An Email’s Journey
With over 20 years of experience in the world of email, including email marketing, strategy, and program consultation; deliverability metrics tracking; analytics; and deliverability consultation, dmarcian Senior Account Manager Jason Crichton shares his insights on how an email moves from conception to the inbox and actions you can take to help it complete the journey.
When you open your inbox and look at the emails waiting for you, it can be easy to take for granted the road it took for that email to actually reach you. Even the marketers who send those emails can be unaware of the path an email must navigate in order to reach its final destination.
In this article, we take a look at the path an email takes each time it attempts to make its way to you. It’s not as straightforward as you may think it is.
We are all aware of the beginning stages of a marketing email’s life cycle—the content planning and creation process from the marketing team and the subsequent send from an email blast engine of choice. We are also aware of the end result—that email landing in our inboxes (hopefully) so we can see that amazing deal or offer to take advantage of. What many of us are unaware of is the journey an email actually takes from start to finish.
In the beginning
A marketing email starts where it starts: a great email idea has its visual content and copy created and curated for your consumption. It goes through some revisions, and then is approved to be sent. Who it is sent to is part of the segmentation process—selecting the right audience from the right list to send to in order to get the best chance for the best rate of response and engagement. You are properly segmenting your marketing lists—right? Once this has been taken care of, the Send button is clicked and the email is off on its way to you—seems simple enough. What if I were to tell you that this was just the beginning of the journey and that the destination is further away than you think it is?
An Email’s Path: Behind the Scenes
When you send an email campaign, there are several “behind the scenes” checks and balances that happen that influence whether your email makes it to their destination.
With the introduction of Google and Yahoo’s sender guidelines (and most recently Microsoft adopting these guidelines), having your DMARC policy set up correctly plays a major role in your emails going anywhere from the start. Not having your DMARC policy set up correctly can guarantee that an email (or broader campaign) ends up going nowhere—quickly. Unsure if you even have a DMARC policy in place for your sending domain—check out our DMARC domain checker as a first step?
In addition to having a DMARC policy (as well as SPF and DKIM), your email needs to pass the reputation sniff test based on your previous sending history. Your sending reputation is factored on multiple items including but not limited to IP/domain reputation, blocklist history, email engagement and spam complaint rates. Assuming your email reputation is considered passable by the mailbox provider (Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.) and your DMARC setup passes, your email continues on its way.
Unsure what your reputation looks like based on that particular email provider? Most providers offer free tools to help you stay on top of this yourself such as Google’s Postmaster Tools, Microsoft’s Smart Network Data Service (SNDS) and Yahoo’s Sender Hub. Each Email Service Provider (ESP) measures reputation differently, so it is a good idea to monitor each one separately so you can see how they look at you.
It is advisable to consider looking into feedback loops (FBL) where available as a potential secondary level of reputation information from the mailbox provider. Some FBLs are easier to implement and utilize than others. In some cases your ESP may already handle the processing of FBLs for you; check with your ESP, as appropriate, regarding this option.
You made it to the inbox!
You’ve passed the security/infrastructure (DMARC) and reputation checks; next comes the front door of the inbox.
- Will the inbox let you in, send you to spam or bounce you out completely?
- Does the inbox have a routing rule in place to move you to somewhere that isn’t in the coveted first few spots on top of the inbox?
- Is the inbox full and unable to accept your mail? Even today, this can, and does, still happen.
These are some of the scenarios to consider where you have little to no control over the receiving inbox.
Is the address you sent to still valid and being used? Did you use a list cleaning service to check the health of your email list recently in order to attempt to remove as many potentially undeliverable addresses as possible? High bounce rates due to poor list hygiene will hurt you in the long run, so ensure you are making an honest effort to stay on top of this.
What now?
Congratulations! Your email has made the journey to the inbox and has navigated the largely unseen and sometimes choppy waters to get there. At this point the success of that email relies on the work the marketing team has done:
- Is the subject line relevant and attention grabbing?
- Is the pre-header interesting and used in a way to preview the email so the recipient is curious about what the rest of the email has to offer?
- Are the images working correctly when the email is opened?
- Is there no visual clutter or confusion about what the email is trying to get across to the person?
- Have the links been tested and are functioning correctly?
At this point, if you’ve answered yes to everything we’ve covered, then you’ve done everything you can and it is up to the offer to do the work to earn the engagement from your target audience. You can’t control everything with regards to the full path an email takes from start to finish, but you can certainly do a lot in advance to influence how the journey will go.
We encourage you to be a good steward of the internet and do your part to help make sure that the content, security and reputation of your emails are strong for the betterment of all the internet community.
Want to continue the conversation? Head over to the dmarcian Forum.
