What is an email deliverability manager and why do you need one
Author: Srashti Yadav
Importance of Email Deliverability Manager or Email Deliverability Agency
No doubt email marketing is gaining wide popularity among the businesses and in fact, has been a key tool of digital marketing. After putting a lot of time and energy to build a strong email data list and crafting the crisp content, you often believe that once you push a send button, the emails directly land into the inboxes every time. But, have you tried looking behind the curtains? Email marketing is not as easy as it may sound. There are professionals working tirelessly to ensure that your subscribers receive your emails right in their inboxes. These professionals are referred to as ‘Email Deliverability Managers’.
In simpler words, an email deliverability manager is defined as a person who takes care that the emails you shoot get delivered at their right destination. Companies need to hire these managers for a reason that commercial emails are a bit more complex than the personal emails.
Spam filters, old email addresses, blacklists, and stale lists can all significantly affect the email deliverability rate of your campaign by preventing your messages from reaching your email list.
Incorrect mail transfer agent (MTA) configuration, poor domain or IP reputation, wrong sending practices are other factors which can severely hamper email campaigns success. However, companies usually prefer to use large emailing platforms like Sendgrid, SES and other ESP and this is the reason why an email deliverability manager is a rare profession.
Despite the fact that businesses use large ESPs to send out emails and these ESPs spend tons of effort to maintain the reputation of their IP addresses and other factors which impact deliverability, sometimes the businesses do not get required results from their email sending efforts. And the reason is deliverability depends on many aspects which are peculiar to the domain used to send emails, content of the email campaign, subject line, template design, header and footer design, web factors, etc. And hence many times businesses running email marketing campaigns need help with deliverability.
If you are one of those businesses who rely a lot on your email marketing efforts to generate revenue and at times feel constrained in scaling your email marketing efforts because of deliverability issues, you surely need a deliverability manager or a deliverability consultant or a deliverability agency.
Now the next question is weather do you need a full time deliverability consultant or is it something which you can outsource. The answer again depends on a number of factors. There are high chances you may end up deciding that you don’t need a full time deliverability manager and you are OK to get some external help or just outsource the deliverability efforts. In this case you can give a contract to a Email Deliverability Agency to manage your deliverability.
Hire Postbox Consultancy Services as a deliverability agency to improve your email inboxing
Checkout our cold email guide here
At Postbox Consultancy Services, we have our core expertise in resolving complex email deliverability issues and we have our own email deliverability team. If you are still not ready to hire a full time email deliverability manager, we can help you as external consultants and can work closely with your email marketing teams to make your campaigns successful.
So, if you’re still wandering around to get maximum information about what exactly email deliverability managers do, here we’ll explore more about it to know why email deliverability matters and how our email deliverability management gives our clients an unmatched experience to deliver their emails to the right destinations.
What is Email Deliverability and how is it different from email delivery?
Before moving ahead, it’s important to learn the basics. So, let us discuss a little about what email deliverability is and why it is considered as a crucial part for the success and growth of any business.
Email deliverability basically measures the percentage of emails that are meaningfully delivered at their intended targets inbox, which makes a campaign successful. Let’s suppose an example, when you shoot 1000 emails from a particular campaign, ideally you want all 1000 emails to reach their intended destinations inbox, that’s what is referred to as 100% email deliverability. But let’s say out of these 1000 emails, 500 are landed in spam folders and the rest of 500 in the inbox, in this case the email delivery is still 100% but deliverability is only 50%.
What impacts your email deliverability
Spam filters and blacklists can hinder your emails, putting them into the void of the internet just to be never seen again. Besides this, there are a number of factors that can affect your email delivery and deliverability rates, one of the factors is the spam score of the server you’re sending your emails through, inclusion of a honey pot address on email list, or spam complaints by the recipients.
Here are some of the most common reasons why emails fail to be delivered, let’s have a look at them.
- The first factor is wrong or incorrect email address, which prevents a mail transfer agent from sending emails
- Recipient’s inbox is full so they cannot accept emails.
- Sending unsolicited emails, spam emails, or putting prohibited content/messages in a mail and hence domain or IP is throttled.
- The mail exchange (MX) server of the recipient is down or having some technical issues.
The domains and IPs reputation also gets affected due to the above mentioned like abuses. This way other email servers may trust them less and might reject even genuine emails believing they could be spam.
It is important to note here that some of these abuses or issues are easy to fix, while others are a bit more complex and technical. This is when email deliverability management comes in the frame.
So, if you’re looking for the right steps to boost your email deliverability rates, then here are some of the best practices to be followed.
- First of all, make sure your subscribers completely understand what they’re signing for and be 100% transparent in the signup process.
- Avoid to buy or rent email lists as it never proves to be a good idea. In fact, it is illegal in some countries. Your emails become more effective when subscribers are themselves interested to receive them.
- Keep a track of spam complaints to find out the reasons why recipients are marking your mails as spam.
- When hitting the send button, make sure your “From” mail address is recognisable, otherwise it will make the recipient assume that you’re sending spam.
- Consider implementing a double opt-in, so that the targeted users themselves confirm their subscription through a link shared on their email address.
- Make a habit of creating relevant, crisp and interactive mail content that your recipients would want to read.
- Get reliable email services to take care of your 360-degree mailing needs, who is responsible to manage the technical part, provide you analytical details about email delivery, and seriously monitor their email servers as well.
At Postbox Consultancy Services, we have a team that puts their best foot forward to ensure you get best quality services every time. So, if you’re wondering how we deliver the best, here is how they do it.
What Does an Email Deliverability Manager Do?
Just like other professionals, the role of an email deliverability manager is a blend of technical tasks and building relationships with ISPs and other ESPs.
It is important to have a deep understanding and good knowledge of email marketing best practices, privacy and anti-spam laws, which our email deliverability managers are skilled with. Besides, they have good technical knowledge related to email authentication, mail servers, and filtering technologies.
The key roles of email deliverability managers include the following:
- Responsible to manage email delivery reports and alerts including the bounce logs.
- In case of deliverability-related issues, responsible to troubleshoot and collaborate to find effective solutions.
- Maintain good relationships and understanding with ISPs and other email providers.
- Remain up-to-date with the latest trends and technologies in the email industry.
- Educate customers and clients on the best practices of email marketing.
- Become a part of the anti-spam community by attending conferences, webinars, and joining related communities.
All these roles contribute to helping the email senders ensure that their mails are delivered to their targeted subscribers with a high deliverability rate.
At Postbox, we have a team of expert professionals who categories their tasks as preventive and reactive. Here is what each category includes:
Preventive actions first:
Email deliverability managers avoid blacklist and spam filters to ensure that the emails are delivered right in the subscribers’ inbox with as close as 100% of the time possible.
And, undeniably, taking preventive actions is the most effective way to maintain high deliverability rates.
Do you know what is an email deliverability audit? Take a look here
Therefore, our team of email deliverability managers stay ahead of the race and competition by taking efficient and effective preventive actions, which are mentioned below.
- Make sure the email list is updated – There have been many reasons why this factor is extremely important. First, we ensure that the email marketing application/platform is configured to remove any hard bounce, unsubscribes and complaints immediately. Second, due to the fact that email addresses get changed as people switch their jobs and companies, there’s a high chance of email lists getting stale. Hence, to ensure a healthy and reliable email list is our top priority and we follow either a 60 or 90 days sun set policy where anyone who has not engaged with our emails in the last 60 or 90 days is automatically unsubscribed.
- Educate clients on email best practices – No matter if you’re a prominent business player, you might not be an expert dealing with the email marketing techniques. This is when email deliverability management teams come in the frame to ensure users remain compliant with the regulations and best practices.
- Ensure IP addresses are warmed up – Don’t confuse yourself with the term ‘warming’, because in email marketing, ‘warming up’ basically is all about building a good reputation with ESPs, which often starts from a neutral position. Warming up is the process to slowly increase the volume of email over a period of time. This gradual process helps soothing the spam filters to ensure that the mails are comforting to the rules and regulations. The process is extremely important to make sure that mails are delivered to their targeted subscribers.
- As it was mentioned earlier in the post, ESPs are likely to reject email from senders having unknown or bad reputation. Say for example, the IP address has been used earlier for sending spam emails in the past and due to this terrible reputation, it is significant to follow the ‘warm-up process’.
- During this warm up we also take care of many other web factors which warm up the domain’s presence on the internet.
- Email authentication tools – There are email authentication methods, namely Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM), which are used to verify the authentication of email addresses. These are just small and simple security tests to confirm that you are sending legit emails to the users.
- Monitor deliverability rates across all platforms – We believe ‘precaution is better than cure’ and this is the reason why we keep monitoring the things before some issue happens. Secondly, even if there’s some issue, we get it rectified right after it occurs and not months after. Our email deliverability management team keeps a track and monitors deliverability rates of everyone on our email servers. Thus, any issue is resolved right away. If you are using multiple ESPs / corporate email providers we ensure that all of your platforms are properly monitored and you get a consolidated view of the emailing. There are several tools available in market which we implement for the same.
- Building and maintaining relationships with ESPs – It is important to maintain good relationships with ESPs and ISPs and keep the communication healthy, so it makes it easier to fix any issue if they arise.
- Research and implement latest trends and technologies – If you want to lead the race, it is important to stay up-to-date with the new methods, trends and technologies. This helps to keep you on the cutting edge in terms of email security and technology developments. We have expertise in using various tools and technologies like 250OK, Return path, MXtoolbox deliverability dashboard, GlockApps, Mail-tester, different blacklist monitoring tools, etc.
Reactive tasks:
Benjamin Franklin once said that, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, which stands true even today. Although despite putting 100% efforts, there always remains a chance of loopholes and things can go wrong. No matter how much email deliverability management teams try to prevent issues, it’s hard to predict the coming threats or possible risks. So, it’s equally important to be prepared when things go wrong.
Thanks to the advanced technology that most of the issues are addressed automatically, which makes it easier for the email deliverability managers to fix the issue at its initial stage before it becomes widespread.
- Automated actions – ESPs automatically block the sender’s address that has recorded high rates of spam complaints or invalid email addresses. We configure all of our MTAs to back off timely and wait enough before trying to build up the email sending speed again.
- Research and take actions on abuse reports – As we said, our prime focus is to deliver the quality and thus, our email deliverability managers do a thorough research to take further actions on abuse reports by tracking and blocking users. This may also include analyzing logs, monitoring reports, and calculating the severity of issues.
- Removal from blacklists – If required, our deliverability managers may also take certain measures to get servers or IP addresses withdrawn from blacklists. Unfortunately, no matter how much we try to prevent blacklisting, there’s still a possibility for this to happen.
Occasionally, this could occur due to complaints by subscribers (they forget they subscribed), while at other times, it happens from the senders’ side due to the lack of education and knowledge on email best practices..
When such situations occur, it is the responsibility of our email deliverability managers to get delisted from the blacklists. In addition, our team may also work to remove IP addresses that have been earlier blacklisted. All this ensures that emails will be delivered to the subscriber’s inbox and as per the scheduled time.
Hope now have got a clear understanding about how much effort it really takes to make sure that your emails get delivered at scheduled time in their inboxes.
We can say that email deliverability managers are the stewards of your email marketing, ensuring the technology works, spammers get blocked, and your emails are delivered.
Summary:
If you want to take your business to new heights, remember that email marketing is the most-effective method to connect with your existing as well as prospective clients. Excitingly, the rate of returns on email is also around 42% on per $ spend.
Therefore, choosing the best email deliverability management team can help you attain your organisational goals by delivering your marketing emails right in the inboxes every time. We have the best email deliverability managers to look out for your business needs and handle the most complex deliverability issues so you never have to worry about it again.
Author: Srashti Yadav
Srashti is a young and enthusiastic Content Writer, skilled in writing for different niches and verticals. She has completed her Master’s Degree in Advertisement and Public Relations and has been working tirelessly since 2015. She is dedicated to explore new challenges in her professional life.
