Everything about What is Email Bounce

Everything about What is Email Bounce?

Have you ever found yourself sending an email, only to receive an automated response stating it bounced back? If so, you’re certainly not alone. In fact, this is a common occurrence experienced by many individuals, including email marketers.

But what exactly is a bounce, and what are the typical reasons behind it? Furthermore, how can you address the issue when you’re encountering a high number of bounced emails?

In this blog post, we delve into the realm of email bounces, addressing these questions and providing comprehensive insights into this common email phenomenon.

What is Email Bounce?

An email bounce happens when an email service provider (ESP) attempts to send an email to the recipient’s email server, but it’s rejected and returned, triggering an automated bounce message to the sender, signaling a delivery failure. While there are numerous factors behind why an email bounces, we’ll delve into this further shortly.

Consider a scenario where a small business owner sends out a mass email to promote a new product to a list of 100 potential customers. In this case, one or two emails bounce back. Initially, you might think, “What’s the harm?” And you’d be correct; a couple of bounced emails likely won’t make much of an impact.

However, as the business grows over time and the email list expands to 10,000 potential customers, the same proportion of bounced emails becomes a more significant issue. A high bounce rate could result in the business’s emails being flagged as spam, leading to reduced delivery rates and visibility for future marketing endeavors. Hence, it’s crucial to monitor bounced emails and understand the reasons behind them. This is where an email bounce code proves invaluable.

What’s an Email Bounce Code?

As part of the Internet Message Format standards, email bounce codes, as old as emails themselves, consist of a series of numbers assigned to an undeliverable email message. These codes indicate the reason why the message couldn’t be delivered.

Here are two examples of codes that Microsoft Outlook users or individuals utilizing Azure in their email infrastructure might encounter:

– 554 5.2.122: The recipient has exceeded their limit for the number of messages they can receive per hour. For more information, visit…
– 452 4.3.1: Insufficient system resources (TSTE). For more information, visit…

Typically, codes beginning with a 5 signify that the error is permanent, while those starting with a 4 indicate a temporary issue.

Armed with these codes, it becomes easier to manage your email bounce rate and implement any necessary adjustments.

How does email bounce impact email deliverability?

When an email bounces, it communicates a negative signal to the email sender’s server, which can potentially harm the sender’s reputation and future deliverability. Furthermore, bounced emails can adversely affect recipient engagement metrics, including click-through and open rates, thereby diminishing the overall effectiveness of email campaigns.

Understanding the reasons behind email bounces is crucial for minimizing errors and enhancing deliverability.

Types of Email Bounces

Bounces can occur due to various reasons, and a practical approach to handling them involves categorization:

Soft Bounce:
A soft bounce typically indicates a temporary obstacle in email delivery and can stem from several factors:

1. Full Inbox:
When a recipient’s inbox reaches its capacity, emails may bounce back. Despite this, it’s advisable to keep such email addresses in your list, anticipating that the inbox might be cleared eventually.

2. Server Overload:
High traffic volumes on a recipient’s email server can lead to soft bounces. Monitoring patterns in email bounces can help identify instances of server overload, prompting adjustments in email sending schedules.

3. Email Size:
If an email exceeds the recipient’s email server size limit, it may result in a soft bounce. To prevent this, ensure that your emails adhere to size limitations.

4. Email Filtering:
Email filtering mechanisms implemented by recipients’ email service providers can sometimes categorize legitimate emails as spam, resulting in soft bounces. Prompt action is necessary to address content-related issues and avoid potential hard bounces.

5. Temporary Server Error:
Occasional network outages can lead to temporary server errors, causing emails to bounce. In such cases, resending the email often resolves the issue.

Hard Bounce:
Unlike soft bounces, hard bounces indicate permanent email delivery failures, requiring corrective action:

1. Invalid or Non-Existent Email Address:
Typos, missing information, or inactive email accounts can result in hard bounces. Regularly verifying and updating your email list can mitigate this issue.

2. Poor Email Authentication:
Issues with email authentication protocols like DKIM, SPF, and DMARC can lead to hard bounces. Ensuring proper implementation of these protocols can prevent such bounces.

It’s crucial to promptly address bounced emails to maintain the sender’s reputation and email deliverability. Regular list verification, compliance with sender guidelines, and proactive communication with recipients can help minimize bounce rates and enhance email campaign effectiveness.

What is a good Email Bounce Rate?

When evaluating the effectiveness of an email campaign, understanding what constitutes a low bounce rate is crucial. While most marketing tools automatically calculate and display your bounce rate, it’s important to grasp the underlying calculation.

For instance, if you successfully sent out 800 emails but encountered 20 undeliverable ones, the bounce rate would be:

(20 / 800) x 100 = 0.025 x 100 = 2.5%

This indicates a slightly elevated email bounce rate of 2.5% for this specific campaign.

Generally, a successful marketing effort aims for an average email bounce rate of less than 2%. By implementing key strategies, you can maintain this benchmark and enhance the efficacy of your email marketing endeavors.

Implement a double opt-in process:
Utilize a confirmation email for each new subscriber, requiring them to confirm their subscription before being added to your email list. While it may seem like an additional step, it helps ensure active and engaged subscribers, leading to increased conversions over time.

Regularly monitor your bounce rate:
Leverage analytics tools to track your bounce rate and detect any recurring patterns or issues contributing to a high bounce rate. Make necessary adjustments to your email strategy to enhance results.

Optimize email deliverability:
Ensure that your emails are properly formatted, avoid appearing spammy, and provide valuable content without being overly promotional. A captivating subject line is essential, as it’s the first element recipients notice. Conducting A/B testing on subject lines can help identify which types resonate best with your audience, ultimately improving open and click-through rates.

In summary, grasping the concept of email bounces and their underlying causes is pivotal to uphold favorable email deliverability and mitigate adverse effects on your email marketing endeavors. Vigilantly monitoring bounce codes and adapting your email-sending practices to address both temporary and permanent issues is imperative.

Employing appropriate tools to consistently track bounce rates and ensuring the resilience and currency of your email infrastructure can significantly contribute to sustaining optimal email deliverability.

What is an Email Open Rate For and How to Calculate It

What is an Email Open Rate For and How to Calculate It?

In our blog post about Email Marketing Metrics, we categorized key performance indicators based on their importance. Out of over 20 metrics, we emphasized the significance of the open rate. It serves as a cornerstone for developing analytics for your email campaigns. While the open rate is relatively straightforward to calculate and utilize, it also has its intricacies that merit closer examination. In this article, we delve into essential details about the email open rate and elaborate on them further.

What is an Email Open Rate?

The open rate indicates the number of recipients from the entire mailing list who opened the email campaign. It serves as a barometer of the campaign’s success or failure. A favorable open rate allows for further analysis of subsequent metrics to enhance email performance. Conversely, if the open rate is low, the primary objective is to boost it.

Email open rate calculation formula

Formula #1:

Open rate = (total unique opens ÷ total recipients) x 100

To calculate the open rate, you’ll need two variables:

– Total recipients: The number of email addresses on your mailing list.
– Total unique opens: The number of recipients who opened your email.

Simply divide the number of unique opens by the total recipients and then multiply the result by 100. It’s important to note that you only count unique opens. If recipients open the same email multiple times, they’re counted as a single unique open.

Formula #2:

Open rate = (total unique opens ÷ (total recipients – bounced emails)) x 100

Some companies use a more advanced formula for open rate calculation that includes three variables:

– Total recipients: The total number of email addresses on your mailing list.
– Total unique opens: The number of recipients who opened your email.
– Bounced emails: The number of emails that failed to reach the inbox.

For instance, if out of 1,000 total emails sent, 15 bounced due to technical issues (soft and hard bounces), this indicates that 15 recipients didn’t open them because of a technical problem rather than disinterest in the email campaign. This alternative formula provides a more accurate open rate by focusing on the number of people who engaged with the email.

For further insights, you can read more about managing your bounce rate.

How do you calculate the email open rate for multiple campaigns?

Consider the open rates of your last three email campaigns:

Campaign A: 16%
Campaign B: 20%
Campaign C: 22%

To find the average open rate, add them together and divide by three:

(16 + 20 + 22) ÷ 3 = 19.3%

Therefore, the average open rate for your email campaigns is 19.3%.

What is the difference between the open rate and the click-to-open rate?

The open rate largely depends on the quality of subject lines and pre-inbox optimization. Meanwhile, the click rate indicates the effectiveness of the email design. Combining these metrics, the click-to-open rate (CTOR) provides insight into the relevance and performance of the email content.

The CTOR offers a glimpse into how many recipients both opened the email and clicked the call-to-action (CTA) within it. The formula for calculating the click-to-open rate is:

Click-to-open rate = (total unique clicks ÷ total unique opens) x 100

For instance, if your email campaign was opened by 150 recipients, and 42 of them clicked the CTA link, your click-to-open rate would be 0.28 or 28%, indicating a satisfactory result. Research suggests that the benchmark for the CTOR metric falls between 20-30%.

Tracking email opens primarily relies on two methods: tracking pixels and trackable links. Tracking pixels, embedded as HTML code within the email, assign a unique tracking number to each pixel. When the recipient loads the email, the tracking number signals it as read. While this method is reliable, it may not register if the recipient’s email client blocks images and HTML. Trackable links, on the other hand, are generated using tracking software and inserted into email content. When clicked, they provide information about who opened the email and when. These links, created using UTM parameters, are visible to recipients and offer insights into user engagement data.

Read receipts

Read receipts provide a method for determining if an email has been opened. Here’s how they operate:

– The sender’s email client sends a receipt request alongside the email.
– Upon receiving the request, the recipient has the option to consent or decline to send a read receipt.

However, this tracking method may not be entirely reliable. If the recipient’s email client prohibits read receipts in its settings, you won’t receive confirmation of the email being opened. Additionally, read receipts typically function best when both the sender and recipient use the same email client.

How does my open rate measure up?

Apart from the caliber of email content and the quality of the email list, several other factors influence achieving an outstanding open rate:

1. Email type: Transactional emails typically boast open rates two to three times higher than marketing emails.
2. Industry: Open rates vary significantly across different industries.
3. Sending date and time: Identifying the ideal day and time for launching an email campaign is crucial for maximizing open rates.
4. Target region: Open rates can differ considerably across various regions.
5. Recipient’s device: With open rates from mobile devices steadily increasing each year, optimizing for mobile viewing is increasingly important.

How to Improve Email Open Rate?

When it comes to opening an email, recipients typically consider two factors: the subject line and the sender name. Therefore, if you’re aiming to boost a low open rate, optimizing both of these elements is crucial.

Opt for a recognizable sender name:
People tend to engage more with emails from individuals rather than generic addresses like “Marketing crew” or “Support Team.” Using a specific contact person’s name, such as “Jane from [Company name],” adds credibility and encourages interaction. Research suggests that personal email addresses can increase open rates by 15% or more.

Incorporate your brand logo:
To further enhance the credibility of your email sender, consider implementing the Brand Indicator for Message Identification (BIMI). This DNS TXT record allows brands to display their logo alongside each email in the inbox. With BIMI, emails from different brands can appear more visually appealing and recognizable, thereby increasing recipient trust and engagement.

What are the steps to optimize my Emails for higher Open Rates?

Every email is subject to authentication mechanisms and spam filters on SMTP and IMAP (or POP3) servers. To ensure successful delivery, it’s crucial to test your email campaigns thoroughly. Here’s what you should aim for:

Email sending capability of your app –

1. Verify the email-sending capability of your app by sending a test email.
2. Utilize Email Testing to comprehensively inspect and debug emails across different environments, including staging, development, and QA. This ensures your emails are optimized without inconveniencing recipients with test emails.

SMTP Relay – Verify if your SMTP server can effectively route emails to the correct destination SMTP server. You can use Telnet or web-based tools like MX Toolbox for this purpose. For more detailed information, refer to our blog post on Testing SMTP Relay.

Email Spam Testing – Conduct tests to evaluate deliverability, spam detection, and email address validity. Numerous online tools are available for this purpose, as outlined in our Email Testing Checklist.

Email Content Review – Before hitting the send button, preview your email, assess its HTML and body copy, and ensure the subject line is optimized. This final check ensures everything is in place for a successful send-off.

After digesting this article, we trust you’ll be better equipped to calculate and monitor your email open rates effectively, leading to more impactful email marketing campaigns!

top email marketing matrics

Top Email Marketing Matrics You Need to Know

Whenever we start sending out emails, we’ve got a goal in mind. It could be anything from showing off a new product to getting people to sign up for a subscription. These goals help us figure out what we need to keep track of – like how many people are actually opening our emails. Some things, like open rates, are super important. We can’t ignore them. Others, like where people are opening our emails from, aren’t as urgent but still give us good info. So, let’s take a look at both the big numbers and the smaller details in email stats.

Deciding which email marketing stats are most important

Setting priorities helps you sort out which Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) matter most. But why bother prioritizing? Well, if you search online, you’ll find loads of lists detailing 5, 6, 10, and even 22 essential metrics. But they often lack explanations about which ones truly hold the most value. That’s why we’ve gathered some of the top-rated sources for you.

 

5 Metrics 6 Metrics 10 Metrics 22 Metrics
read more read more read more read more
1. Deliverability rate
2. Open rate
3. Click-through rate
4. Conversion rate
5. Social sharing rate
1. Click-through rate
2. Conversion rate
3. Bounce rate
4. List Growth rate
5. Email sharing/forwarding rate
6. Overall ROI
1. Open rate
2. Click-to-open rate
3. Mobile open rate
4. Mobile click rate
5. Open and click rates by domain
6. Unsubscribe rate
7. Conversion rate
8. Bounce rate
9. Revenue per email or click
10. Revenue per subscriber
1. Open rate
2. Mobile open rate
3. Total opens vs. unique opens
4. Opening time
5. Repeat opens
6. Bounce rate
7. Deliverability
8. Link clicks
9. Click-through rate
10. Unsubscribers
11. Unsubscribe rate per email
12. Subscribers vs. unsubscribers
13. Conversions
14. Purchase rate
15. Return on ad spend
16. Revenue per open email
17. Revenue per subscriber
18. Time spent viewing email
19. Active audience
20. Warm reply rate
21. Spam score
22. Email client

Understanding which performance metrics are more important can be tricky. To simplify this, we’ve applied the MoSCoW framework to prioritize them. Now, you’ll easily see which metrics fall into these categories:

– Must-haves
– Should-haves
– Could-haves
– Won’t-haves

MUST-HAVE Email Metrics

Key performance indicators (KPIs) that are essential for evaluating email campaign performance are critical. We’ve identified five top-priority metrics:

1. Open rate
2. Bounce rate
3. Unsubscribe rate
4. Spam complaint rate
5. Click rate

Open Rate

The open rate indicates how many recipients from the entire email list opened the campaign. This happens after the email is successfully delivered. Factors like the subject line contribute to this – a more engaging subject line usually results in a higher open rate. To ensure effectiveness, it’s important to check your subject lines using email testing tools. However, it’s not just about the subject line; the sender’s name matters too. Emails sent from different sender names can have varying open rates.

Inbox placement, or which folder the email lands in, is also significant. For instance, Gmail categorizes emails into Primary, Promotions, Social, and others. Users tend to prioritize emails from certain folders over others.

Other factors such as brand recognition and email history also influence the open rate.

Formula:
Open rate = (total unique opens ÷ total recipients) × 100

Benchmark:
Opinions vary on the ideal open rate, depending on factors like industry and email purpose. However, most experts agree that an open rate below 20% is considered a failure.

Tracking frequency:
It’s recommended to track open rates weekly.

Bounce Rate

The bounce rate indicates the proportion of bounced emails to all email addresses in the mailing list. A bounced email is one that failed to be delivered, and there are two types of delivery failures:

1. Soft bounce – occurs due to a temporary issue, like the recipient’s mailbox being full.
2. Hard bounce – happens due to a permanent problem, such as an invalid email address. 

Formula:
Bounce rate = (total bounced emails ÷ total email recipients) × 100

Benchmark:
Ideally, if fewer than 2% of your emails fail to reach recipients’ inboxes, that’s acceptable. However, exceeding this threshold indicates a need to improve your delivery rate (the opposite of the bounce rate). A double-digit bounce rate is a warning sign that your sender reputation could be at risk.

Tracking frequency:
It’s advisable to track bounce rates on a monthly basis.

Note: An alternative metric to consider is the inbox placement rate (IPR), which reveals how many campaign emails successfully landed in recipients’ inboxes. Both bounce rate and IPR are crucial for deliverability; therefore, we recommend reading our email deliverability guide for further insights.

Unsubscribe rate

The unsubscribe rate is the ratio of the recipients who clicked Unsubscribe to the total number of emails delivered. As a rule, this metric shows how many subscribers have lost interest in your product or service. At the same time, the reasons that lead to opting out may include:

  • misleading subject lines
  • emailing too frequently 
  • ineffective offer
  • and many more

Unsubscribe rate can point out how to fine-tune your email campaigns and filter out irrelevant subscribers. Segmenting subscribers will also help you reduce unsubscribe rates.

Formula: Unsubscribe rate = (total unsubscribes ÷ total emails delivered)

Benchmark:

The threshold value of the unsubscribe rate is 0.5% per email campaign. This means that of 100 emails delivered, you may have up to 5 unsubscribes. 

How often you should track it:

Every week

Spam Complaint Rate

The spam rate represents the proportion of recipients who marked your email as spam compared to the total number of emails delivered. It’s a crucial metric for assessing your domain reputation and overall deliverability.

It’s important not to confuse this metric with the Spam score, which isn’t influenced by recipient actions. The Spam score acts as a sort of ticket for your email campaign to bypass spam filters. If your email receives a high spam score, it’s likely to land in the spam folder automatically. You can learn more about this in our blog post “Why Emails Go to Spam and How to Prevent It.”

With the spam complaint rate, the fate of your email rests entirely in the recipient’s hands. They may mark your email as spam for various reasons, such as:

– Sending emails too frequently
– Providing irrelevant content
– Lack of an opt-out option
– Sending without the recipient’s consent

The last two points are particularly crucial for GDPR compliance. For further information on this topic, check out our blog post about GDPR for email marketing.

Formula:
Spam complaint rate = (total “marked as spam” ÷ total emails delivered) × 100

Benchmark:
The ideal spam complaint rate is below 0.1%. If it exceeds this, it suggests your email marketing might be targeting incorrect recipients or providing poor value.

Tracking frequency:
It’s recommended to track the spam complaint rate weekly.

Click Rate

The click rate, also referred to as the click-through rate (CTR), measures how many recipients clicked on the links within your email. Several factors influence this metric:

– Compelling and trustworthy content
– Email formatting
– Anchor text used for the link
– Placement of the link within the email body
– Total number of links included

All these elements should motivate recipients to take action and click the link. A poor click rate indicates that you’ve struggled to effectively convey your call-to-action (CTA) or idea to subscribers.

Formula:
Click rate = (total unique clicks ÷ total emails delivered) × 100

Benchmark:
There isn’t a universally optimal click rate as values vary across industries. For instance, according to Constant Contact’s Knowledge Base, the average CTR in the transportation industry in September 2019 was 16.61%, while in the travel and tourism industry, it was only 5.92%.

Tracking frequency:
It’s advisable to track the click rate weekly.

Total opens

The open rate is determined by unique opens, meaning each email opened by a recipient counts only once. However, if a recipient opens your email multiple times, you can monitor this using different tracking methods. One such method is the total opens metric, which aggregates all the opens by each recipient.

Why does this matter? Well, if a subscriber opens your email repeatedly, it likely indicates a high level of interest. This might be an opportunity to engage further and follow up with them. Conversely, multiple opens could suggest that the email content is appealing but too lengthy, prompting the recipient to revisit it later.

Formula:
Total opens = Sum of total opens by each recipient in the mailing list

Benchmark:
Not applicable

Tracking frequency:
It’s recommended to track total opens twice a week.

Conversion rate

Conversion rate is the ratio of email recipients who completed a desired action to the total number of emails delivered. Each email campaign has its own desired action, such as clicking a link or purchasing a product. The successful desired action defines the conversion. 

For example, in your email, you’re calling the subscribers to switch their free trial account to a paid one via a corresponding link. Of 100 emails delivered, 20 recipients clicked the link, but only 5 of those signed up for the paid subscription. So, the conversion rate will be (5 ÷ 100) × 100 = 5%. However, if your desired action was just to click the link, the conversion rate would be (20 ÷ 100) × 100 = 20%. 

Formula:

Conversion rate = (total recipients who completed the desired action ÷ total emails delivered)  × 100

Benchmark:

The conversation rate depends on the email types you send and which action you need the recipient to complete. If you expect to sell something via a newsletter, the average conversion rate in this case is around 1%. Follow-up emails or abandoned cart emails can boast a conversion rate of around 5%.  

How often you should track it:

Every month

Campaign ROI

The return on investment (ROI) for your email campaign is calculated by dividing the total revenue by the total expenses. However, relying solely on campaign ROI may not provide an accurate picture. For instance, your first email campaign might have required a larger investment but brought in some revenue. Subsequently, the next campaign might have cost less but yielded more benefits due to the residual impact of the first campaign. Combining the revenues from both campaigns gives a more accurate ROI. This consolidation is essential regardless, as ideally, each campaign should function independently, excluding external factors.

An email itself is a free asset, while an email campaign represents an investment asset encompassing expenses for platforms, templates, testing tools, etc. Tracking ROI for each campaign provides valuable insights for optimizing your email marketing strategy.

Formula:
Campaign ROI = ((total revenue – total investment) ÷ total investment) × 100

Benchmark:
Although the statement “$38 for every $1 spent” is often cited to underscore email ROI, it may not be entirely accurate. According to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) survey in 2018, the average return was £32.28 for every £1 spent, showing a potential shift in confidence regarding ROI calculations. While there’s no specific optimum campaign ROI, you can use the average value to assess your campaign’s performance.

Tracking frequency:
It’s advisable to track campaign ROI every month.

Forwarding Rate

The email sharing rate indicates how frequently your subscribers share your email campaign with others. This metric is crucial for gauging the quality and engagement level of your email campaign. Content that resonates with recipients is likely to be shared on social media or forwarded to friends, extending the reach of your product or service beyond your mailing list. Numerous social media marketing companies can assist in maximizing this potential.

Formula:
Email sharing rate = (total shares/forwards ÷ total emails delivered) × 100

Benchmark:
Sharing and forwarding rates vary across industries. For instance, according to The 2018 Hidden Metrics of Email Deliverability by Return Path, the average rate of email forwards in the insurance industry was 0.16 (16%) in 2017. In contrast, industries like sporting goods, toys/hobbies/crafts, and even flowers/gifts had lower rates, with an average of 0.01 (1%).

Tracking frequency:
It’s recommended to track the email sharing rate monthly.

Subscriber List Growth Rate

The subscriber list growth rate measures the rate at which new subscribers or users are added to your funnel. If your email campaign includes prompts such as “Subscribe to Our Blog” or “Sign up and try Mailtrap for free,” monitoring the subscriber list growth rate becomes essential. This metric is actionable for various goals, including driving website traffic, increasing free trial signups, expanding outreach for sales, and more. It’s crucial for your subscriber list to continuously grow, ideally by at least 3% per month, while also considering potential losses due to unsubscribes.

Formula:
Subscriber list growth rate = ((new subscribes – unsubscribes – spam complaints) ÷ total subscribers) × 100

Benchmark:
While benchmarks vary by industry, the average subscriber list growth rate is around 3% per month.

Tracking frequency:
It’s recommended to track the subscriber list growth rate monthly.

Select Metrics According to Your Objectives.

Selecting metrics based on your objectives is crucial. Tracking these metrics helps determine whether your email campaign has achieved its goals. Therefore, it’s essential to begin by identifying the primary goal of your campaign. Next, define the target audience and any necessary segmentation. Understanding the campaign’s goal and audience will guide the type of content needed. By considering the combination of goals, audience, segments, and content, you can determine the appropriate metrics to track.

Goal → Audience → Segments → Content → Metrics to track

This sequence leads to the selection of metrics that align with your campaign’s specific objectives and content. Utilize our comprehensive list of email marketing metrics to identify those that best suit your campaign goals and content. Best of luck with your email endeavors!


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what is deliverability

What is Email Deliverability

In the ongoing battle against spam, ISPs (Internet Service Providers) are imposing increasingly strict restrictions on mailbox access. While this may inconvenience senders, it ultimately benefits users by ensuring a clutter-free inbox with desired content and expected experiences.

However, important messages often fail to reach users’ inboxes due to careless mistakes made by senders in haste or due to lack of experience. To avoid such pitfalls, join us as we explore the fundamentals of email deliverability in this updated 2024 guide. We’ll highlight key focus areas and common pitfalls to avoid.

What is Email Deliverability?

Before delving into the intricacies of email deliverability, let’s first define what it entails. Simply put, email deliverability is the measurement and understanding of how effectively your marketing or transactional emails are delivered to recipients’ inboxes. It’s also referred to as inbox deliverability.

Email Deliverability vs Email Delivery

Deliverability vs delivery

These terms are frequently mistaken for being identical, but they are distinct concepts, and it’s crucial to differentiate between them.

Email delivery refers to whether the recipient’s mail server accepted the email file and delivered it to the mailbox, regardless of the folder it landed in.

On the other hand, email deliverability involves the server accepting the file and delivering it to the mailbox, but the critical question is whether it ended up in the inbox, spam, social, updates, or any other folder that the recipient seldom checks.

In essence, email deliverability denotes the actual capability to ensure emails land in the recipient’s inbox.

Why Email Deliverability matters?

A user forgets her password? Send her an email containing reset instructions.

A new feature has just been launched? Share the exciting news with your subscribers’ inboxes.

The blog’s traffic is slower than usual? Send a roundup of the latest articles to your mailing list. Companies frequently send emails for various purposes.

However, according to the latest research from Influencer Marketing Hub, only 79.6% of legitimate emails reach their intended destination. This means that, on average, three out of every 20 users (or over 15,000 users in a seven-digit community):

– May not regain immediate access to their account and might abandon your platform.
– Might not be informed about the shiny new feature you’ve worked on for months, potentially leading them to competitors offering similar or even less functional options.
– Won’t be reminded of your existence and may not consider any of your paid plans.

If you can afford not to be concerned about it, we envy you. However, most content specialists strive to improve delivery rates, even by just a single percent.

At Email Jinny, where we deal with emails daily, we want to share the key considerations for improving deliverability.

What is a good Email Deliverability rate?

Determining what’s considered a good email deliverability rate isn’t straightforward.

Generally, it’s advised to aim for a rate between 85% and as high as 95% to make the most of your marketing efforts.

However, this number can vary depending on your business’s unique factors. It’s a good idea to research your industry to see how your competitors are doing and analyze your current email inbox placement rate, along with related metrics like engagement rates, to identify areas for improvement.

Once you have this information, you can set a benchmark for email deliverability and work together as a team to achieve it.

Marketing Emails Deliverability Rate

Usually, marketing emails don’t get a lot of attention, and they’re opened around 20-25% of the time.

But here’s the bright side: in many industries, having an open rate higher than 30% is seen as pretty good.

So, if you tried out an email warm-up service to give your emails a little push and you got an extra 5-10% increase in open rate, that’s actually a great outcome.

Transactional Emails Deliverability Rate

When it comes to transactional emails, things are a bit different because users usually anticipate receiving them and view them as legitimate even before they arrive.

As a result, most transactional emails boast deliverability and open rates as high as 80-85%. However, just because they typically perform well doesn’t mean you should skip testing them. Running tests can still help you achieve even better outcomes.

How to test Email Deliverability?

Today, there are numerous tools available, many of which are free, to help you conduct comprehensive email deliverability tests, examine various aspects of deliverability, and gauge the performance of your emails:

1. Mailtrap Email Testing: Utilize Email Sandbox to test your email workflows in a secure environment. Evaluate how emails appear in different clients, analyze their spam scores, and ensure proper delivery without the risk of spamming recipients.

2. Sender Score: Assess your domain reputation and receive a “Sender Score” for each IP address from which you send emails. It also verifies critical authentications and related website certificates.

3. MXToolbox: Offers a range of tools for reputation validation. In addition to their Blacklist tool, they provide others for authentications validation and domain health checks, among other features.

4. Mail-tester.com / Isnotspam.com / Spamcheck by Postmark: These are additional tools for basic reputation checks. Simply send an email to an individual address and receive a detailed report with suggestions for improvement within seconds.

5. SendForensics / Glock Apps / Kickbox: These are paid but more comprehensive email deliverability testing solutions that are worth considering.

What affects the Email Deliverability rate?

There are several factors that can lead to email deliverability problems, with some of the main ones including:

1. Frequency of received spam complaints
2. Content of the email
3. Volume of emails sent within a specific timeframe
4. Infrastructure used for sending emails

However, by effectively tracking these aspects and making necessary improvements, email deliverability issues can be greatly minimized. Let’s delve into how this can be accomplished in detail.

How to stop email from going to spam

How to Stop Your Emails from Going to Spam

In the world of emails, some land in the main inbox, some end up in spam, and others bounce back. Just like fairytales, our emails face similar journeys when reaching customers. Achieving a 100% inbox placement rate is tough; usually, around 89% of emails make it. Today, we’ll share tips to improve your email delivery and keep them out of spam folders.

Why do my email marketing campaigns keep going to spam?

There could be several reasons, but the most common ones include:

– Spam-like content
– A compromised sender reputation
– Low engagement rates
– Unreliable email infrastructure
– Lack of unsubscribe links
– Non-compliance with email marketing laws like GDPR, CCPA, and CAN-SPAM
– Neglected email lists
– Incorrect or missing email headers
– Failure to meet the latest sender requirements from Google and Yahoo.

Most ISPs have spam filters that determine whether to accept incoming messages. While they might seem like villains, these filters actually safeguard us from phishing attempts, spammers, and harmful emails.

Understanding the mechanics of spam filters

The success of your email campaign greatly depends on filter technology. These filters not only block incoming messages but also categorize them. Nowadays, many email service providers and clients categorize messages into social, commercial, newsletters, and other groups using specific criteria. Similarly, spam filters assess incoming messages and assign them a spam score. If the score surpasses a certain threshold, the email lands in the inbox; otherwise, it’s directed to the spam folder. While the exact criteria are often undisclosed for security reasons, we still have a general idea of what spam filters look for and avoid.

Types of spam filters

Spam filters vary based on the criteria they assess and their implementation methods. Criteria-based filters include:

1. Content filters, which examine incoming messages for spam keywords, harmful attachments, and suspicious HTML code.
2. Header filters, which scrutinize message headers for misleading or infected information.
3. Blacklist filters, which verify if the sender is listed in a blacklist of known spammers.
4. Rule-based or heuristic filters, which evaluate messages based on user-defined criteria like sender-specific triggers or subject line keywords.
5. Permission filters, which confirm if the sender has consent to send marketing emails to the recipient.
6. Challenge-response filters, which send challenges (like entering a password) to verify the legitimacy of the sender.

Implementation-based spam filters include:

1. Gateway filters, which are physical servers detecting phishing, spoofing, malware, viruses, and spam emails at the entry point. Examples include Barracuda, SpamTitan, and Cisco Secure Email Threat Defense.
2. Hosted filters, serving as a secondary security layer. They assess emails after they pass through the gateway filter, assigning a spam score based on content and sender reputation. Examples include Cloudmark, Spambrella, and MailCleaner.

Tips for preventing emails from landing in spam folders across various email providers

Before delving into general recommendations, let’s explore how you can prevent your emails from being flagged as spam across various mailbox providers and email clients.

Gmail:
For senders:
Google offers a set of best practices to enhance inbox delivery for Gmail recipients:
– Configure DKIM and SPF records for your sending domain.
– Set up reverse DNS records (PTR records).
– Ensure your sending domain matches your public website domain.
– Maintain consistent sending from the same IP address.
– Use consistent sender addresses for similar types of emails.
– Avoid combining different email types within a single message.
– Refrain from sending test messages from your primary domain.
– Avoid impersonating others in your emails to prevent them from being marked as spoofed.

For recipients or personal accounts:
If important emails are ending up in your Gmail junk folder, you can whitelist trusted addresses by creating filters or adding them to your contacts:
– To create a filter, go to Settings and then click on “See all settings.”

Gmail spam folder filter

There, find Filter and Blocked Addresses tab and click Create a new filter. 

Gmail Spam Folder Settings

Enter the address you want to be whitelisted in the From field, and type in your own email address in the To field. Press Create filter when you’re done. 

A dialog box will pop up. Mark two checkboxes: Never send it to Spam and Also apply filter to # matching conversations. Then click Create filter. 

That’s it. Now the emails from the entered address won’t be marked as spam. 

Another option is to add a specific sender to your contacts. For that, find the email from that sender and hover your cursor over the avatar. Press the sign and the sender will be added to the list of your contacts. 

Microsoft Outlook, Hotmail, and Microsoft 365 (former Office 365)

Microsoft doesn’t offer specific instructions on avoiding emails landing in the spam folder like Google does. Here, you can only rely on general recommendations outlined below and encourage recipients to whitelist your sender addresses.

Whitelisting addresses can be done in two primary ways: adding the sender to the safe senders’ list and creating an inbox rule.

To add a sender to the safe senders’ list, you’ll need to access Settings in your Outlook webmail or app. In the web version, click on “View all Outlook settings” (skip this step if you’re using the app).

outlook spam

Navigate to Junk email (Junk in the app) and find Safe senders and domains (Safe senders in the app) tab. 

Press +Add (+ icon in the app), type in the sender email address or domain you want to whitelist, and press Enter. 

How to avoid emails being marked as spam

As you might expect, there’s no instant fix for dealing with spam filters. It takes deliberate actions to ensure your legitimate emails reach recipients’ inboxes. Below, we’ll guide you on how to lower your email’s spam score and enhance its chances of being delivered to the inbox.

Part 1 - Building a Strong Sender Reputation

Domain Reputation

Email filters evaluate domain reputation based on several metrics:

1. Complaint Rate: This indicates the percentage of emails from your domain reported as spam by recipients. It’s a crucial indicator of your domain’s reputation and email deliverability. A high complaint rate suggests targeting incorrect recipients or delivering poor value. Aim for a complaint rate below 0.1%.

2. Inbox Placement Rate (IPR): This measures the percentage of emails from your domain that land in recipients’ inboxes. It’s a more accurate metric than delivery rate because it focuses solely on inboxed emails. Target an IPR above 80%.

3. Spam Placement Rate: This reflects the percentage of emails from your domain that end up in spam folders. Lower this rate as much as possible, aiming for below 10%.

4. Hard Bounce Rate: This indicates the percentage of emails from your domain that bounce back due to invalid or non-existent recipient addresses. It’s more valuable than the soft bounce rate, which accounts for temporary issues. Aim for a hard bounce rate below 2%.

Email Authentication

Email authentication is crucial for protecting your domain against phishing and spoofing. It relies on four standards:

1. Sender Policy Framework (SPF)
2. DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)
3. Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance (DMARC)
4. Brand Indicator for Message Identification (BIMI)

Don’t overlook the PTR record, which is a reverse DNS record used by ISPs to verify sender identity.

IP Address Reputation

Similar to domain reputation, factors such as sending volume, engagement rates, spam complaints, and bounce rates influence IP address reputation. Avoid being listed on blocklists, and consider using dedicated IPs for higher sending volumes.

New IP addresses require an “IP warmup” period to establish a reputation gradually and avoid deliverability issues.

Tools to Check Sender Reputation

Several tools help assess sender reputation, including:

1. Sender Score by Return Path
2. Send Forensics
3. Barracuda Reputation Lookup
4. Email Reputation by Cisco’s Talos

Part 2 - Refined Email Content

In the early days of spam filtering, content was the main focus for filters. They scrutinized incoming messages for spam-trigger words, keywords, blacklisted links, and other inappropriate elements. While sender reputation now holds greater importance, content filters remain widely used.

Let’s delve into different aspects of email content and explore how to make them less susceptible to spam by avoiding common mistakes.

Subject Line:
– Steer clear of promotional keywords like “buy,” “sale,” or “discount.”
– Avoid using all capital letters or excessive exclamation points.
– Focus on triggering recipient interest by highlighting product/service features or specifications.
– Personalized subject lines can significantly boost open rates by nearly 50%.

Body Text:
– Ensure readability and minimize grammatical errors to build recipient trust.
– High spelling error rates may trigger content filters, so proofread thoroughly.
– Maintain a balanced text-to-image ratio (60% text to 40% images) to prevent filtering due to large images.

HTML:
– Verify HTML formatting to avoid errors or broken tags, which can trigger spam filters.
– Multi-part messages containing both plain text and HTML can enhance engagement but require careful scrutiny.

Images:
– Limit embedded images to 40% of the total message body to prevent filtering.
– Consider compressing images or linking to them from a web server to reduce message size and processing time.

Attachments:
– Attachments raise red flags for filters due to potential malware or viruses.
– While necessary attachments like invoices are acceptable, avoid unnecessary attachments if possible.

Media Content:
– Overuse of media content can increase spam likelihood and reduce recipient engagement.
– Avoid dynamic scripts, as spam filters typically block them.

Tools for Content Checking:
– Various tools like HTML Email Check or PutsMail by Litmus validate HTML content.
– Email Subject Line Grader or Send Check It test subject lines.
– Tools like Hemingway Editor and Grammarly assist with readability and grammar checks.
– Some email marketing services and ESPs offer built-in content validation tools.

Part 3 – Engaged recipient

Engagement Metrics:
To ensure optimal deliverability, it’s crucial to maintain recipient engagement. Email filters analyze engagement through various metrics:

– Open Rate: The percentage of recipients who open your emails.
– Click-Through Rate: The percentage of recipients who click on at least one link in your email campaign.
– Conversion Rate: The percentage of recipients who complete the desired conversion goal.
– Unsubscribe Rate: The percentage of recipients who unsubscribe from your marketing communications.

Email Formatting:
– Ensure emails open correctly across different clients and devices by previewing them with dedicated tools.
– Optimize loading speed by avoiding large images and dynamic scripts.
– Replace embedded forms with links or CTA buttons to avoid triggering spam filters.
– Check for broken links and refrain from excessive use of colors and fonts, as irregularities may lead to manual spam folder placement.

Email Branding:
– Include the sender’s name in the ‘from’ address and header to reduce spam complaints and increase open rates.
– Consider using a recognizable front person as the email campaign sender, and add “from <your brand>” to the header for credibility.
– Brand other elements such as subject lines, headers, and links for increased recognition and organization.
– Ensure email campaign design and content align with your brand and target buyer personas for consistency and effectiveness.

Follow-ups:
Following up with recipients can enhance your credibility with email filters, showing your commitment to engagement. However, maintaining balance is crucial. Excessive follow-ups in a short period can raise suspicion and lead to emails being flagged as spam. Aim for around once a week or two for follow-ups, maintaining consistency and scheduling campaigns within regular intervals.

Whitelisting:
Emails from contacts’ addresses are less likely to be marked as spam. Encourage recipients to whitelist your main sender addresses if you’re having trouble reaching inboxes. Include instructions in the email for easy whitelisting, as recipients are more likely to comply with minimal effort.

Email Lists:
Building permission-based email lists is essential. Obtain consent from recipients to receive marketing emails, typically through a simple checkbox in sign-up or download forms. Double opt-in, which confirms consent with a confirmation email, is now an industry standard, ensuring a high-quality list of interested contacts.

Unsubscribe Link:
Including an unsubscribe link or button in every commercial email is vital for inbox delivery and legal compliance. The CAN-SPAM Act and similar regulations require senders to disclose the email’s purpose and offer recipients the option to unsubscribe. Ensure unsubscribe links are easily accessible and functional to prevent recipients from marking emails as spam out of frustration.

Quality Over Quantity:
It’s preferable to have a smaller list of engaged recipients than a large list of disinterested contacts. Recipients who can’t easily unsubscribe may resort to marking emails as spam, damaging sender reputation.

Part 4 - Strong Email Infrastructure

Lastly, don’t overlook your email infrastructure. Whether it’s for sending or testing emails, you need a dependable provider. It’s best to choose a platform that offers both solutions in one place, eliminating the need to switch between tools.

One excellent option is Email Jinny. It offers a unified platform for testing emails, sending them to recipients’ inboxes, and monitoring email infrastructure performance. Email Jinny seamlessly integrates two essential solutions: Email Testing and Email Sending.

Email Testing provides a secure space to examine and troubleshoot your emails without inundating users with development clutter. This tool assists you in testing different aspects of your emails to evade spam filters. It accomplishes this through the following features:

Spam Analysis, utilizing SpamAssassin data, enables you to assess the spam score of your emails. If the score exceeds 5, adjustments can be made accordingly. Additionally, detailed descriptions of spam variables are available under the Spam Report chart, with the importance of each highlighted by a score.

In addition, Email Testing provides technical information to view and validate critical email headers. Moreover, it offers the ability to utilize multiple inboxes for various projects, capture all SMTP traffic, automate testing workflows, and preview how your emails will appear on mobile, desktop, and tablet devices.

Once all inspections are completed, you can seamlessly transition to Email Sending. This service offers an Email API and SMTP functionality, ensuring timely delivery to your recipients’ inboxes.

Email Sending provides essential alerts in case of any unforeseen sending issues or unexpected drops in metrics. This ensures you are promptly informed about any issues with your infrastructure, allowing you to take quick and efficient measures.

Types Of Email MArketing

Types of Email Marketing Explained Everything

Life would be much easier for marketers if there was just one perfect type of email that always worked. They could just copy the same email and send it to everyone. But that’s not really a good idea.

Imagine getting the same email from different companies all the time. You’d get annoyed and probably block all marketing emails. Then you might miss out on important stuff, like news or discounts. That could make email marketing less effective.

That’s why it’s important to use different types of email marketing and send the right content to the right people. In this guide, we’ll show you how to do that.

Types of email marketing

There are two main kinds of email marketing: inbound and outbound. All emails and campaigns fit into one of these categories based on who they’re meant for and what they’re trying to do.

Inbound Email Marketing

Inbound email marketing is about sending emails to people who are already on your email list. These emails target customers at different points in their journey as buyers. They’re usually based on detailed descriptions of your typical customers, called buyer personas. Inbound email marketing aims to do things like make people more aware of your brand, get them more engaged, or make them more loyal customers. To do this, it uses carefully planned-out campaigns.

It’s important to know that inbound email marketing only sends emails to people who have agreed to get marketing emails.

Outbound Email Marketing

On the other hand, outbound email marketing aims to reach a broader audience—people who aren’t on your email list yet. The goal is to make more people aware of your brand, especially those who haven’t heard of your product or service yet.

Outbound email marketing mostly relies on research about the kind of people who would be interested in your product or service, called an ideal customer profile (ICP). Because of the way it works, outbound email marketing doesn’t need consent from the people it sends emails to.

If you want to learn more about the differences between inbound and outbound email marketing, check out this blog post.

Types of email marketing campaigns

As we mentioned earlier, all email marketing campaigns fall into two categories: inbound or outbound. That’s why we decided to organize different types of email campaigns based on this.

Inbound Email Marketing Campaigns

Inbound email campaigns can be split into two groups: recurring and one-off. Most marketing campaigns are usually recurring, but we might also see standalone campaigns sometimes.

Recurring email campaigns

Recurring email campaigns are sent regularly, following a set schedule, and targeting a specific audience. They can be sent weekly, monthly, or yearly. These campaigns are great for building relationships with customers, giving value to subscribers, sharing regular updates, or promoting content.

The details like content, schedule, audience, and purpose of recurring campaigns are typically part of the email marketing strategy. This ensures that every email matches your brand’s style and business goals.

To make things easier, most recurring campaigns are automated using marketing automation and email marketing software. These tools let you create email templates with customized details that are sent out according to a preset schedule.

Advantages of recurring email marketing campaigns:

1. Helps maintain consistent communication.
2. Builds a strong relationship with the audience.
3. Can boost engagement.
4. Keeps subscribers informed about updates or promotions.
5. Improves your sending reputation with ISPs and spam filters since scheduled emails seem less like spam.

Disadvantages of recurring email marketing campaigns:

1. Might overwhelm subscribers if you send too many emails.
2. May not be suitable for all audiences.

Onboarding campaigns

Onboarding campaigns are a great way to introduce new subscribers to your product or services and help them get familiar with your platform. They usually start with a welcome email followed by a series of emails that teach users how to use specific features.

For instance, HubSpot has an onboarding campaign consisting of eight emails. The first email welcomes you, tells you what to expect in future emails, and suggests some tasks. Each subsequent email guides you through using different parts of the platform. The final email offers additional resources and upsells from HubSpot Academy.

Drip campaigns

Drip campaigns are a set of emails that get sent automatically when users take certain actions. You can set these up using your email marketing tool by creating workflows for different triggers. Once a user does something specific, like signing up for your emails, they’ll start getting a series of emails automatically.

For instance, let’s say you run a blog about musical instruments. When someone signs up for your emails, you can send them a series of emails with recommendations for blog posts, highlights of different instruments, or descriptions of various types of instruments.

Likewise, if you have an online store and someone adds an item to their shopping cart but doesn’t buy it, you can send them a series of emails with suggestions for other products or reminders to complete their purchase.

Seasonal campaigns

Seasonal campaigns are sets of emails sent out during certain times of the year. These might align with the season or holidays. These campaigns can include both helpful info and deals.

For instance, if you’re doing email marketing for hotels, you might start your campaign a month before summer. You’d suggest cool places to go or talk about fun things to do at your hotel. Once your subscribers are interested, you could offer them a discount.

One-off (or standalone) email campaigns

A one-off (also known as standalone or ad-hoc) email campaign is a single email sent just once. These emails don’t follow a set schedule. Marketers typically use them for special occasions like a one-time sale, announcing a new product or update, promoting an event, or adding variety to their content strategy.

Even though they don’t have a schedule, one-off email campaigns still target a specific audience.

Advantages of a one-off email marketing campaign:

1. Allows marketers to test different subject lines, messages, designs, and formats.
2. Makes it easy to quickly inform subscribers about changes, news, or limited-time offers.
3. Can showcase aspects of your brand that aren’t usually part of your regular emails, like your history or values.
4. Adds diversity to your content strategy.

Disadvantages of a one-off email marketing campaign:

1. Can disrupt the usual flow of communication with subscribers.
2. Might lead to spam complaints since subscribers aren’t expecting the email.
3. Requires more resources since the design and content are different from regular campaigns.

Trigger-based email campaigns

Trigger-based campaigns, also known as triggered emails, are sent when a user takes a specific action. They’re similar to drip campaigns, but instead of a series of emails, only one email is sent. These actions could be events, behaviors, or engagement with your website or app.

Marketers use various types of automated trigger-based campaigns, such as confirmation emails, welcome emails, or abandoned cart emails.

For instance, when a customer, whether new or returning, makes a purchase, a confirmation email containing a receipt or invoice is a triggered campaign.

Here’s an example from Postable: It’s a straightforward confirmation email that includes details like the order number, purchased items, and total order amount, personalized for each customer.

Promotional email campaigns

Standalone promotional email campaigns have one main goal: to boost sales. They’re sent only once, usually during slower times. You can spot them easily because they include discounts that aren’t part of the usual offers.

Alternatively, one-off promotional email campaigns might have coupon codes, vouchers, or special deals aimed at specific groups of people who don’t usually buy your products. For example, if customers over 40 aren’t big buyers, you might send them a special offer to try and increase sales.

Event campaigns

Event email campaigns are prime examples of standalone campaigns. They’re tied to a forthcoming event you’re organizing, like a conference, webinar, or awards ceremony. Typically, these one-off event campaigns are used when the event is relevant only to specific segments of your audience.

Outbound Email Marketing Campaigns

Outbound email marketing campaigns aren’t as varied as inbound ones because many of them follow similar formats and traits. However, we’re focusing on a lead generation campaign because it’s the most prevalent type of outbound email campaign.

Lead generation campaign

An outbound lead generation campaign is designed to introduce a product or service to a new audience. This audience is divided into groups based on an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). The most common approach involves detailed, data-driven personalization.

For instance, instead of just using the recipient’s first name, experienced marketers delve into shared interests or the recipient’s specific challenges, crafting a lead generation campaign tailored to those details.

Typically, lead generation campaigns include an initial cold email followed by several subsequent emails. The first email highlights the recipient’s problem and suggests a potential solution. Each subsequent email reinforces the previous information while adding more value by emphasizing different aspects or benefits of the product or service. The final follow-up taps into the fear of missing out (FOMO) to urge the recipient to take action.

Welcome email

Welcome emails mark the first (and most crucial) communication sent to your subscribers. As per the benchmark report by GetResponse, welcome emails boast an average open rate of 68.59% and a click-through rate (CTR) of 16.05%.

Clearly, a welcome email needs to leave a positive first impression and lay the groundwork for a lasting connection.

Imagine meeting someone for the first time, and they immediately start talking about their studies at Harvard without even saying hello. You’d likely feel confused, annoyed, and maybe even lose interest after the first sentence.

Likewise, welcome emails should begin with a simple thank you to show appreciation to the subscribers. Then, you can introduce your product and inform them about what to expect in future emails. It’s also helpful to let them know how often they’ll hear from you.

To enhance the usefulness of welcome emails, consider including links to additional resources such as technical documentation, getting-started guides, your blog, or even social media profiles.

Tips for welcoming new subscribers:

1. Express gratitude for selecting your product or service.

2. Avoid making your email overly promotional, as it might deter them.

3. Utilize email automation to ensure a timely welcome for every subscriber.

4. Tailor the tone of the email to suit the preferences of your target audience.

5. Emphasize providing value and ensure the email is informative.

 

Onboarding emails

We talked about onboarding campaigns before, and onboarding emails serve the same goal: to assist users in getting started. For some businesses, a single email is enough, and they don’t need a whole campaign.

Onboarding emails should contain all the necessary information to kickstart users. Ideally, they should address most of the questions that new users might have. This helps reduce support inquiries and enhances the user experience.

Tips for onboarding subscribers:

1. Offer clear and succinct instructions.

2. Use headers to enhance readability.

3. Ensure consistency in both design and content.

4. Incorporate relevant CTAs for each stage of the onboarding journey.

Transactional emails

Transactional emails are akin to trigger-based emails, but they lack any promotional content. When users request a password reset or sign up for an account, they receive an automated email. Since users trigger these emails themselves, their open rates are typically higher.

These emails include post-purchase confirmations, registration confirmations, and other types of confirmatory messages.

However, the effectiveness of transactional emails is usually gauged by deliverability rates and speed. Users don’t want to wait long to access their accounts, nor do they want important transactional messages to end up in their spam folders. Therefore, in this case, deliverability is more important than open or engagement rates.

Transactional emails should prioritize accessibility over heavy design elements and images to ensure they can be viewed on any device or email client. However, maintaining a simple style that aligns with your brand identity is still recommended for consistency. Creating transactional email templates for various triggers can streamline the process.

Tips for effective transactional emails:

1. Utilize a clear and prominent call-to-action (CTA).

2. Prefer plain-text format over HTML whenever feasible.

3. Perform a sender reputation audit to ensure delivery of transactional emails.

4. Craft subject lines that are clear and descriptive.

5. Develop transactional email templates tailored to various triggers.

6. Personalize emails and include signatures to enhance credibility.

Email newsletters

Newsletter emails are routine emails sent on a specific schedule, like weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. They typically include a summary of news within your company or industry, recent blog posts, or highlights from your latest podcast episodes.

Often regarded as top-notch lead-nurturing emails, newsletters are valued for their informative nature. They can be brief, containing links to additional resources, or longer, depending on your objectives and the preferences of your audience. Additionally, you can create segmented lists and send different newsletters to various buyer personas.

Promotional emails

While newsletters and welcome emails focus on increasing engagement rates, promotional emails are geared towards driving sales. They feature various special offers ranging from simple discounts to contests and giveaways. However, discounts alone may not always be sufficient to persuade customers to make a purchase. Highlighting the benefits of the product can greatly enhance their effectiveness.

Just as there’s no Rick without a Morty, promotional emails often incorporate FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). FOMO elements may include expiring offers, one-time sales, or exclusive memberships. The primary objective is to instill a sense of urgency, prompting users to make decisions swiftly.

How to promote effectively without being too pushy:

1. Offer meaningful discounts that truly entice customers; a mere $1 off might not cut it.

2. Instead of solely focusing on discounts, explain the reasons why users should consider purchasing your products.

3. Get inventive with your messaging and craft compelling, memorable copy.

4. Choose the right timing for sending your emails. According to Campaign Monitor’s report, Mondays see the highest open rates (22.0%), while Tuesdays boast the highest click-through rates (2.4%).

5. When planning your promotional email schedule, align it with seasons, holidays, and local or company events. Users often anticipate discounts during these periods.

Survey emails

Survey emails are an effective method for boosting engagement. They transform a one-way communication into an intriguing conversation, enabling users to interact with your emails and demonstrating your interest in their opinions.

In addition to their engaging nature, survey emails provide an opportunity for research. For instance, if you’re planning to launch a new SaaS solution, you can ask your current audience about the features they desire in such a product. Alternatively, you can inquire why they stopped using your services or validate hypotheses regarding changes in your marketing metrics.

Product update emails

The last type of email we’ll discuss is the product update email. It serves to demonstrate ongoing growth and introduce new features to generate interest.

It’s important to avoid sending emails for every minor bug fix, as this approach won’t yield significant results. The updates highlighted in your emails should either be major improvements or enhance user experience in some way.

When sending product update emails, you typically have two choices: provide a summary of recent updates or dedicate an entire email to the most significant one.

Cold Emails

It begins with a cold email. A simple subject line, a touch of personalization and creativity, and a few proposals.

Unlike inbound marketing emails, cold emails can’t rely on fancy designs. Since they’re unsolicited, they’re already under scrutiny. A complicated HTML layout with heavy design elements would only make it harder to bypass spam filters.

How to do it correctly:

1. Demonstrate familiarity with the recipient and begin the conversation with genuine compliments to create a positive impression.

2. Get straight to the point and present your proposal promptly.

3. Clearly outline what you can offer and how it benefits them.

4. Include links to helpful resources for further context on collaboration or partnership. Additionally, consider creating a virtual business card with these links and contact details for easy sharing.

Follow-up emails

You might receive responses from your initial cold email, but chances are, you won’t. That’s why follow-up emails are crucial in outbound campaigns, including outbound lead generation campaigns.

In your first follow-up email, summarize your proposal once more. Adding a personal or distinctive touch can help your message stand out in their inbox.

Ways to improve the chances of recipients reading your outbound emails:

1. Fine-tune the timing between cold emails and follow-ups for optimal engagement.

2. Experiment with various subject lines to gauge your target audience’s preferences.

3. Incorporate a personal touch to increase response rates.

4. Ensure compliance with GDPR and CCPA regulations at all times.

Read Also – Guide to Cold Email Marketing

Wrapping things up:

Phew, we covered a lot of ground on various email marketing campaigns and strategies, didn’t we? Feel free to use these insights as inspiration to craft outstanding emails and campaigns.

Here are some final suggestions:

1. Ensure all your emails include unsubscribe links.
2. Monitor your sender reputation regularly to enhance email deliverability.
3. Experiment with different types of email marketing to find what works best for you.
4. Segment your audience based on buyer personas.
5. Keep your emails diverse and engaging.
6. Maintain consistency in your designs and tone of voice.
7. Avoid overwhelming your subscribers with too many emails.
8. Prioritize building long-term relationships over quick sales.

what is cold email marketing

The Ultimate Guide to Cold Email Marketing

What is Cold Email Marketing

A cold email can be a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal, enabling you to reach potential customers, establish valuable connections, and ultimately drive significant business growth. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the world of cold email marketing, unravel its potential, and equip you with the knowledge and strategies to develop successful campaigns. Whether you’re new to cold email marketing or seeking to optimize your existing tactics, read on to discover how to leverage this strategy effectively and ethically.

The Basics of Cold Email Marketing

Cold email marketing, as the name suggests, involves sending unsolicited emails to individuals who haven’t previously interacted with your brand. When executed correctly, cold email marketing can yield impressive results, including lead generation, conversions, and customer acquisition. However, it’s crucial to understand the fundamentals before diving into this strategy.

Cold emails are most effective when they are personalized, targeted, and comply with email regulations. By thoroughly researching your recipients and tailoring your messaging to address their pain points and goals, you can significantly increase the chances of engagement and positive outcomes.

Crafting Compelling Cold Emails

  1. Writing attention-grabbing subject lines:
    • Incorporate the primary keyword: “cold email marketing” into your subject lines strategically.
    • Focus on creating curiosity or providing a clear value proposition.
  2. Designing engaging email content:
    • Use a conversational tone and address your recipient by name whenever possible.
    • Tell a story that connects with your audience emotionally.
    • Highlight the benefits and solutions your product or service offers.
  3. Utilizing storytelling techniques:
    • Begin your email with an engaging anecdote or relatable scenario.
    • Incorporate a problem-solution structure to resonate with readers.
    • Share success stories or testimonials to demonstrate credibility and build trust.
  4. Leveraging persuasive copywriting:
    • Utilize persuasive language and strong calls-to-action (CTAs).
    • Create a sense of urgency or scarcity to prompt immediate action.
    • Keep sentences concise and focused, enhancing readability and impact.

Cold Email Statistics You Need To Know

Cold Email Automation and Software

Email automation is a game-changer when it comes to optimizing your cold email campaigns. By utilizing automation tools, you can streamline your processes, save time, and ensure consistency throughout your outreach efforts.

  1. Introduction to cold email automation:
    • Explain the concept of cold email automation and its benefits.
    • Emphasize the importance of personalized automation.
  2. Benefits of using email automation tools:
    • Discuss how automation improves efficiency and scalability.
    • Highlight features like email sequencing and follow-up automation.
  3. Comparison of popular cold email software options:
    • Analyze popular software options like Email Jinny, Mailchimp, etc.
    • Discuss key features, pricing, ease of use, and customer reviews.
  4. Key features to consider when choosing a tool:
    • Provide a checklist of essential features, such as advanced personalization options and analytics.
    • Address any potential concerns, such as deliverability and email reputation.

Strategies for Successful Cold Email Campaigns

To run successful cold email campaigns, it’s crucial to establish a strong foundation and implement effective strategies.

  1. Building a quality email list:
    • Explore methods for building a targeted and permission-based email list.
    • Highlight the significance of quality over quantity.
  2. Segmenting your email contacts:
    • Explain the importance of segmentation for targeting and personalization.
    • Provide examples of effective segmentation criteria.
  3. A/B testing subject lines and content:
    • Introduce the concept of A/B testing and its role in optimizing open and response rates.
    • Share best practices for conducting meaningful tests.
  4. Effective follow-up tactics:
    • Discuss the value of follow-up emails in nurturing leads and increasing conversions.
    • Provide tips for crafting compelling follow-up messages.

Maximizing Results with Email Advertising

In addition to your cold email campaigns, email advertising presents opportunities to amplify your reach and connect with new audiences.

  1. Understanding the concept of email advertising:
    • Define email advertising and its potential impact.
    • Highlight the advantages over traditional advertising methods.
  2. Utilizing sponsored emails and dedicated sends:
    • Explain sponsored emails as an effective way to leverage established email lists.
    • Explore dedicated sends to reach diverse audiences.
  3. Working with influencers and thought leaders:
    • Discuss the benefits of collaborating with influencers or thought leaders in your industry.
    • Share strategies for identifying and approaching potential partners.
  4. Tracking and analyzing email advertising metrics:
    • Introduce key metrics to track, such as open rates, click-through rates (CTRs), and conversions.
    • Recommend tools for analyzing and optimizing your email marketing campaigns.

Cold Email Tools for Enhanced Efficiency

In addition to automation tools, various other cold email tools can enhance your productivity and effectiveness.

  1. Introducing useful cold email tools:
    • Explore additional tools such as Email Jinny, Hunter.io, and Voila Norbert.
    • Explain their purpose and value in a cold email campaign.
  2. Analyzing and selecting the right tools for your needs:
    • Share factors to consider when choosing cold email tools.
    • Highlight the importance of aligning tools with your specific objectives.
  3. Email tracking and analytics:
    • Discuss the significance of email tracking and analytics tools in measuring and improving performance.
    • Recommend tools like Email Jinny or Mailtrack.
  4. Streamlining outreach with email scheduling tools:
    • Introduce email scheduling tools like Mixmax or Email jinny .
    • Explain their benefits in managing communication and optimizing engagement.

SEO Best Practices for Cold Email Marketing

To ensure your cold email campaigns align with SEO best practices and drive traffic to your website, you need to incorporate certain techniques.

  1. Incorporating SEO techniques into your emails:
    • Provide tips on incorporating relevant keywords naturally.
    • Emphasize the importance of delivering valuable content to recipients.
  2. Optimizing your email content for search engines:
    • Discuss the significance of clean HTML coding and responsive design.
    • Recommend using alt tags for images and concise meta descriptions.
  3. Utilizing relevant keywords and meta tags:
    • Explain the role of keyword research in optimizing cold email campaigns.
    • Suggest tools like Google Keywords Planner or Moz.
  4. Link building and driving traffic to your website:
    • Incorporate internal links to relevant blog posts or landing pages within your cold emails.
    • Encourage recipients to click on links, leading to valuable content on your website.

Conclusion

In conclusion, cold email marketing can be a game-changer for businesses of all sizes, driving leads, conversions, and overall growth. By crafting compelling cold emails, leveraging automation tools, implementing effective strategies, and adhering to SEO best practices, you can take your cold email campaigns to new heights.

Remember, success in cold email marketing requires a thoughtful and strategic approach. Take the time to research your target audience, personalize your emails, and continually refine your tactics based on data-driven insights.

Integrate the strategies and tools outlined in this guide, and get ready to unlock the potential of cold email marketing for your business today.

Best Free Mailchimp Alternative: Top Email Marketing Platform

Best Free Mailchimp Alternative: Top Email Marketing Platform

Mailchimp is a popular choice for sending emails. It’s liked by small and medium-sized businesses and online store owners for its helpful features.

But, because Mailchimp recently changed how it charges for its services, more people are looking at other options. If you’re one of them or just curious about similar tools, keep reading to find free alternative to Mailchimp that might work better for you.

Mailchimp Features and Pricing

Let’s dive into Mailchimp’s features and pricing. To properly compare it with other options, we need to understand what Mailchimp offers and how much it costs. When Mailchimp first started, it was mainly for sending emails. But now, it’s grown into a complete marketing platform. It works well with e-commerce tools like Facebook Ads and Google Ads.

Here’s what you get with Mailchimp:

1. Email Campaigns: Create eye-catching emails using their drag-and-drop editor. They also offer templates you can customize with personalized tags.
2. Audience Management: Easily organize your subscribers into groups and send targeted emails.
3. Automation: Set up automated emails triggered by actions like sign-ups or purchases to save time.
4. A/B Testing: Experiment with different subject lines or content to see what works best.
5. Analytics: Get detailed reports on your emails’ performance, including open rates and engagement.
6. Integration: Connect Mailchimp with other tools like eCommerce platforms and social media.
7. Mobile App: Manage your campaigns on the go with their mobile app.

As for pricing, Mailchimp offers a free plan that is limited to 500 contacts and 1,000 monthly email sends. It also has basic segmentation and templates, but you can’t code your own from scratch.

Disadvantages of Mailchimp

While Mailchimp is widely used for email marketing, it has its downsides to consider:

1. Pricing: Mailchimp’s pricing has changed over time, and it may be costly for those with large subscriber lists or specific needs, affecting affordability for some users.

2. Complexity for Beginners: Despite user-friendly features, beginners might find Mailchimp overwhelming initially.

3. Limited Customization: While Mailchimp offers templates and customization, some users may feel restricted by design limitations. Advanced customization may require coding knowledge or custom-coded templates.

4. Support: Mailchimp offers email or chatbot support, but it’s not immediate or direct.

5. Advanced Features: Some businesses may find Mailchimp lacking certain features they need, requiring higher-priced plans or third-party integrations.

Consider these factors when choosing a service. Evaluate how they align with your business needs and research alternatives for potentially better options.

Top Mailchimp Competitor

Looking for an alternative to Mailchimp? Let’s explore Email Jinny, a promising competitor. Check out our comparison below.

Email Jinny is a cloud-based platform offering advanced features for sending bulk emails. With the ability to send unlimited personalized emails per day, it ensures your emails remain secure and avoids getting banned. The platform also provides comprehensive tracking capabilities, allowing you to monitor key email events such as sending, opening, and bouncing.

 

One Solution For Every Industry:

  • Freelancer
  • Agency
  • Digital Marketer
Email Jinny Logo

Use Email Jinny’s services to send important information like:

            • Alerts/Reminders
            • Business Promotion
            • Latest Offers 
            • Lead Generation
            • Out Reaching
            • Social Campaign

Why Should You Use Email Jinny For Bulk Email Services ?

Experience the freedom of unlimited daily sending with Email Jinny’s no limits feature.

Say goodbye to subscriber limitations with Email Jinny, hassle-free.

Enjoy a 100% delivery rate with Email Jinny’s secure cloud panel for emails.

Personalized messages that resonate with your audience’s interests and needs.

Track email events like opens, bounces, and clicks in real-time to gain valuable insights.

Exclusive Resell Opportunity – Set Your Own Price with Email Jinny!

In terms of pricing, there are certainly more affordable options than Mailchimp that offer comparable functionality. Take EmailJinny, for instance—a user-friendly and scalable alternative. With EmailJinny, streamlining your email campaigns and improving your marketing performance is a breeze.

Maximize your bulk email sending with Email Jinny’s
advanced features and comprehensive tracking for secure and engaging delivery.

Bulk Email Marketing

How Bulk Email Services Grow Your Business

Bulk email marketing is when a business sends emails to lots of people at the same time to promote what they sell or keep in touch with customers. If it’s done well, it helps get more loyal customers and makes more money.

Two Kinds of Bulk Emails

Legitimate Bulk Emails:

When a business sends a reminder email to someone who bought their product or service, it’s considered a bulk email. It’s considered legitimate if it follows these rules:
– The person agreed to receive it.
– There’s an option to unsubscribe.
– The business name is clearly visible.
If bulk emails meet these rules, they can be effective marketing tools for businesses.

Unsolicited bulk emails:

These are emails sent to people without their permission. They typically lack:
– An option to unsubscribe.
– Personalized information.
Businesses need to be careful with bulk email marketing to avoid spamming their email lists. Using Email Jinny can help create and manage bulk email campaigns effectively.

Advantages of Bulk Email Marketing

-Enables instant messaging
-Allows customization of messages
-Aids in organizing mailing lists by segments
-Boosts conversion rates
-Promotes consistent communication
-Gives insights through test marketing
-Facilitates information sharing
-Reduces overhead expenses
-Provides tools for tracking user engagement and sales

Email Marketing Revenue Statics

$7,5 Billion in 2020
$17.5 Billion in 2027 *expected

Data Source – Statista

Bulk email marketing is a great way for businesses to quickly connect with both current and potential customers. This approach makes it easy for marketers to create marketing messages without much effort. Instead of spending weeks on implementation, it only takes about an hour for one person to use available tools and workflows.

But that’s not the only advantage of bulk email marketing. Let’s take a look at some other benefits:

Real-Time Messaging

Because marketing emails can be created quickly, marketers can send out timely messages, like promoting limited-time offers or informing customers about low stock. They can also send real-time emails for special occasions like birthdays or anniversaries.

Personalized Messages

Unlike traditional advertising methods like TV or radio, bulk email marketing allows businesses to send personalized emails addressing customers by name and even including customized information based on their purchase history. This helps build stronger relationships with customers.

Mailing List Segmentation

With bulk email marketing, marketers can divide their customer list into smaller, more targeted groups and send personalized emails. For example, they can create campaigns tailored to customers in specific locations, making communication more relevant and effective.

Increased Conversions

By segmenting their customer list and sending targeted emails, marketers can significantly increase sales conversions. Sending appealing messages to specific customers increases the likelihood of getting a positive response.

Regular Communication

Bulk email campaigns are easy to create and launch, allowing marketers to reach out to customers frequently. They can send weekly offers or even more frequent emails, but it’s essential not to overwhelm customers with too many emails.

Test Marketing Insights

Bulk email marketing enables marketers to test different elements like headlines, colors, and graphics to see what resonates best with customers. They can also send different versions of emails to see which one performs better and use tracking tools to analyze user actions and sales conversions.

Information Sharing

Email marketing makes it easy for recipients to forward emails containing valuable information or offers to others, helping businesses gain advocates who spread the word within their networks.

Reduced Overhead Costs

Bulk email marketing is incredibly cost-effective, requiring minimal overhead compared to hiring marketing analysts and designers. All it takes is an email marketing service and a skilled marketer to create compelling content for the relevant customer list.

User Engagement and Sales Tracking

Email marketing platforms provide tools to track various metrics like email opens, link clicks, spam complaints, and unsubscribes. By analyzing this data and tracking sales, marketers can understand customer engagement and response throughout the marketing cycle.

Overall, bulk email marketing offers an efficient and effective way for businesses to connect with customers, drive sales, and achieve a high return on investment.

How to Conduct Bulk Email Marketing:

  1. Understand your target audience.
  2. Highlight the benefits of your products or services.
  3. Keep your messages concise and clear.
  4. Offer special discounts or promotions.
  5. Clearly communicate any deadlines or expiration dates.
  6. Provide multiple channels for communication and inquiries.

Steps for Successful Bulk Email Marketing:

1. Identify your target audience: Determine the specific groups of people who are most interested in your products or services based on factors like nationality, income, education, age, gender, and ethnicity. Tailor your email campaigns to these market segments.

2. Focus on the benefits: Clearly explain the advantages that customers will gain from your brand. By addressing their interests, you encourage them to take action.

3. Be brief and straightforward: Keep your marketing emails concise. Present the key points clearly so readers can quickly make decisions. Lengthy or complex emails often lose readers’ interest and may get deleted without being read.

4. Offer special discounts: Attract readers by providing exclusive discounts or promotions. For example, offer a 20% discount specifically for them.

5. Communicate deadlines: Create a sense of urgency by specifying when the offer expires. This prevents procrastination and ensures prompt responses from customers.

6. Provide communication channels: Make it easy for customers to respond to your email. Include contact information such as phone numbers or hyperlinks, allowing them to reach out to your company conveniently with any inquiries.

How to Avoid Spamming While Sending Bulk Emails

1. Target Interested Individuals: Send emails only to those who have shown genuine interest in your business. Avoid purchasing email lists.

2. Choose a Reliable Email Marketing Service: Use a legitimate email marketing service to ensure compliance with regulations and best practices.

3. Implement Double Opt-in: Have subscribers confirm their consent to receive marketing emails by responding to a verification email.

4. Prioritize Customer Privacy: Keep all interactions with customers confidential and never sell their personal data.

5. Craft Compelling Calls-to-Action: Encourage engagement with enticing calls-to-action that prompt recipients to take desired actions.

6. Provide an Unsubscribe Option: Include an easy-to-find unsubscribe link to allow recipients to opt out of future communications.

How to Send Bulk Email for Free with Email Jinny.

1. Sign up with EmailJiny.
2. Build your mailing list. You can import an existing list, If you import your list, make sure to validate email addresses.
3. Create an email campaign.
4. Choose or customize an email template.
5. Review and send.

Best Practices for Bulk Email Marketing:

1. Embrace Performance-Based Email Marketing.
2. Respect Unsubscribes: Honor opt-outs and avoid sending marketing emails to those who have unsubscribed.
3. Personalize Your Emails for Maximum Impact.
4. Confirm Subscriptions: Notify subscribers once they’ve opted in, ensuring transparency and acknowledgment.
5. Integrate Email Campaigns with Social Media Platforms.

What is mass email marketing?

What is Mass Email Marketing?

In today’s world, email marketing is still a big deal for businesses of all shapes and sizes. And among the different ways to do email marketing, mass email marketing is a standout. It’s basically sending emails to a bunch of people at once, but making each email feel like it’s just for them. In this guide, we’ll break down what mass email marketing is all about, why it’s good for businesses, and how to do it right.

What is Mas Email Marketing

Commonly referred to as bulk email marketing, mass email marketing entails sending identical emails to a sizable group of recipients all at once. It’s a widely used method for disseminating non-interactive communication, like announcements, promotions, offers, and educational content.

Through mass email marketing campaigns, businesses have the opportunity to communicate with their target audience, enhance awareness, increase engagement and conversions, and more, depending on the content conveyed in the campaign emails.

Despite the uniformity of the email content across recipients, there’s still room for personalization.

Who are the Receivers of Mass Mailing?

The recipients of mass marketing emails are people who have agreed to receive email communication from a business by giving them their email addresses and becoming a part of the mass mailing list.

Is Mass Mailing Spam?

Basically, even though mass marketing emails can end up in the spam folder because they’re not sent the right way, they’re not actually spam. Unlike spam, these emails are only sent to people who agreed to get emails from a business. Spam, on the other hand, is unwanted, random, and breaks laws like GDPR and CAN-SPAM, which makes it illegal too.

Does email mass marketing still work?

it’s still widely used and relevant. However, it’s worth mentioning that it’s not as effective as other strategies. This is mainly because mass emails often lack personalization or customization, making them less engaging for recipients. In today’s digital landscape, where consumers expect tailored content, this limitation can hinder the success of email marketing campaigns.

Difference Between Mass Email Marketing and Email Blasting

People sometimes mix up mass email marketing with email blasting. But there are small differences between them that make them different from each other.

Personalization

Mass email marketing can include personalized features, which means it can send content customized for different groups of people based on things like age, behavior, and interests. On the flip side, email blasts don’t have this customization, so they’re more generic and the same for everyone.

Quality

Even though mass email marketing sends out lots of emails, they’re usually of good quality, which could lead to more people interacting with them and making purchases. But with email blasts, the main aim is to send out as many emails as possible, so the quality of each email isn’t as crucial.

Targeting

Multiple audience segments are defined and targeted in mass email marketing campaigns, while the same is not the case for email blasts which target as large of an audience as possible without any segmentation. 

Advantages and disadvantages of mass email marketing

Pros and Cons of Mass Email Marketing

Advantages

Affordable – Mass email marketing is known for being budget-friendly, allowing businesses to save money compared to other advertising methods like social media or pay-per-click campaigns.

Easy to track – Using email marketing software, businesses can easily monitor performance metrics such as open rates, conversion rates, and click-through rates, enabling them to gauge the effectiveness of their campaigns and adjust strategies accordingly. This tracking is more difficult with other forms of advertising, like print media.

Fast delivery – Mass email marketing campaigns can be executed quickly and effortlessly, reaching hundreds or even thousands of people within minutes, unlike print media which takes longer to distribute.

High return on investment (ROI) – With an average ROI of $36 for every dollar spent, mass email marketing offers a lucrative return on investment, especially considering its low operating costs compared to other mass marketing channels.

Versatile – Mass email marketing is suitable for businesses of all sizes. While small businesses benefit most from its affordability, larger businesses can also capitalize on its effectiveness with minimal investment and resources.

Disadvantages

Commonly flagged as spam – One major drawback of mass email marketing is that it often gets labeled as spam. Because these campaigns reach large audiences, their relevance can decrease, leading email providers and recipients to mark them as spam. This can harm the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and damage your sender reputation.

Lack of personalization – Today’s email recipients expect personalized content. While some level of personalization is possible with mass email marketing, it can’t match the individualized approach of one-on-one email campaigns, where everything from the subject line to the message content can be tailored based on recipient data.

High unsubscribe rates – Compared to more personalized approaches, mass email marketing tends to have higher unsubscribe rates. This is because recipients may find the content less relevant or valuable when it’s not tailored to their interests.

Legal and ethical concerns – Mass email marketing raises legal and ethical issues. For example, while the US allows sending unsolicited commercial emails under the CAN-SPAM Act, the UK requires businesses to obtain permission first. Adhering to these regulations is crucial to avoid legal trouble and maintain ethical standards.

Formatting and optimization challenges – Achieving consistent email formatting and appearance across various email platforms and devices is difficult in mass email marketing. This is because the wide range of recipients use different email providers and devices, making it hard to ensure that emails appear as intended.

Guide: Steps for Mass Email Marketing

Now that we understand what mass email marketing entails and its advantages and disadvantages, let’s delve into the process of running such a campaign.

1. Choose an Email Marketing Platform

To simplify your mass email marketing efforts and send campaigns efficiently, selecting an email marketing platform that meets your requirements in terms of features and sending capacity is essential.

Consider features such as SMTP or API sending options, email builder, email list management, marketing automation tools, real-time analytics, email templates, and any other functionalities you find necessary.

When it comes to sending volume, opt for a service provider that can handle the number of emails you plan to send without experiencing delays or bottlenecks.

One excellent choice is Email Jinny’s Bulk Email Stream, which allows you to send bulk emails at transactional rates. With the Email Jinny Email Delivery Platform supporting both marketing and transactional emails, you can manage all your sending needs in one place without compromising deliverability.

Additionally, Email Jinny’s Bulk Email Stream offers various benefits, including:

– Easy and secure setup process
– Free Unlimited Mass Mailing
– Detailed analytics for actionable insights
– No daily limit

You can explore this feature today by signing up for a free Email Jinny account!

 

2. Identify Your Goals

To ensure you’re heading in the right direction, maintaining relevance, and facilitating easy measurement of success, establish a clear goal for your mass email marketing campaign. This goal could involve increasing sales, driving website traffic, fostering customer relationships, or similar objectives.

3. Create an Email List

If you haven’t yet gathered the email addresses of individuals interested in receiving messages from your business, it’s essential to start doing so. You can accomplish this by implementing opt-in or subscription forms on your landing page or by reaching out to prospects on platforms like LinkedIn. It’s crucial to do this step correctly and avoid purchasing email lists. Building a quality email list takes time and patience, so allow sufficient time for this process.

4. Organize Your Email List into Segments

What’s even more valuable than a quality email list? A carefully segmented one! After gathering enough email addresses for your mass email marketing campaigns, divide them into distinct and thoughtfully planned segments.

5. Outline Your Campaign Content

To ensure your content resonates with your target audience, strategize it to align with the goals for each segment. For instance, if your objective for segment “A” is to educate, consider crafting an email featuring a case study on an industry topic or showcasing how your product resolved a customer’s issue.

Additionally, keep in mind that your email content should be easy to comprehend, consistently deliver value, and incorporate a clear call-to-action (CTA).

6. Include Personalized Touches

While you might not have as many options for personalization compared to other campaign types, it’s still important not to overlook personalizing your email. Utilize recipient data such as their name, location, website activity, purchase history, and more to tailor your messages.

7. Make Sure You're Following Regulations

In this article, we’ve highlighted the complexities of running mass email marketing campaigns due to the numerous laws and regulations that must be adhered to. While it’s essential to study these regulations or seek legal advice before launching your first campaign, you can ensure compliance to the best of your knowledge by:

1. Obtaining proper consent before sending emails.
2. Providing unsubscribe links in your emails.
3. Promptly removing individuals who unsubscribe from your email list.
4. Avoiding the use of misleading, deceptive, or false information.

8. Track and Evaluate Performance

Metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, unsubscribe rates, and conversion rates are essential for monitoring and analyzing your campaign’s performance. These metrics help you gauge your progress towards achieving your goals and identify areas for improvement.

Mass Email Marketing Concepts and Templates

Now that you understand the basics of creating a mass email marketing campaign, it’s time to brainstorm ideas for your own. Don’t worry about feeling pressured to come up with something entirely original right away.

For your first or next mass email marketing campaign, feel free to utilize some proven ideas and templates, including:

Flash sales

Create a campaign informing your email subscribers about a flash sale happening in your eCommerce store, featuring significant discounts. Highlight the limited time frame of the sale in the campaign to evoke a sense of urgency.

Subject: Limited Time Offer: Flash Sale with Huge Discounts!

Dear [Subscriber's Name],

We have an exciting announcement for you! For a limited time only,
we're hosting a flash sale with significant discounts on our most popular products. This is an exclusive opportunity for our valued subscribers like you to enjoy incredible savings. Don't wait too long, as this flash sale is only available for a limited period. Act now to take advantage of these amazing deals before they're gone! Visit our website or click the button below to explore the sale and start adding your favorite items to your cart. Remember, stocks are limited, so make your move quickly! [Call-to-action button: Shop Now] Don't miss out on this fantastic opportunity to grab our high-quality products at unbeatable prices. Happy shopping! Best regards, [Your Company Name]

Template Source – Mailtrap

Early access offer

Craft a campaign offering exclusive early access to product launches, special features, or sales.

Subject: Get Exclusive Early Access to Exciting Offers!

Dear [Subscriber's Name],

We have a special treat for our most valued subscribers like you! As a token of our appreciation, we're granting you exclusive early access to our upcoming product launches and sales events.

Be the first to discover and take advantage of the latest offers, limited-time deals, and exciting new products before anyone else. This is your chance to stay ahead of the crowd and enjoy exclusive benefits.

To access the exclusive early access, simply visit our website or click the button below. Keep an eye on your inbox for upcoming notifications about exclusive events and launches.

[Call-to-action button: Explore Exclusive Offers]

Thank you for being a part of our loyal subscriber community. We can't wait to show you the fantastic surprises we have in store for you!

Best regards,

[Your Company Name]

Template Source – Mailtrap

Best tips and Advice for Sending Mass Emails

If you follow the steps we talked about earlier, you’ll probably make a good campaign the first time you try. But to make it even better, follow some common tips for mass email marketing, like:

Use a different way to send your mass emails to make sure they reach people's inboxes better.

Many email senders send different kinds of emails to their subscribers. Along with your mass marketing emails, you’ll likely send transactional ones too.

It’s important to follow the best practice of using separate infrastructure, different IPs, and if possible, different domains or subdomains for sending mass marketing and transactional emails. Why? Because it helps improve email deliverability!

By separating these types of emails into different streams, you help mailbox providers distinguish between more critical (transactional emails) and less critical messages (mass marketing emails) that need to reach your subscribers. This also gives them a clearer understanding of your sending practices, which keeps deliverability high for both streams.

With separate streams, you also get separate suppression lists. This means that a contact suppressed from the mass marketing stream can still receive emails from the transactional one and vice versa. This prevents issues like spam complaints or hard bounces from one stream affecting the delivery of emails in the other stream or your domain reputation!

Discover the optimal day and time to send your mass marketing emails.

The best time and day to send your email campaign, whether it’s a big one or not, can vary based on your business, industry, target audience across different time zones, and your campaign goals. However, there are generally safe times and days to consider:

Weekdays, especially Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, when people are not too busy catching up on work or winding down for the weekend.
Mid-morning around 10 AM or early afternoon between 1 PM to 3 PM, when people are typically focused on their work or checking their emails before or after lunch.

Don't buy leads or email addresses for your mass email marketing campaigns.

Whether buying leads or email addresses for mass email marketing campaigns is legal or illegal largely depends on enforced laws and regulations. However, it’s crucial to understand that many individuals on purchased email lists haven’t actually agreed to be contacted for promotional purposes by you or other businesses. Sending even a single email to them could violate CAN-SPAM and GDPR regulations.

If you’re considering purchasing an email list legally, be sure to carefully assess the provider. However, there are drawbacks to using purchased lists, such as legal issues, low engagement, high unsubscribe rates, high bounce rates, and damage to sender reputation. Consider whether these are challenges you’re willing to face if you’re not building an email list organically.

Ensure the email content is valuable.

Without providing value, the content of your emails in your mass email marketing campaign is just text that might not get read. It could even lead recipients to unsubscribe from your emails. To avoid this, make sure each email includes:

– Relevant information
– Educational content
– Interesting offers or recommendations
– Other types of content that address your audience’s needs and interests

Also, ensure that the main value of your email is in the text part. This is because sometimes the visuals in emails don’t show up properly. So, even if the visuals fail, you want to be sure the value is still there in the text.

Best mass email marketing services

To conclude this detailed article, let’s provide some recommendations for mass email marketing software. Look for software that can streamline and automate your mass email marketing tasks, including features like:

– Email creation
– Email delivery
– Workflow creation
– Personalization
– List management
– Scheduling
– Tracking performance
– Analyzing performance
– A/B testing
– Integrations with CRM software

Having such software in your toolkit is essential for effective mass email marketing.

List of some popular ones:

  • Brevo
  • EmailJinny
  • Mailchimp
  • Mailjet
  • Elastic Email
  • Mailgun

And that’s a wrap for this article! We hope you found it enjoyable and informative, covering the fundamentals of mass email marketing. Now, it’s time to put your newfound knowledge and our tips into action. Whether you’re launching your first mass email marketing campaign or refining existing ones, we wish you the best of luck!

Other Related Articles :

How to send Bulk Mail using Gmail

What is Bulk Call Service

How to send Bulk Voice Calls