🥫SPAMAGEDDON🥫How To Get Out of Spam and Junk Folder! [Limited Series]

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 cohost 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: Spamageddon is back. And today, we're gonna be talking about quick wins to get back in the inbox because you're stuck in the junk folder or spam folder, and we're gonna crush that. But before we do, we are playing our ten second game. At the start of every Spamageddon, we play a ten second game where I ask Danielle a question. I ask Guy a question. They have nothing to do with anything, and they're both ridiculous. Not Danielle and Guy, the questions, of course. So we're going to play the ten second game. Danielle, you're going first this time. Are you ready?

Guy Hanson: Yes. Question mark. Let's do it.

Jay Schwedelson: I get so nervous about these questions. I love

Guy Hanson: it. Amazing. Is go.

Jay Schwedelson: Okay. Here we go. Okay. Danielle, you have 10 questions. Not two questions.

Guy Hanson: No! You can't

Jay Schwedelson: do this to me. Alright. You have ten seconds. Name the worst three movies of all time.

Guy Hanson: The Happening, Birdemic, The Room.

Jay Schwedelson: Wow. Look

Guy Hanson: how ready you I know these because I am a huge fan of bad movies. I love them. I watch them.

Jay Schwedelson: Who says that?

Danielle Gallant: Have you ever watched three animator?

Guy Hanson: They're so good, guys. They're so good.

Jay Schwedelson: That movie, The Room, looks scary. I don't like scary movies. Was that scary?

Guy Hanson: The Room? Yeah. No. Am I am I I don't know. Listen.

Jay Schwedelson: They're like stuck in a room. Aren't they stuck in a room?

Guy Hanson: No, that's Room. That is a

Jay Schwedelson: scary movie. Oh. I have no idea what's going on. Alright. I don't want to see either one of those movies. Alright. Guy, are you ready for your question?

Danielle Gallant: Let's do it.

Jay Schwedelson: This is gonna be amazing. Here we go. Guy, you have ten seconds. Name three things people dip fries in besides ketchup.

Danielle Gallant: Oh, mayo, Tabasco sauce, and hot sauce, you know, like spicy sauce.

Jay Schwedelson: I thought you were gonna say ranch. Guy apparently loves ranch dressing. We established that on a previous episode. Would you dip a fry into ranch dressing? Everybody wants to know.

Danielle Gallant: Of course.

Jay Schwedelson: Okay. I was like looking at like, it was very like James Bond type style. Like you're a fool. Of course I would. I love it. All right. Let's jump into getting back into the inbox. A lot of everybody out there is living sometimes in the junk folder, in the spam folder. It's not our happy place. We want to get back into the inbox. And here's the thing, is it easy to do, Danielle? How do we do it? Is it just like you flip a switch and get back in or do we got to do some specific stuff?

Guy Hanson: Yeah, it's not easy. That's why I'm employed. I'm kind of grateful that it's not super easy. It takes work for sure, but there are quick wins. If you are consistently going to the junk folder or the spam folder, you have to focus first on data quality at the beginning and end of your subscriber journey. So at the beginning, don't buy lists, don't rent lists, get consent and permission. Nobody wants to hear this, but do double opt in. It's gonna work. And then at the end, on the other side, we all love, marketers love big lists, but you've got to remove those subscribers that are not engaging with your mail. There's just no two ways about it. If your data quality stinks, your deliverability is going to stink.

Jay Schwedelson: By the way, we're going do another episode. I want to do a debate on double opt in because I think that would be really valuable for everybody to hear. But I do have a question for you about removing people that haven't engaged or whatever. Do you have a certain amount of time, like Danielle's secret sauce, amount of time to remove people that haven't opened, clicked, or done whatever?

Guy Hanson: There's a rule of thumb. There's a rule of thumb, which is if the subscriber hasn't engaged with your program, and by that I mean clicked, bought anything, whatever, within a year, that address becomes a little risky. But it depends on the business. Like, I work with tenders that are in the auto industry. That life cycle is gonna look a lot different. So there's a rule of thumb where addresses can become a little risky, but it depends on your business. Just keep them clean at the beginning and you'll avoid a problem down the line.

Danielle Gallant: I thought you were gonna carry on ripping on the food theme, Jay. I thought it was like, Danielle have a secret sauce that got content deliverability for us?

Jay Schwedelson: See that? I'm not quick enough. You know, I'm not fast enough for all that. But I do think it's a really valid point that, you know, you can't just take, Oh, everybody says it's twelve months, it's eighteen months, it's six months. You have to factor into the industry you're in, you're buying cycle, all that. So I think it's really valid. So Guy, I have a myth I need you to bust for me, which I'm actually curious because I don't know the answer. So a lot of people that have deliverability issues, they're going to junk or spam folder. One of the most common things people say to do is listen, the way to get back in the inbox is grab only the people in your database who are engaging, open clicking, buying, doing, your engaged people, and only send to them for a little while. And then your reputation will get better and you're going go back to the inbox. Then you can start being a doofus again and sending out all the bad Is that a recipe to get back into the inbox?

Danielle Gallant: Not really. I think, you know, you think about KPIs like open rates, like clicks, they've definitely become more nuanced. You know, they they get skewed for factors like Apple's MPP, you know, bots are skewing click rates. And, and you see the impact. I mean, it's funny, you look at Apple's own deliverability guidance, and they say, sure you're sending to subscribe, you know, engage subscribers, except they've taken away a primary engagement signal. There's a reason why, you know, Apple's one of the lowest performing mailbox providers when it comes to deliverability. But I think, know, a couple of quick comments. I think, firstly, opens do still have some value, you know, even at Apple. Open tells you that the address exists. It tells you that it hasn't been, the email you sent hasn't been placed in the junk folder. So those are two good deliverability signals that you can use to improve your performance. I think, you know, senders should probably pay more attention to feedback as well. And when I'm talking about feedback, I'm literally talking about feedback from your customers. The opportunity to ask them what you're doing well, and they can help you improve your game. You know, it can be as simple as, you know, write your email, thumbs up, thumbs down, you can send them a formal survey, maybe an exit survey in your opt out process, you know, let them tell you what good looks like. And then, you know, use that feedback to get there. And I think the third thing, and this is a tough one, because it's very hard to measure, we mentioned it on a previous episode, but there's this principle of what we call hidden metrics, you know, stuff which the mailbox providers like Yahoo and Gmail can see, which the sender can't see, but which are really important, you know, for example, email was placed in the junk folder, but your customer actually missed it. And they went and fetched it back out of the junk folder and put it back in their inbox because they really wanted it. And that sends a seriously positive signal to Yahoo and Gmail that this is a valuable email. So you know, you need to think about is there anything you can do to amplify those behaviors? You know, what can you do to make somebody forward an email? There was a great example which we saw from as the supermarket in The UK, a recent Valentine's Day, where it was clearly pitched. The message went something like, does your other half need reminding that an important romantic event is coming up, forward this email to them. And we could actually see that the forward email rates for that campaign were exceptional. So, you know, with a little bit of thought, you can achieve it and sort of move the needle in terms of amping up some of those metrics,

Jay Schwedelson: which I would like to get that forwarded to me by the way, it'd be very helpful. So I have a question for our business to business marketers out there. So a lot of business marketers out there, even though everyone says they don't do it, but they still do it. They do these cold email programs from their sales teams, right? Their BDRs, their SDRs are sending out these cold emails. Is it really important for kind of the cold email programs that you have going on to be delivered from a separate domain, IP infrastructure, whatever, than it is your promotional emails. Like if they're all going out kind of from the same environment, can that be a root cause of why you're going to the junk folder or the spam folder?

Guy Hanson: Yeah. Yeah. It can. I just went to a conference where there was an entire hour and a half long session on cold emails. Like, basically, these are spammy. Cold email, you don't have permission. It's an inevitability for a lot of businesses, so it's gonna happen. But yeah, I think, Jay, one way to protect your other mail streams is to have a subdomain or separate IP or something like that. PS, there is a subreddit for you lurkers that it's called cold emails. And if you need a good laugh, I really encourage you to go to this subreddit.

Jay Schwedelson: Yes. Guy, you subscribed to all that?

Danielle Gallant: Oh, absolutely. All I was going to say is it's exactly what we do as a business. Separate mail streams.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah. I think that not enough people realize that, that you need to separate yourself from yourself. And you also have to be real. Listen, we got rid of cold email in my business a zillion years ago because it's just not a great way to establish a relationship. But it's naive to think that marketers, if you're doing it, you're not a horrible business. You're not a horrible person. And a lot of brands and businesses do it, but you need to get real with yourself and separate yourself from yourself because you could be hurting the mothership because of the way that you have your infrastructure set up. All right, everybody out there, go and follow Email After Hours podcast. It's an incredible show. Do This Not That is mid, but you could follow that one too if you're bored. And we'll see you at the next Spamageddon. 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.