubscribe link, they are redirected to a page where they may enter their email and they will be immediately unsubscribed. In the case of a one-click unsubscribe, a user may click the link and will be immediately unsubscribed without being redirected to another page to do so.

While this is not an industry standard or policy, it is highly recommended. This is dominantly because it is a simpler route of unsubscribing which ensures people who intended to be unsubscribed do so properly. In some cases of a double-opted unsubscribe link, some users may accidentally remain subscribed, and this can lead to an increase in user complaints which can affect your domain and IP reputation.

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

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