Email Campaign Delivery Challenges

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Main email delivery challenges

Let’s now look at some of the challenges that can affect your inbox placement.

Once your email makes it through the servers and past the ISP filters, it will be delivered to your recipients – but where is it actually going to be delivered to? Is it the primary inbox, the spam folder, or the promotions folder?

The main challenges when delivering marketing emails to your audience include:

• Bounces
• Sending volumes and frequency
• Engagement

Bounces

There are two types of bounce:

Hard bounce: A hard bounce is a permanent failure where retries will not be successful.

Soft bounce: A soft bounce is when the email server cannot deliver your message, but it is still trying and will continue to try for a limited period of time. This often occurs when the email was successfully delivered and later bounced back after checking to see if the email actually exists. You can try to rectify soft bounces by sending the email again when the mailbox may have some space; waiting for some time to pass until the server is likely up and running again; and reducing the size of your message.

You can use your CRM or automation tool to see if an email to a lead or contact bounced. Then, you can clean your contact database as needed by removing all leads or contacts that consistently bounce back emails.

Spam complaints

A spam complaint is when the email recipient clicks the Spam or Junk button on your email in their email client. Most ESPs (such as Gmail or Yahoo) provide the Spam or Junk button and it only appears when the email is in the inbox.

Fun fact: While most people are aware that unwanted or bulk email is called spam email, did you know that normal, legitimate email communication is actually called ‘ham email’. The name could be a nod to ham radio, which, according to Wikipedia is “The use of radio frequency spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radio sport, contesting, and emergency communication”. However, it is probably not a good idea to refer to your email marketing or client campaigns as ‘Ham’ as it may create some confusion!

Sending volumes

A further challenge you'll need to take into consideration is sending volume. ISPs want to see an established sending history and sending pattern in order to help determine inbox placement. Spikes in email volumes will often trigger email filters due to inconsistency with an existing pattern. Your ISP might think your email address has been hacked and is sending out random spam emails.

Sending emails too frequently or irregularly can raise suspicion from an ISP. Let's say you send a regular weekly newsletter to about 10,000 recipients. Suddenly, you begin emailing more than 70,000 people per week. This could trigger an ISP's spam filter because it doesn't align with your sending history or frequency. You must keep a regular sending pattern that doesn't have large fluctuations with volume.

So, it’s better to build up to higher sending volumes by growing your database and sending through your marketing automation or email tool to avoid triggering a spam filter from your internet provider.

Segmentation is an important factor to consider when controlling send volumes. Rather than sending to your entire list, segment your audience based on their engagement levels. You might consider some recipients to be unengaged because they have not opened your emails over a significant period of time. For these people, consider running re-engagement campaigns leading up to a big event such as Black Friday. Those that re-engage can be added to your mailing list for this big event, rather than sending to all unengaged subscribers –which could negatively impact deliverability.

Engagement

The final challenge in getting your email into a recipient's inbox is engagement. Some ISPs look at recipient engagement to determine inbox versus junk folder delivery. These types of engagement include open, click, save, reply, forward, move, and so on. The more engaged a recipient is, the greater the chance of the email landing in the inbox. ISPs also look at the sender’s IP and domain reputation, along with user engagement, to score the sender.