During my last job I was commissioned to start a newsletter and was suddenly confronted with a number of unknown acronyms: DKIM, DMARC, SPF. (Apparently this last is not in connection with sun protection?)
So I wrote Al Iverson (not the basketball player) an SMS that has been working in the E -Mail delivery since the start of the mainstream internet and asked if he could help me what I have Really had to know.
Since you (probably) do not (probably) have Al Iverson’s phone number, I spoke to him last week about the e -mail delivery, the possession of the audience and windmills.
Meet the master
Al Iverson
Industry research and commitment in the community, lead, Valimailand consultant and publisher of the availability, publisher, Spam resource
- Right to fame: AL has been working since the term before the term existed, including a 15-year stay at Salesforce as a director of availability.
- Funny fact: He programmed all computers in the Mac laboratory of his high school to play “Stayin ‘Alive” for warnings instead of peeping. Macs of the old school could not multitasking during the beeping; They had to hear the entire 4-minute song.
Lesson 1: The commitment of the audience has a technical component.
“From time to time they came across something really strange, like Microsoft, blocking e -mails that have the word” windmill “in the subject line,” says Iverson.
“Did you say Windmill? How … Dutch windmills? “I ask and make sure I heard him correctly.
“We have no idea why,” he says, and I certainly can’t start guessing. ((Iverson later made it clear to me that this is a fictitious example to show how a strange spam filtering can be and why you shouldn’t stop too much on certain words. You are sure, Windmill fans! —Ed.)))
But “free!” And “Buy now!” are probably okay, he tells me and crawling my brain on.
Not intuitive, says Iverson, that the use of a swear word in a subject line is no longer a guaranteed trip to the spam filter.
The real lesson This is not about a quixotic persecution of the ideal e -mail, but that is that There are persistent myths in the e -mail delivery – and it pays off that you get to know each other.
For the beginning, Iverson proposes healthy skepticism of all “top -200 words in her subject line”. And Google Mail “would like to ensure that the subject line and the sender information are actually a connection to what is in the body of the e -mail”, “actually very sensitive” for outdated ideas such as starting a bulk email with “Re:”.
In other words: Pay attention to the technical side of the audience commitment as you do to create excellent content.
Lesson 2: Own your identity.
“Why do people love e -mail so much?” IVERSON asks. “Because it is a platform that is open to everyone.” Platforms such as Instagram and Tikok – apart from basic video editing and possibly from dance skills – companies belong outside of their control. Although individual e -mail platforms such as Gmail have a lot of influence on the availability, your e -mail audience is your own.
And, says IVERSON, “gives us this channel to connect to people without making committed with these specific platforms.” The downside of this is: “If you do not have the technical ability to take control of the levers that bring it into your control, you can still hold on to your control.”
If you are new to e -mail newsletter, one of the main platforms is a great place to start. But the more technical know-how you have (or can set), the more you can do things like Send from your own domain and bring only a little more “control over your own fate, both from the perspective of availability and from a long-term brand and marketing perspective”.
Lesson 3: stop watching subscribers.
“People live and die from their subscribers,” says Iverson. “If you have 10 million subscribers, but a very low open prices, your e -mails will rather go to the Spam folder.”
The main reason that an otherwise good newsletter ends up in the Spam folder is the lack of engagement. “The more they focus on people who are actually enough to interact with their email, the better reputation for the mailbox providers it is more likely that they will come to the inbox,” he says.
“And for a long time, short, short, What prevents the Spam folder’s placement is not like many subscribers to have – it is a high commitment. “
Maximize the high commitment through “implementation of a subscription -life cycle -management process”, the subscribers -LIEN -CYCLE -Management process, “ says Iverson. The suppression of inactive subscribers, the segmentation of their audience and the transparent overview of their practices are the key to the final success of their newsletter.
Questions
The question of this week
If you could only invest in a tool to grow your company in the next three years, which tool would it be? –Ryan Atkinson, founder and CEO of Spacebar Visuals
The answer this week
IVERSON: In the context of the success of E -Mail marketing, inbox and delivery capacity, this means to invest in a platform for the sound test and monitoring (e.g. in the incoming monster). If your sales depends on a successful e -mail marketing, you will become blind, without something like that. You can easily follow whether your e -mail gets into the inbox on an e -mail marketing platform. As part of the E -Mail delivery process, there is no disposition information returned to the sender or Send platform. A tool like this and the associated know -how leads you how to interpret results and make strategic adjustments to fix or prevent problems.
The continued question of the next week
IVERSON asks: What is a marketing habit or best practice that you believe that we should leave behind together and what would you replace it?
