How to Get Your Email Delivery on Track

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Building a beautiful, compelling email does nothing if it doesn’t make it to the inbox. That’s why building an effective email marketing strategy starts with understanding email deliverability and how to achieve a good email reputation.

In this article by Campaigner, they cover the best practices to help you achieve just that. 

 

Make sure your email domain is authenticated. 

Authenticating your email address helps reassure ISPs that you are the business you claim to be. This makes them more inclined to trust you and reduces the chances that you will be flagged as spam. 

There are four things major authentication factors that you should have: 

1. SENDER POLICY FRAMEWORK (SPF)

2. DOMAIN KEYS IDENTIFIED MAIL (DKIM)

3. DOMAIN-BASED MESSAGE AUTHENTICATION, REPORTING & CONFORMANCE (DMARC)

4. “FROM” NAME AND EMAIL ADDRESSES

 

IP Reputation

IP reputation is critical for your email delivery. Your Internet Protocol address might be shared or dedicated. The IP address refers to the unique address that will identify your device on the internet. Depending on your IP reputation your email might be reaching the inbox. You must remember here that even landing in the spam folder would mean the email at least reached the recipient. Sometimes, emails might not even get delivered. To maintain IP reputation here are the best things to take care of.

5. IP warm-up 

After a certain number of emails, businesses should opt for a dedicated IP address. When you first get the address, the IP doesn’t have any reputation at all, so you have to work to build that up which is known as warming up your IP. 

Warming up your IP is simply a way that you can build up that reputation and earn trust with ISPs. To do this, send small batches of emails every day and keep increasing the number. Make sure the content is engaging and strike up conversations with your customers. 

6. Have a Quota for sending every day

Once your domain is authenticated, and your IP warmup is done, you can send bulk emails but keep the number of emails sent consistently. If you send too many or drastically change the number of emails you send, then you risk ESPs flagging you as spam.

7. Beware of Blacklists

Domain and IP blacklists are lists of IP addresses and domains that ESPs have blacklisted. You should check these lists regularly to see if you have been blacklisted. There are tools to check these lists. If you find yourself in these blacklists, you will need to start fresh and from scratch, which is not too difficult, but you will lose out on time.

8. Collect feedback

Getting feedback (especially when people unsubscribe) can help you improve your campaigns and make your content more engaging. In turn, this will keep your subscribers happy, and reduce the likelihood that people will mark your emails as spam in the future. 

9. Verify email addresses

Sending to an email address that hasn’t agreed to hear from you is one of the main reasons that an IP address can become blacklisted. Even if you are only emailing to addresses that have signed up to your list, you can still run across this problem. If someone misspells their address, that can lead to this issue. When they first sign up, send them a welcome email that asks them to confirm their interest in receiving emails. 

10. Clean your contact lists frequently  

It’s natural for an email list to have unengaged subscribers or email addresses that begin to bounce. Some amount of soft bounces is okay, but if you start to see many soft bounces in a row it might be time to remove them. If you have hard bounces in your list, those should be removed since hard bounces usually mean a long-term problem. 

11. Unsubscribe link

Make sure every email has an unsubscribe link at the bottom and that the process is easy. Not only do you need this to abide by anti-spam laws, but if a subscriber finds it too difficult they will be more likely to report you as spam. 

 

Email Content

12. Compelling subject line

A subject line gives your audience an idea of what to expect in the email. If it is not interesting, they won’t even open it. Worse, some words are considered spammy like “cheap,” “credit,” “earn,” “work from home,” “biz opportunities,” “earn” – that work as red flags for ESPs and can cause your email to be marked as spam. Instead, avoid words that might suggest clickbait and keep it precise and meaningful.

14. Links

Like images, links have a similar problem; having one or two might be great, but more than that will make it look spammy, and it might just get lost before reaching the inbox. To be in the good books of ESPs, be careful while adding links.

16. Personalisation

The more relevant the content is, the less likely a subscriber will mark it as spam. Building out quality content that is engaging is vital. That’s why personalising content can be so powerful. Whether you’re adding a few small details such as the subscriber’s name or building out hyper-personalised product recommendations, this tool will help you not only increase deliverability but improve the overall success of your campaigns.

Ultimately the best way to maintain good deliverability and build it up is by making sure you’re following spam guidelines and that you’re delivering quality content to your subscribers. By following these best practices you’ll be on your way to improving your results and making it to the inbox. 


Looking for a powerful email marketing tool? Try Campaigner today!

 

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10 Mistakes You’re Making with your Newsletter

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Campaigner explains what you could be doing wrong when writing your newsletters.

 

The email marketing newsletter is a quintessential piece of a traditional email marketing program. Many brands send a regular newsletter to their subscribers to update them on new products, release content (like blog posts and podcast episodes), announce sales and promotions, and offer various kinds of education.

If you’re like a lot of brands, your newsletters are never as effective as you’d like them to be. Your open rates and click-through rates are never high enough. Why does this happen? Because you’re probably making some common newsletter mistakes that discourage your audience from engaging with your email content.

In this article, we are going to look at some of the common email marketing newsletter mistakes that many brands make, as well as how to fix them.

 

1. You’re sending the same email to everyone

This is the top mistake we see brands making with their email newsletters, so we had to list it first.

There’s nothing that says you have to send the same email content to everyone. In fact, that’s almost always a bad idea because your content doesn’t apply to your entire list. People want to read the messages that add value to their lives, not the irrelevant ones. After all, 80% of consumers are willing to spend more on brands that offer a personalised experience.

 

2. Ignoring mobile devices

This should go without saying at this point, but many email marketers fail to take it seriously. More than half of all emails are read on mobile devices, and yet nearly 1 in 5 email campaigns aren’t optimized for mobile devices.

It’s absolutely critical that your emails look great on small screens. Use a mobile responsive template for your emails and preview them at multiple sizes before sending.

 

3. You talk about yourself too much

It’s tempting to brag about your company, your successes, and yourself in an email. But your subscribers don’t want to hear much about you. They want to hear about themselves, or at least the things they care about. They want stories, resources, and value that appeals to their needs. It’s okay to talk about yourself a little bit, but no more than 10% of your overall content.

 

4. Not adding links and buttons

Your newsletter may have great content, but it’s important to entice visitors to take the next step. You want them to click to your other properties, such as your website or social media pages. So make sure to include at least one primary call-to-action and several other links.

That said, don’t get carried away. If you add too many links in your emails, it can confuse your readers, or take away from the action you want them to take. Don’t include more than 5-7 links in your email, and keep your primary CTAs to one or two.

 

5. Not writing like a human

When brands get big and many people contribute to the newsletter, there’s a tendency to lose the human component. The result is bland and impersonal language that fails to connect with your subscribers.

Think of your subscribers like guests invited to a private event. They don’t want to hear boring corporate-speak. They want to connect with real people. Let people know that a real person is behind the newsletter.

 

6. Not branding your emails

When a subscriber opens one of your emails, they should be able to tell right away who it’s from. It’s important to use consistent branding throughout all of your email marketing activities. This branding should match the branding on your website and social media pages. Use matching colours, fonts, language, and logos.

 

7. Your fonts are hard to read

Using complex fonts or too many fonts make your emails hard to read, especially on small screens. Stick to no more than two different fonts.

Opt for sans serif fonts such as Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana. Stick to fonts that email clients can display (which is a much smaller list than what browsers can display). Use 22-24pt text for headers and 12-16pt for body copy.

 

8. You leave the important things until last

If you were reading a book or producing a film, it would make sense to leave the best part until the very end. But that’s not how it works with email newsletters. Remember that short attention span we talked about? That’s why you need to give your subscribers the best part first.

Think of each email like an inverted pyramid. The most important stuff comes first, the second most important stuff comes second, etc.

 

9. Including attachments

This is a big mistake, even if you have something valuable to distribute. Email recipients are leery of attachments as they may contain malware. Most email clients will instantly regard your email as spam. Don’t do this.

 

10. You have typos and misspellings

Nothing looks more unprofessional than a mistake in your email copy. Review your emails carefully before they go out to catch mistakes. It’s always helpful to use a second set of eyes.

 

Are You Making These Email Marketing Newsletter Mistakes?

We encourage you to bookmark this list and check it each time you send an email newsletter to your audience. Make sure that you aren’t making any of these common mistakes. Your subscribers will appreciate it!

 

For more Email Marketing best practice, check out Campaigner.

 

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Levelling Up Digital Connectivity in the North East

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In the Government’s outline for Levelling Up the United Kingdom, one of the twelve ‘missions’ concerns digital connectivity. They sate that the UK will have nationwide gigabit-capable broadband and 4G coverage by 2030, as well as 5G coverage for the majority of the population.

This mission is motivated by the fact that the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated the importance of digital infrastructure, and that digital connectivity has the potential to drive growth and productivity cross the UK, as well as widen job opportunities through remote working. There are significant spatial disparities in the quality of broadband and mobile networks across the UK, with rural areas more likely to experience worse digital connectivity than urban areas.

In this post I summarise the mission’s policy programme and what it could mean for the North East.

 

Gigabit-capable broadband

In 2020, the UK Government published the National Infrastructure Strategy, committing to providing £5bn in public funding to roll out gigabit broadband to at least 85% of the country by 2025, and subsequently to as close to 100% as possible, working with the private sector. Public investment will target premises that are hardest to reach, and which would otherwise not be provided for by the private sector.

Gigabit coverage has already increased massively over the last couple of years. Across the UK, there was an increase from 10% to over 60% in less than two years. This increase does not exclude the North East, with Gigabit broadband coverage increasing massively from 2% in November 2019 to 66% in January 2022. By 2025, it is forecast to reach 70-80%. With the current speed of growth, it may indeed be possible to reach nationwide gigabit-capable broadband by 2030.

The North East was among the first areas to benefit from Project Gigabit last year, prioritising buildings that had the slowest connections in the local authority areas of County Durham, Darlington, Stockton, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland, Sunderland, Gateshead, South Tyneside, Tees Valley and parts of Northumberland. The Levelling Up report states that Project Gigabit is still going ahead in Durham, Tyneside, Teeside and Northumberland.

It is also worth mentioning that the Towns Fund, which is investing over £172m across seven towns in the North East, will include a revitalisation of Darlington which will incorporate town centre WiFi.

 

4G and 5G coverage

The Government has also agreed a £1bn deal with mobile operators to deliver the Shared Rural Network programme. This will see operators collectively increase 4G coverage to 95% by 2025.

There is an opportunity to improve the North East’s 4G coverage greatly. 2021 figures show that the North East’s 4G coverage is lower than 70%, which is lower than every other region in England, as well as Scotland. The report’s figures forecast roughly a 15% increase in coverage Post-Shared Rural Network programme. More work will be needed in the region, then, in order to reach nationwide 4G coverage by 2030.

Meanwhile, regarding 5G, the Government aims for the majority of the population to have access to a 5G signal by 2027. They state that 5G “has the potential to radically change the way people live and make businesses more productive and competitive.”

5G is currently live in some regions across the North East, but often with only with one or two providers.

Since 2017, the Government has provided £200m in funding for 5G Testbeds and Trials, supporting over 200 startups and SMEs across a range of sectors in order to better understand how to use the technology to develop new solutions and services.

In 2022, the Government will publish the Wireless Infrastructure Strategy. This will review how far the private sector will go to deliver wireless infrastructure – including 5G – across the country, and determine whether there are any market failures in places that need to be addressed, and how the Government could tackle these.

 

Digital Skills

The report points out that the economic benefits of gigabit-capable broadband will only materialise if businesses and workers have the skills to take advantage of improved infrastructure. So, we must ensure that people have sufficient digital skills to reap the benefits and prosperity arising from the digital economy. 

In 2020, the UK Government introduced a new digital skills entitlement, giving adults with low or no digital skills in England free access to new digital skills qualifications based on employer-supported national standards. They state that they will continue to work with local leaders to develop Local Digital Skills Partnerships. These collaborative partnerships are now operating in seven regions across England, but none are in the North East.

I would argue that the North East is almost certainly deserving of a Local Digital Skill Partnership. In September of last year, IPPR North produced a report on Addressing Digital Exclusion in North East England. You can read my summary of the report here. The report explained that digital exclusion exists on a spectrum, and is not just about a lack of connectivity. It highlighted that a lack of access to devices, lack of skills and confidence, and lack of inclusive digital design is just as important when considering digital exclusion.

Although it cannot be definitively said how many people in the North East are digitally excluded according to this definition, particularly because there is a lack of data available on digital exclusion at local and regional levels, there is evidence that the North East has higher levels of digital exclusion than the rest of England, particularly in rural areas.

The Government states that it will work with devolved administrations to consider how best to share the insights and evaluation of the programme to help build digital skills capability across the UK. Because digital exclusion is deeply intertwined with other inequalities and deprivation, and the North East has some of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the country, we must hope that specific support will be given to these areas to target the specific forms of digital exclusion that they face in order to truly level up the region.

 

Freya Thompson

Knowledge and Research Executive

@NEEChamberFreya

 

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Customer Experiences. Digital Design for A Lifetime of Loyalty

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Customer-centric experiences that harness the power of data, creativity, and the latest technologies are gradually becoming the norm as consumer expectations rise. Potential disruptors know this and use it to their advantage to drive successful business performance.

In this workshop, our expert panellists from Mediaworks explained how you can use data, creativity, and the latest technologies to create a future proofed digital experience. How immersive web and digital experiences can support commercial objectives and audience needs. These can be blended to reimagine your customer experiences, drive business efficiencies, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

SPEAKERS:
Chris Coulson, Mediaworks Marketing Director.
Luke McLeary, Mediaworks Head of COnversion Rate Optimisation.

Harnessing your Digital Intelligence to Fuel Future Growth

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We live in a universe driven by digital. The rapid pace of technological innovation and evolving user behaviours have increased the need for intelligent data-driven decision making to drive business performance.

In this workshop, our expert panellists from Mediaworks discussed how to embrace digital to transform and drive performance beyond today. They explained why using your own data, in combination with the latest technology, can help you develop and formulate a transformational roadmap to fuel your future growth.

SPEAKERS:

Brett Jacobson, Mediaworks CEO.

Daniel Hoggan, Mediaworks CTO.

Rachel McGuigan, Mediaworks Head of Insight and Innovation.

Adopting Amazon Web Services (AWS) for Success

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Intelligent IT solutions company Perfect Image specialises in helping businesses adopt cloud technologies. In this article, their head of managed services solutions architecture Andrew Rigg shares three case studies on how cloud technology can be used.

When it comes to cloud infrastructure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a market leader, holding roughly a third of the UK market – and for good reason.

The cloud computing platform goes beyond IaaS and SaaS capabilities to offer additional value to businesses across the globe.

We’re seeing more new and innovative ways to use AWS than ever before as businesses and organisations take advantage of the possibilities it offers. Here, we explore some of the most groundbreaking ways UK businesses and organisations are using AWS.

1.      Availability and disaster recovery – case study: Bellway Homes

Operating in the fast-paced and highly competitive property market, email and system uptime is critical for Bellway Homes. Even an outage of a few minutes could see the business lose thousands to its competitors.

Bellway had been experiencing storage and reliability issues for its emails, which was hindering its ability to carry out and close critical business deals. It was reliant on a virtualised platform that provided shared storage, and it needed a more reliable system.

Through working with managed AWS services partner Perfect Image, Bellway Homes was able to migrate to an AWS platform that offered greater reliability, scalability, and a much faster disaster recovery option. Previously, recovering the email system could take up to eight hours with a chance of failure, but the new AWS solution allows it to be recovered in just 15 minutes with an almost 100% success rate.

As well as near-100% availability, Bellway Homes has also benefitted from AWS in a number of different ways. With no hardware required to scale the solution, less manual maintenance, no physical backup requirements, and a flexible pay-as-you-go contract, the business has dramatically reduced its infrastructure costs.

2.      Unparalleled scalability and innovation – case study: NHS Digital

It goes without saying that the NHS has been under extraordinary pressure over the past 18 months. Not only were hospitals bursting at the seams with COVID-19 patients, but the National Health Service was also required to innovate at breakneck speed.

NHS Digital, which provides technology services to the health service, was required to not only push out new solutions quickly, securely, and effectively but also scale and extend its existing services. The 111 triage service, which was used to support people with a myriad of COVID-19 queries and support, was rolled out quickly and effectively thanks to the flexibility allowed by AWS.

In addition to these new services, which also included identifying and contacting clinically vulnerable patients and vaccination service systems, NHS Digital also needed to scale its existing services. Early in the pandemic, the peak load of one system was 95 times higher than it had ever been. Availability of 99.999% was essential for success, and NHS Digital relied heavily on the strict security protocols around AWS due to regulatory patient confidentiality.

According to NHS Digital CEO Sarah Wilkinson, the “elasticity” of AWS was critical to meeting this demand: “AWS has made much of this possible over the past year. We’ve been building out our AWS estate for many years, and many times we’ve reflected on the value of the AWS environment in which we operate those services today and the extraordinary power it gives us in terms of extreme scaling and deployment.”

While the AWS platform helped NHS Digital create and scale digital services at a pace that has never been previously required, the technology is also being used as a platform for future innovation and digital transformation. Wilkinson continues: “In terms of our AWS relationship, I have absolutely no doubt that what we’ve achieved in this environment to date is a tiny fraction of what we’ll achieve in the coming years.”

Future plans for the AWS platform include leveraging centralised control of hospital devices, which could range from radiology equipment to IoT devices on hospital beds, to organising, structuring, and making sense of its mountains of unstructured but essential patient data.

3.      Efficient deliveries and employee satisfaction – case study: Deliveroo

UK-born business Deliveroo operates in a saturated market, so a competitive edge is essential. With a presence in 12 countries worldwide including its UK base, the company caters to multiple markets, all with differing needs and fluctuating demands.

By using AWS and Amazon SageMaker, Deliveroo is able to differentiate itself from its competitors through its efficient dispatch services. Instead of using only geo-location data to assign a driver to an order, the company now uses an intelligent AWS machine learning system that will take into consideration driver pickup and delivery timescales, as well as a meal prep estimate.

The intelligent use of machine learning not only helps Deliveroo to maintain a high level of customer satisfaction but also keeps its drivers loyal and dissuades them from defecting to competitors. This is because it allows them to be more efficient, delivering more orders during their shifts and earning more money.

Deliveroo first implemented AWS in 2017, but the technology came in especially useful during COVID-19 lockdowns, which saw demand for deliveries triple in the face of 80 per cent of restaurants closing. The company decided to focus on immediate cash flow instead of growth and was empowered to do this through the flexibility of AWS. Deliveroo scaled back resource-heavy features like auto-generated restaurant suggestions because they were being used less, allowing the business to focus on its most profitable features.

Most businesses have now migrated at least some of their workloads to the cloud, with cloud computing becoming the norm. Many cloud platforms offer hosting and storage, but solutions like AWS go beyond these basic services to offer an outstanding opportunity for businesses to do more than ever before.

Andrew Rigg is the Head of Managed Services Solution Architecture at Perfect Image, a UK based managed AWS services company. With expertise in Microsoft Azure and AWS cloud technologies, Andrew works closely with the delivery teams to generate solutions and ensure planning & development is architected and delivered at the level each customer requires.

https://perfect-image.co.uk/

Sources:

https://perfect-image.co.uk/bellway-homes-aws/

https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/deliveroo-case-study1/?did=cr_card&trk=cr_card

https://www.cloudindustryforum.org/content/uk-cloud-adoption-rate-reaches-88-finds-new-research-cloud-industry-forum

https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/nhs-digital-psso-keynote/?did=cr_card&trk=cr_card

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