Evan and I prefer not to talk about deliverability if we can help it, and here’s why:

It’s often seen as complex, scary and technical.

Or, worse, it’s seen as someone else’s problem.

It’s very common for people to say “The email platform I use has poor deliverability”. And, with the greatest of respect to them, they’re almost always wrong.

The popular email marketing platforms have mostly excellent delivery. Their operations teams work round the clock to fiercely protect their email reputation, so their customers’ emails will get delivered. They all suffer from the occasional problem (no platform is immune to this) but they almost always get things resolved quickly.

That’s why it’s almost never a good idea to switch from one email platform to another just to get “better deliverability”.

It’s similar to if you’re working out at a gym. You’re not going to get any fitter JUST by switching to a different gym and doing exactly the same exercises.

There are lots of other misconceptions about deliverability as well.

How many of these have you heard?

“If I set up email authentication (SPF and DKIM), my emails will get through”

“If I don’t have any spammy words in my email, it’ll land in the inbox”

“I don’t have any control over my deliverability”

Here’s the reality.

You have almost total control over whether or not your emails will land in the inbox, rather than the spam folder.

It doesn’t matter what email platform you use.

It doesn’t matter whether you’ve got a big email list, or a small email list.

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been sending emails to your list.

What really matters is whether or not you’re being smart with the way you send your emails.

There are so many ways you can impact whether people will see your emails or not.

All you need to do is take responsibility for your behaviour and start thinking differently about your email list.

Since EmailSmart is all about being smart with the way you send your emails, here’s how you can use SMART as an acronym to remember what matters most to get more emails seen and make more sales.

SMART stands for:

Start Smart and Shift Your Thinking

Manage Your Engagement

Authenticate Your Emails

Reputation is Everything

Transform Your Content

We’ll go through each of these steps in future posts but for now, make sure you’ve checked your EmailSmart Score to start your journey towards becoming EmailSmart.