[Limited Series]🥫SPAMAGEDDON🥫 13 Deliverability Hacks You Need Now 📬 | Ep. 360

Jay Schwedelson: Welcome to Spamageddon. This is a special five part crossover series between the email after hours podcast and the Do This Not That podcast. We're gonna keep these short. They're gonna be fun. They're gonna be awesome.

Danielle Gallant: We're teaming up to help marketers battle the ultimate inbox apocalypse. Is your email program doomed, or can you survive the invasion of spam filters, block lists, and dwindling engagement?

Guy Hanson: In this special series, we're gonna bust myths, drop truth bombs, and give you the tips you need to survive the deliverability doomsday.

Jay Schwedelson: Alright. So your host, you got me, Jay Schwedelson from the Guru, Media Hub, and the Do This Not That podcast. And

Danielle Gallant: I'm Guy Hanson. I'm VP of customer engagement at Validity and co host of our Email After Hours podcast.

Guy Hanson: And I'm Danielle Gallant, also of Validity and Guy's Better Half on the Email After Hours podcast.

Jay Schwedelson: We are back for Spamageddon, and this one is going to be awesome. This is the kitchen sink. We have Danielle, we have Guy, two of the greatest deliverability people on the planet, and they are going to rip through so fast 10 tips about deliverability and stuff that everybody needs to know. But before we get into this, okay, we're going to play our ten second game. So at the start of every Armageddon, we play, You Have Ten Seconds, where I ask Danielle and I ask Guy two completely ridiculous questions that have no meaning in life at all. And they each have to answer them and they're awesome. Are you both ready to do this?

Guy Hanson: Yes.

Jay Schwedelson: Yes. I love it. All right, Guy, you are first. Here we go. Here we go. This is very exciting. Guy, you have ten seconds. Name three words that mean something totally different in The UK versus The US.

Danielle Gallant: Table as in let's table this motion. And then I'll get the obvious ones just in terms of spelling, you know, our aluminium is your aluminium. And I'm blanking on this one.

Speaker 4: Wait a minute. I wanna know about like, what how do you say aluminium?

Danielle Gallant: Aluminum. It has an extra I in it.

Speaker 4: Wow. I love that.

Guy Hanson: Can I please raise my hand and then use this as a credit toward my own horrible tension? What about pants, Guy? Pants.

Danielle Gallant: Pants. Yeah.

Jay Schwedelson: Or french fries, chips.

Danielle Gallant: No. But they're they're they're they're the same thing. I think what you are asking for is the same word, which means completely different things. And

Guy Hanson: But doesn't pants mean unbeatable?

Jay Schwedelson: I know

Danielle Gallant: the clock's ticking, but I remember at a very early stage when I joined Return Path and we sat in a meeting where we violently disagreed with each other because the more somebody was saying, let's table this discussion and then I'm understanding it's let's put it on the table and talk about it now. And of course, my US colleagues are going, let's save it for another day. And it took a while for us to realize that we were talking about different things. What was the old saying? Two countries divided by common language.

Speaker 4: Oh, I like that. I'm gonna

Jay Schwedelson: like the aluminium or whatever the hell you said.

Speaker 4: I'm gonna try to say that.

Guy Hanson: Like in

Jay Schwedelson: Marvel. Alright. Let's get into the Danielle, are you ready for your question?

Guy Hanson: Yes. I'm ready.

Jay Schwedelson: Okay. You got this. I feel like you got this. Here it is.

Speaker 4: Okay.

Jay Schwedelson: Danielle, you have ten seconds. Name three songs that Danielle would sing in a karaoke bar.

Guy Hanson: Tequila. It's one word.

Jay Schwedelson: Lots of it.

Guy Hanson: Anything by the Backstreet Boys and the Ghostbusters theme song, I think. What?

Speaker 4: Who said Ghostbusters? That's the most random karaoke song of all time. You were if I was at a bar and they go, and now Danielle is gonna sing Ghostbusters, I'd be like, what?

Guy Hanson: You'd be thoroughly impressed. Don't lie. Come on.

Jay Schwedelson: I mean, it would be one and done. I've never heard that before, but this episode's also one and done. This is gonna be amazing. We're about to get into the kitchen sink. 10 tips about deliverability that everybody will put this in the show notes because we're gonna go through this so fast. There's gonna be so much information. So I'm gonna toss it over. Guy, you ready to start crushing these one after another?

Danielle Gallant: Yeah. Who are gonna call? It's about rosters.

Speaker 4: Was so bad. That was so bad.

Guy Hanson: I see this. I can't play this game anymore.

Jay Schwedelson: Oh my god. Alright. Ray Parker Junior, are you ready? Okay. Here we go. Guy, let's go.

Guy Hanson: I'm up next, and I'm going with another item related to those sender requirements from Gmail and Yahoo. That's about spam complaints. So even though Gmail and Yahoo have said 0.3% spam complaint is a maximum, that is really, really generous. What senders want to do is keep their spam complaint rates below 0.1%. So if you're at that 0.3, odds are you are already going to be having deliverability issues. So the lower your spam rates can go, the better.

Danielle Gallant: A %. My next one, guess what? We spend a lot of time reading the mailbox provider email best practices documents because we're email nerds. And it's important because you know what? Today's best practices seem to have a regular habit of becoming tomorrow's mandates. And if you read the guidelines from Gmail, Yahoo, Apple, they all strongly recommend using double opt in. So, you know, your subscriber signs up, you send them an email, you go, cool, that's me, and then you're you're live. They all strongly recommend that as the approved sign up mechanism. And again, I can see a future state where that becomes one of their mandatory requirements too. Don't wait for it. Your program's gonna perform better because of the the title consent anyway.

Guy Hanson: Jay, feel like you had strong feelings or had a question about double opt

Jay Schwedelson: I'm not I'm not a fan of double opt in. I know that that sounds ridiculous because what Guy just said makes a lot of sense and is a % true. I think the problem is that so many people get law left in in limbo. They don't think to go and actually double opt in and they want to be on that list. They just ask to be on that list. And then marketers don't know what to do with this portion of their database of people that opted in that said they want to do that thing. And And then the people are left out because they just did opt in. So it's this awkward land of limbo. And so that, that bothers me a lot. But again, that might be an episode for another time, because I'd love to go back to Yeah.

Danielle Gallant: I think we should table this conversation.

Jay Schwedelson: I love it. I love it. Alright. Danielle, go for it.

Guy Hanson: Alright. We're gonna go we're gonna go to the next one, which is about data hygiene and making sure that your program is protected. So protecting your email list, your subscriber list, from bot attacks and bad addresses. A good relationship and good deliverability starts right at the point of acquisition, how you're getting those subscribers, who's allowed to come in. So implement a multi part strategy for your acquisition that includes, sorry, Jay, double opt in maybe, address validation. So you are ruling out typos or anything like a role address if you don't want that. Captcha. Captcha is cheap or free sometimes, and it's an easy way to get rid of to get rid of bad addresses. And there are lots of additional security requirements. So definitely protect your sign up form.

Danielle Gallant: Tip number five, delete those dormants. I think Gmail and Yahoo particularly are actively deleting old dormant accounts. So, yeah, that has an impact on your email programs. Make sure you're excluding all subscribers who have not engaged to their emails for twelve plus months, and it's going to have a positive impact on your deliverability.

Guy Hanson: My next one is it's going to feel like a retread, but it's cut out the complaints, but I should say complainers. So we already know and we've talked about why it's important to keep complaint rates low, but those subscribers who mark your message as spam, you want to remove them from ever receiving any other mail from you because odds are, if they think you're spam now, they're going to keep marking you as junk moving forward. So there is something called a feedback loop or an FBL that everybody should be enrolled in. The mailbox providers do it differently. Your ESP can help you with this. And Validity. Validity operates a universal feedback loop. So make sure you're taking advantage of feedback loops to get those complainers off your list.

Danielle Gallant: Definitely. Now, on a previous episode, we talked about Gmail annotations. This is some functionality that Gmail offers in the promotions tab to expose things like code snippets or your preferred image directly into the inbox, which is great. The only challenge is that they are now using AI to auto insert annotation schemas to emails that aren't already using it. And the problem is they might identify a code snippet or an image, which you as the sender didn't really want them to use. So best way to overcome that is implement annotations, and then you're going to have full control over what content is shown in the Gmail promotions tab when your emails are delivered.

Guy Hanson: And I have some really bad examples like horror stories where senders didn't define annotations and now Gmail is pulling up just like the completely irrelevant stuff or images from that email. Totally.

Danielle Gallant: Yeah. Yeah. Hey, you know, and go and have a look at this expired offer. Yeah.

Guy Hanson: So charming. Next one, anticipate AI generated summaries. So in Apple, even if it's not completely rolled out yet, if you're using the native mail app, and even if you're not, it's gonna be more widespread than that. Preview text. So that pre header that takes up a nice piece of real estate in the mailbox, it's going to be replaced by AI generated summary. So senders really need to start adopting SEO principles to ensure that the right content is being summarized and presented, and be aware of your alt text for the images in your emails. Because if you're using recycled or old images that have completely random names, even that text can be pulled into your summary.

Danielle Gallant: For your bulk sends, don't schedule them to start at the top of the hour because everybody does it and the mailbox providers hate it. Marcel at Yahoo told us that 70% of all the inbound traffic that Yahoo processes arrives in the first ten minutes of every hour. So it creates constraints for processing capacity and bandwidth, and that has an impact on your deliverability. So offset the start time of your broadcast, you're going to face less competition, and you are far more likely to reach your customers inboxes.

Guy Hanson: Accessibility. I can't believe we're still talking about this. And yet 90% of marketing emails still contain critical or serious issues that exclude customers that have an accessibility need. So it means reduced engagement and more spam complaints. Get on that, everybody.

Danielle Gallant: Definitely. Feels like we've spent the last three years talking about artificial intelligence, but not a huge amount of conversation about new AI legislation, but it's coming. In some cases, it's already here. And I think now's a great time for senders to be doing things like revisiting the legal basis that you're using to process personal data, evaluate the risk levels that your AI use creates, Make sure you're updating your privacy policies and your user preferences so that you've got all of your ducks in a row and your boxes are ticked as that legislation starts to become effective wherever you are.

Guy Hanson: And the last one, the last one in this kitchen sink, get recognized. Like, imagine you're on LinkedIn, you're one of those people on LinkedIn, you don't have a picture. That's kind of what it's like if you're not taking advantage of BIMI, Apple Business Connect, VMCs. You want to associate your logo with your mail in the mailbox. So making sure that your logo is trusted, available, you've got that blue check mark that everybody recognizes as a sign of legitimacy just proves that you're a trusted sender and your subscribers are gonna be happy about it.

Jay Schwedelson: This was an awesome list. I just was taking notes. I just learned so much. And for all the listeners out there, you may be like, Oh my God, I'm doing everything wrong. This is overwhelming. It could feel like a lot. Here's what I don't think a lot of people realize. Your sending platform that you're on, it doesn't matter which one you're on. They're on your team. They want you to have good engagement. You're on their pipes. You're on their IPs. You're on their infrastructure. They want you to be a client and they want your money, but they also need you to do a good job because the reputation of what you're doing impacts the entire ecosystem for their entire platform. And you need to push your provider. You need to reach out to them, set up calls with them, say, I don't understand all this stuff. What does it all mean? And if you don't get the right answer, go further, ask them for an internal consultant. And if they won't do that, they won't help you. That is a telltale sign you're on the wrong platform because they are on your team. And also, of course, check out Validity because Validity are the pros in terms of deliverability. So if your platform doesn't know it, no joke. And and Guy and Danielle did not ask me to do this, but Validity are the, leaders in the space. And also listen to email after hours. It's an incredible podcast, and you could check out Do This Not That. And let us know if you like this series, Spamageddon. Should we keep it going? Should we do more Spamageddon? Who knows? Drop us DMs. Leave us messages. Leave us comments. Danielle, Guy, this has been a blast. What do you wanna say?

Danielle Gallant: Keep those complaints. Right, style?

Jay Schwedelson: There it is.

Guy Hanson: Come listen to email after hours. Let's see us when we get in.

Danielle Gallant: Let's do it. Alright. We'll see you all later.

Jay Schwedelson: Alright. Later. That's a wrap on this episode of Spamageddon, but the battle for the inbox never ends. If you love this crossover chaos, you gotta tune in the next time and make sure to subscribe to email after hours podcast. It is one of my favorites. And also check out do this, not that podcast for marketers. It is a blast. We'll see you at the next episode.