The start of the customer experience journey is arguably the most important.
From minute one, the better you treat your potential customers and the better informed they are, the more willing they are to provide accurate and correct data. It might seem obvious, but providing engaging and relevant content right then is rare. That initial experience and the clarity that you’re providing at the point of acquisition is the biggest driver of not only deliverability issues, but lifetime value of your customers.
With high quality data upfront you can minimize complaints, spam-traps and blacklisting which gives your sender reputation a boost. This means your campaigns’ inbox placement rate can be significantly improved just by spending some time on ensuring accuracy at the point of sign-up.
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes
Recently, I registered as a regular subscriber to an online glasses retailer to find out what the initial customer experience is like. This particular US brand had terrible deliverability problems and it’s critical to look at the data that lies behind those issues.
I can look at particular ISPs and see that they’re having struggles with them. With Microsoft and Gmail, for example, we know that there are certain attributes that those providers analyze which are engagement related. They look at complaints and clicks on the spam button within the email, whilst also deciding whether or not someone is likely to engage with that email based on the amount they receive from a sender and interactions with other, similar senders.
So they’re making judgement calls based on their best guess as to whether or not the recipient is likely to enjoy receiving the email, and therefore whether or not to put that into the inbox or whether to put that into the spam folder. These are critical decisions that can determine the success or failure of your campaign.
What’s driving these problems?
Let’s look further back up the funnel.
To make someone likely to engage with your email you have to provide them with choice and clarity concerning what you’re going to offer, right at the point of sign-up. What was really interesting with this online glasses retailer was that, if you visit their website as a first timer, they pop up a huge splash screen which says ‘get 60% off your first purchase, give us your email address and we will give you your coupon code’.
While that is great for database-building, the long-term value to a business is questionable. For example, there’s nothing to stop me entering a fake address to get my voucher displayed on-screen right away.
Another method they use to collect data is through their account sign-up process. When you go through their purchase process, you have a choice to op tin to receiving their regular email communication. All very usual stuff.
Looking at these two distinct methods they were using to sign subscribers up – the rapid database building technique was the one that was causing the deliverability issues because people are signing up to get the discount voucher, they’re not signing up to receive regular newsletter communication. Yes, the retailer was converting a lot more people on that first visit, but there is no lifetime value attributed to those particular sign-ups and it was causing huge issues for them with those subscribers that were positively opting in and had good potential lifetime value.
Damage to valuable contacts
If you’re getting your email blocked or moved to the junk folder because you’re employing these rapid database building tactics, you are damaging your marketing to your valuable contacts. Those subscribers that do want to hear from you, those most likely to be repeat purchasers in future, aren’t getting a chance to convert because the email providers are relegating your communications straight to the spam folder.
So you have to consider the right balance between data acquisition and providing that clarity and choice which subscribers need to engage with you further down the line. This in turn impacts the decisions that ISPs such as Gmail and Microsoft are making about whether or not to let your email through to the inbox.
How can you tell it’s a deliverability problem?
When a marketer says they have “deliverability issues”, that might not strictly be the case. You have to know what led to that problem; what are the tactics and business practices that their team is employing?
There might be one brand which is employing the best acquisition tactics possible and another which is buying lists from third parties. Even if they’re both using the same tech platform and the same infrastructure, one will have fantastic deliverability while the other will not.
This is not the platform’s fault; it’s because the ways in which those brands have decided to build their lists don’t (or do) meet the best practices required for the ISPs to make their decisions.
By approaching things from a brand and customer experience angle from the outset, through adopting best practice in data quality and relevance, you can fix your deliverability strategy in the process. Remember, poor deliverability can be a symptom rather than a problem, after all.