At my last job I was tasked with launching a newsletter, and was suddenly faced with a bunch of unfamiliar acronyms: DKIM, DMARC, SPF. (Apparently that last one is not related to sun protection?)
So I texted Al Iverson (not the basketball player), whoâs been working in email deliverability since the dawn of mainstream internet, and asked if he could help me figure out what I really needed to know.
Since you (probably) donât have Al Iversonâs phone number, I chatted with him last week about email deliverability, owned audience, and windmills.
|Meet the Master
Al Iverson
Industry research and community engagement lead, Valimail, and Deliverability consultant and publisher, Spam Resource
Claim to fame: Alâs been working in email deliverability since before the term even existed, including a 15-year stint at Salesforce as its director of deliverability.
Fun fact: He programmed all the computers in his high schoolâs Mac lab to play âStayinâ Aliveâ for alerts instead of beeping. Old-school Macs couldnât multitask while beeping; you had to listen to the entire 4-minute song.
Lesson 1: Don't neglect the tech side of audience engagement.
âMicrosoft blocks emails that have the word âwindmillâ in the subject line,â Iverson says.
âDid you say windmill? Like ⌠Dutch windmills?â I ask, making sure Iâve heard him correctly.
âWe have no idea why,â he says, and I certainly canât begin to guess. But âFree!â and âBuy now!â are probably okay, he tells me, further scrambling my brain.
Even more counterintuitively, Iverson says that using a swear word in a subject line isnât necessarily a guaranteed trip to the spam filter anymore.
The real lesson here isnât about some quixotic pursuit of The Ideal Email, itâs that there are persistent myths in email deliverabilityâ and it pays for you to get acquainted with them.
For starters, Iverson suggests a healthy skepticism of any âtop 200 words to avoid in your subject lineâ lists. And Gmail âwants to make sure that the subject line and sender information actually connect to what's in the body of the email,â so itâs âactually very sensitiveâ to outdated ideas like starting a bulk email with âRe:.â
In other words: Pay as much attention to the technical side of audience engagement as you are to creating excellent content.
Lesson 2: Own your identity.
âWhy do people love email so much?â Iverson asks. âBecause it is a platform that is open to all.â Platforms like Instagram and TikTok â aside from needing some basic video editing and possibly dance skills â are owned by corporate entities out of your control. Although individual email platforms like Gmail have a lot of influence when it comes to deliverability, your email audience is your own.
And, says Iverson, email âgives us this channel to connect with people without being beholden to these specific platforms.â The flip side of that is that âif you don't have the technical ability to take control of those levers that put it more into your control, you can still get similarly stuck.â
If youâre new to email newsletters, any one of the major platforms is a great place to start. But the more technical know-how you have (or can hire), the more you can do things like sending from your own domain, putting you just a little bit more âin control of your own destiny, both from a deliverability perspective and from a long-term branding and marketing perspective.â
Lesson 3: Stop chasing subscriber count.
âPeople live and die by their subscriber counts,â Iverson says. But âif you have 10 million subscribers, but a very low open rate, your emails are more likely to go to the spam folder.â
The primary reason that an otherwise good newsletter might land in the spam folder is lack of engagement. âThe more you focus on people who are actually interested enough to interact with your mail, the better reputation you have with the mailbox providers, so you're more likely to get to the inbox,â he says.
âAnd, long story short, what prevents spam folder placement isnât how many subscribers you have â itâs high engagement.
âMaximize high engagement by âimplementing a subscriber lifecycle management process,â says Iverson. Suppressing inactive subscribers, segmenting your audience, and being transparent about your practices are all key to your newsletterâs ultimate success.
|Make Yourself a Master
Why are you not sending emailsâŚ
Raise your hand if you want to start a newsletter.
Well, class, this gnarly newsletter roadmap has enough know-how to counter all excuses. Follow closely to streamline setup, improve deliverability, and launch your product like you earned a four-year degree from the highly honored Hustle School of Email.
Hereâs how to rack up wins in the inbox and build a killer list.
If you could only invest in one tool to help your company grow for the next three years, what tool would it be? âRyan Atkinson, Founder and CEO of Spacebar Visuals
THIS WEEK'S ANSWER
Iverson says: In the context of email marketing success, inbox placement, and deliverability, this means investing in a deliverability testing and monitoring platform [like Inbox Monster or Validity's Everest tool, for example.âed.].
If your revenue depends on successful email marketing, youâre running blind without something like this. A high open rate suggests solid inbox placement, but it's far from exact. Whether your email gets to the inbox isnât something you can easily track on an email marketing platform; thereâs no âwhich folderâ disposition information sent back to the sender or send platform as part of the email delivery process. A tool like this, and the expertise that comes with it, guides you on how to interpret results and make strategic adjustments to remediate or prevent issues.
NEXT WEEK'S QUESTION
Iverson asks: What's one marketing habit or best practice you think we should collectively leave behind, and what would you replace it with?
This week's email was brought to you by Laura M. Browning. Editing by Ben Berkley.
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