[Limited Series]🥫SPAMAGEDDON🥫Will Switching Email Platforms Help or Hurt? Ep. 327

​

Jay: We are back for spam. Getin. So excited for the short episode. We're gonna be breaking down about switching your email, sending platforms. Does it help? Will it solve all things? But before we do that on, in this special series, we start out every episode playing. You have 10 seconds, right?

Jay: Ask Danielle and I ask Guy two separate questions that are totally ridiculous and they only have 10 seconds to answer the questions. Uh, guy, are you ready for your question?

Guy: Let's do it.

Jay: Okay, here we go. You have 10 seconds. Name three horrible movie musicals.

Guy: Oh, sound of Music. La La Land. And dare I say it, queen, the musical.

Jay: Wow. You might get kicked out of the, uh, the whole entire British world there. That's not good. We didn't like La La Land. I feel like Danielle, did you like La La Land? Come on. That was a good movie. Oh, no. Danielle's on mute.

Danielle: That's just because I didn't wanna slam La la land too badly.

Jay: There you go.

Danielle: Cats guy that last, that movie, like there's, there's some insanity in there. I can't believe it.

Jay: don't think guy likes movie musicals. All right, Danielle, are you ready for your question? Clearly. Are you ready, Danielle?

Danielle: No, but please go

Jay: All right. You have 10 seconds. Name three fashion trends you wore and now deeply regret.

Danielle: bell bottoms. Number one, no offense, I know those are back now, uh, miniskirts platforms.

Jay: Wow, you were ready with that. You have a lot of fashion regrets,

Danielle: I don't, please don't for.

Jay: everybody

Guy: feel like we should throw a ten second at you, Jay. So, uh, here we are, we're, we're, we're spam and we're, we're sort of inspired by Armageddon. So

Jay: Oh no.

Guy: are you Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, or Liv Tyler,

Jay: my God, that's a great question. I would like to be Ben Affleck. Bruce Willis is the coolest. I'm more l Tyler 'cause she stayed on earth and she like, you know, she was safe. So I don't think I'd go in the astronaut, the, the asteroid and, and help humanity. I would stay home and hang out with, um, my dad, who's Steven Tyler, which would be really cool.

Guy: Yeah, that would be very cool. you know,

Danielle: You both got that luscious hair.

Jay: there you go. Exactly right. Although I can't sing. wow. That is the worst joke I've ever heard. right, but this won't be the worst episode. We're gonna get into this now about will switching email platforms help, because I think that's what a lot of marketers think that, oh, my deliverability stinks, my performance stinks if I just change platforms. It will get better. So, Danielle, I wanna toss it to you first. Is that a thing? Is there a, you know, I could just switch to any platform, any platform's gonna be better than the one that I'm on? Is it one size fits all?

Danielle: It's, it's just not like the key word for any platform is functionality. Like what do you need as a sender? So if you're trading up, you know, you gotta make sure that your new platform has all of the reporting analytics that you need, uh, to be able to measure and, and grow. And if you're downsizing to like save costs or something.

Danielle: You gotta make sure that that new platform has enough functionality to at least maintain your performance. But different, different ESPs offer different things like some do offer shared IP services for those smaller centers, some don't. So it's really about what you need.

Jay: Lemme ask you one more building on that question. If I'm in a particular industry, I'm B2B, I'm in education, I. Nonprofit, I'm, whatever, right. I'm a direct to consumer marketer. are there platforms that you should be looking at depending on the industry you're in, or is it more, I just like the functionality of the platform, so I'm gonna roll with that.

Danielle: Yeah, I, I'm sure that there are platforms that are catered to or, or geared towards certain, um, models more than industries, maybe like maybe B2B versus B2C, but I have senders that are, you name it, a nonprofit, retail B2B. They're all using the same platform, So it's just really about finding what works best for your business.

Jay: Fair enough. Alright guy, let me toss it to you. Totally different topic about moving platforms. I think the biggest reason people move platforms is that they have an issue. They have bad deliverability, they're sending reputation to the problem. If you switch platforms, will it solve those issues?

Guy: So I'm gonna be the contrarian here 'cause I think there is some truth. I think if you choose the right ESP, you know, it's entirely reasonable to expect your ESP to have your sending infrastructure buttoned up. And, uh, that they've got established relationships with the big mailbox providers, key third party vendors like. Validity. I think some email service providers have established standards and they won't work with a sender unless they at least meet those standards. And, you know, those can be external obligations too, like, you know, the CSA in Germany or, um, you know, morgue our industry body. So I think, you know, listen, all of these factors, um, you know, if, if your new ESP is offering them will make your program perform better. But remember that your bad practices will follow you no matter where you go. You know, moving from one platform to another is a great opportunity to wipe the slate clean. You know, don't take your old dormant subscribers and your suspect address and your bad practices with you. Start fresh. And I think also email service providers cannot be expected.

Guy: To exert any control over the relationships that you the sender have with your subscribers. It's the sender who controls the data selections, the sending frequency, the content, and the copy that you're using, the offers and the pricing that you're deploying. So that's all in your gift. You know, make sure that you're sending valuable content that your subscribers want to receive and you'll do vibe.

Jay: When you switch platforms, should you migrate, so when you send out an email, you're sending it out via, you know, an IP address or a shared IP address, or whatever it may be in the domains that you're delivering your email from. Should you bring those with you when you go to the new platform? Or you should start fresh and use whatever IP infrastructure that they're giving you.

Danielle: Yeah, mostly you can't, right? It is the ESP that owns those IP addresses. So even if you're moving, if you, let's say, you know, business A moves from one ESP to another, that IP address is getting left behind rested. Then recycled. So a whole new sender is going to use it for, for ipv four. There's a finite number of those in the world, and if you had a bad reputation on the last one, maybe don't bring it with you.

Guy: I will tell you what I'll, I'll, I'll offer one additional thought though, because you often see programs make that change and they also change sending domain, and I'll always think they miss a big opportunity to tell their subscribers in advance about the new domain that's gonna be used and ask them, you know, the usual stuff add to your trusted senders list.

Guy: Because you know, I guess sometimes we sit wondering, you know, do people really do that? They do, and I reckon a mature program, you know, they make the move and by then maybe 10% or 15% of their customers have effectively, you know, allow listed them. And you know, if you suddenly change sending domains and you haven't given them any advanced warning, you're gonna lose that benefit.

Guy: And it's a big impact when it's 10 or 15% of your list.

Jay: I love that. That's a great tip and I'll, I'll throw this out to everybody that's listening, which is oftentimes when you sign up with an ESP, you're paying for a lot of stuff that you never end up use using. You're using like 20% of the capabilities of what you're actually paying for. And so what we try to do is we try to have at least an annual call, if not twice a year call, where we have our platform.

Jay: Basically re-pitched to us everything that we already have access to. 'cause every platform has new bells and whistles every year. You're not aware of them, your team's not aware of them. You have new members of your team and instead of going in a new platform, find out first without paying an extra dollar what you have access to.

Jay: Um, and meet all the people that can actually help you with your programs. 'cause there's a lot of internal resources at all these platforms that I don't think enough marketers tap into before they make. Change. okay, so speaking of change, we're gonna be crushing more episodes. Everybody's gotta go and sign up for email after hours podcast.

Jay: They do an incredible job. And you could check out, do this, not that also, and do not go and look for any of Danielle's old photos and all the fashion issues that she had that, not that you had issues, but in your mind you did. And I want you to find them and post them on social media. I mean, don't post them on social media, of course. Amazing. All right. We'll see everybody at the next one.