In this video, I’m sharing a great summary of the most important things you need to know about email deliverability and getting more of your emails into more of your audience’s inboxes.
Many thanks to Helena and Kelly at Speaker Insight for hosting my presentation and sharing it with their audience.
I’d strongly recommend you joining their Facebook group called The Connection Hub if you’d like to connect with other speakers, authors and coaches.
And check out the transcript below this video
Rough Transcript (this is a machine translation… please check back soon for a professional-quality transcript!)
Haha. Hello everyone. Uh, my name is Halena. Know, I’m Kelly. We asked you bigger insight. We help speakers, authors and coaches to build a portfolio business on your terms. And we are really excited by all of the information that you are going to be getting today, because we are talking about all things.
Email and more importantly,
I get people reading your emails and
that’s a rule really important thing as a speaker author, coach, you kind of want to be in touch with people and that makes a big difference. So, uh, I’m just allowing everybody to obviously come along. Uh, so we do a thing called the buzzing your business.
So yeah. Please do tell us the buzz and your business, what’s citing you. What have you got going on? What is happening in your world as a speaker, author, or coach? We would very much like to know. So yeah, for the three of you that have already joined us live, that’s brilliant for those of you who are watching this as hashtag replay, pop that in the comments, because we do like to know these things, um, and, uh, you know, let us know what’s going on for you, because that makes a big.
Difference, uh, to you showing up in your world, as well as us knowing what’s going on in your world. So you can see, we have Kelly and me, uh, but we also have the lovely Adrian Savage. So Adrian, think about your boss in the business. Uh, we will introduce you fully in a moment and grill you on all things emails shortly.
Um, but first off, Kelly. Do you want to update the buzz in your business on your bits of you all sorted sharing
things out? If you can go first because Facebooking some reason not allow me to share into the hub.
Oh, ho ho how, how exciting. Okay, good. So what Colleen’s referring to for those of you who are just watching on this speaker insight page, um, we are actually, uh, we have a wonderful group called the connection hub where all the speakers, authors, and coaches and people who look after them and support them.
Some in the background, all hang out together and have massive conversations. So we usually share this live out into that group, as well as interchange maker central, which is our, um, membership. So, uh, so while she’s doing that, let me tell you that a couple of people have actively, uh, already watched this.
I did a brilliant, um, and I say, brilliant, not because. I was doing it, but because it was just really fun to do podcast with Joe dogs, uh, on Friday. So, um, Kelly, I think we’ll pop the link in for that, but, um, but, but the great thing about, you know, Again, it’s this whole thing that we invite you to do. So Joe is about too, you know, she runs a podcast on a regular basis and she’s about to ask inside the connection hub for people to actually attend or be on her podcast.
And that’s the kind of thing that happens. Inside the connection hub, lots of opportunities for you to do your thing and be seen and heard out in the world. So if you want to know a little bit more about me, as well as get, Oh my goodness, me, we went into, into sort of tech, tech heaven’s space around all the types of apps and things that you could do to help you be more effective, efficient, and productive.
It’s a good listen last year. Whilst you’re driving and, or cooking and doing the thing that you do when you’ve listened to podcasts. So if you want to, that’s available for you, Kelly, how are you doing with yours?
Um, I still, for some reason called Shea and into the harvest,
let me, let, let me have a go.
Whilst you tell people about what’s happening for you. Let me see if I can do that.
Yeah. So with, uh, I think we spoke about this last week, but for some of, you know, I run a homeless organization and we have a charity auction that’s going on at the moment and it finishes on Friday. Right. But on Friday we have a big closing party.
So we’ve got Misha Paris performing. We’ve got some other great artists. We’ve got interviews, we’ve got Jane Lee, grace, who’s in the who’s, who’s hosting it and we’ve got some awesome loss. Still up for availability. So things like, you know, signed football memorabilia, craft, cricket memorabilia, Elton John VIP tickets, Coldplay signed albums, holidays to Turkey, everything you can basically think about.
So I’m going to put the link here. You can check out the auction and also you’re welcome to join our closing party on Friday and be part of all the live music and everything that’s going on there.
So I think she meant she was quite excited and talking quite fast. So I
don’t think she meant
holidays for turkeys.
I think she meant
holiday,
but I
found it quite amusing. Kelly. So, uh, so it’s all good. And Karen you’re in saying it’s been a long time and it’s lovely to see you. Karen. He’s been busy with doing some copywriting and various things like that. So, um, Say again? No, that’s, that’s what I was just saying. I can’t share it out either, but bless it with doing that in there.
Yeah. Sorry. We don’t know why we can’t share out for some reason Facebook’s doing it. I’m going to try from my phone. You guys carry on. Let me try from my phone. Yeah. Okay.
So we’ll do that. So, uh, so. Podcasts for me auction for Kelly. What about you, Adrian? What’s the buzz in your business?
Where do I start?
It’s been a crazy few months. Strangely enough. Lockdown has meant that even more people than ever want to get online and the ones who are online already, they have been super keen to make sure all of their emails get delivered into the inbox because we hate these spam folders. Um, so been doing a lot of various things.
I launched a mastermind. Group, um, uh, months ago, um, that has been working really well, um, agencies who wants to learn how they can help their clients get the emails into the inbox. Um, and then after that, I got a lot of feedback that people wanted. Some more one-to-one help. Um, And you to just, you know, doing their own email marketing, they want to know what, what were the simple steps they could take to get there more of their emails into the inbox.
So I had this crazy idea. Um, I’m collaborating with Evan Samira in, in the U S and Mark penny in Australia. And between the three of us, we have launched eight. Five day email, deliverability workshop, um, yesterday, um, it’s not too late to join because we’re recording all the sessions yesterday’s recording is already available.
Um, and we are just teaching people what they need to know to get more of their emails into the inbox that audience avoid the spam folder. And there are the thing, the thing is there are so many things that you can do. But what we’re focusing on is what are the most important things? What is the low hanging fruit that you can pay to get as many emails as possible into your audiences inboxes so that they can engage with you so that they can get your message better so they can buy your stuff, all of those things.
Um, and yeah, this is probably the best promotion that I’ve ever run. Um, I’m still. I was still fairly, fairly a new newbie in the proper online marketing world. I spent so long helping other people. And it’s only more recently that I’ve been doing it for myself
and a quarter of a million pound launch together.
Right.
it’s always the plumber with their own leaky tap. Isn’t it? So it’s very nice. I now find finally eating my own dog food, eating my own cooking, whatever, whatever phrase you. And, you know, I’m, I I’m, I’m getting some amazing results from my own emails and getting great open rates. Um, and so this was obviously a good offer because I’ve only got a list of just over a thousand people on my mailing list and we’ve still have more than 30 people sign up.
Which to me that is, that is really cool. If, if I, if I had a larger list, then who knows what I could be doing, but I’m just happy to get the message out to just to help as many people as possible. Um, I run a ridiculous offer and people signed up, they enjoyed it. And the best thing is it’s not too late to join.
So we tell later on, but yeah,
what we’re doing right now is basically giving them the foundations to know what that course is about because most people. We put emails to the side for a lot of people. So really we wanted to bring you one because a couple of weeks ago, and I put this in the comments or a week ago, I kind of remember we did some training on doing email nurture campaigns and onboard more about the onboarding side of things.
And we know that one of the comments we get is yeah, but I don’t, my emails don’t get opened. My emails don’t get even delivered. So that’s why we knew it was really important to bring you on board. So you can not, people can’t stand the tech and some of the mistakes that people make behind email marketing before they even get to write the copy and know what the content is going to be.
I’m going to show off that in the comments now. Um, but let’s, let’s, let’s get into some of the questions.
Let’s kick it off.
Lots of beaks together as three Gates. We’re going to talk for ages
and we want to make sure,
Nope. Nope. We going to be really
streamlined throughout this and we’re just gonna give you all sorts of juicy goodness.
So, so, uh,
because I’ve taken my anti geek pills, so I’m going to keep going to too much technobabble because they are a few simple things that everyone can take into account. So it’s not, not real big tacky stuff. It’s the simple stuff.
And, and, and that’s actually where I wanted you just to kind of start.
So we’ve obviously known Adrian for a long time, you know, sort of, and, and one of the reasons that, you know, some of the things so that we put in front of you, we don’t like to get you out. Cause we know that as speakers, authors and coaches, you know, that stuff. So to have it, it just needs to be pushed aside a little bit so that you get why this is so important to you.
And so, so, um, Adrian is one of the people that really does know his email marketing. Inside and out. So, so why don’t we start there just so that everyone else, so they don’t just have to trust us. They can actually hear from you why they should also listen to you. So tell us a tiny bit about your background and mostly around this whole, how you’ve become an expert in email marketing, because you’ve basically seen and done the mall.
For awhile. Yes. Um, when I was putting forward a geek, um, I’ve, I’ve been a real geek since I was about seven years old. When my dad brought a computer only work and I had to teach him how to use it. Um, and I’ve been kind of marked for life. So did the whole go to university, computer science degree, joined the corporate world, do lots of geeky things.
Um, and then I was lucky enough it didn’t. It seemed like luck at the time, but, um, it was heaven’s more than 10 years ago. Now when my ex my kids moved to the other end of the country, that was my big reason to suddenly change what I was doing. Uh, I quit my job. I discovered the entrepreneurial world. Um, and I realized that a lot of people didn’t necessarily understand.
And how they could get the tech to work for them in their business, because people are growing with on marketing or what they needed to do, but they’re all scared of the technology. I’m an Adrian, the geek showed up with all this kind of, yeah, this sounds really cool. I can do that for you kind of approach.
Um, I mean, it’s just gone on from there. Really. I learned. Things like infusion soft, um, more recently active campaign, other different email marketing platforms and just how to make them work best for you. And then I got dragged in this really, really unique, very, very tight niche. Um, because I was getting clients that were saying, well, I’m sending these emails out, but they’re all going into the spam.
What do I do about it? So I just started to learn how to actually, you know, not, not just the, how to use the technology, but how to use it in the right way so that you can get as many people as possible, you know, seeing and reading your emails. Um, and over the last four or five years, that’s been my main focus.
And for the last 18 months now, that’s pretty much all I’m doing is this really weird term called email deliverability,
w which you know, and the thing that I love, and this is what we always like to highlight is that. As a speaker author, a coach, as someone who is kind of changing other people’s worlds, which of course Adrian is wearing the hat that he’s wearing.
We love to highlight. And so I’m just, you know, I’m making it really clear that whole, you start from one in one story. Nice. And you, then over time, look at trends, listen to what people are needing. And over time you niche down and niche down and niche down so that you end up with just the one little thing that you are.
And I say little thing in inverted commerce, the one thing that you are focused on that supports people do amazing things and it happens over time. So there’s. There’s this fallacy and I’m using this as a bit of a springboard, Adrian. Sorry, I’m just going to say, because one of the things that we see a lot of the time is that you have to find it straight away and you have to know what it is straight away.
And we’re, you know, just even hearing your story. I’m so heartened that you share it like that because all of us. Grow and learn and do different things and start to notice where we can really add our value. So I love that you’ve ended up doing that this deliverability piece, partly because actually emails can do so much more good if you just take care of them in the way.
You’re about to explain to everyone. Okay. But also just because you’ve shared that journey off, actually I’ve honed and honed and home, and I have a background of all of that, but now I can add it into the. This thing and make people really thrive with this little
piece. Yeah, totally. And this is weird because I think the, I was almost ignoring the message from the universe for so long.
There’s like, there’s this thing that I know something about, but no, I’m just gonna go and do this bit over here instead. And sometimes you need to kind of trip over a few times before you’ll be asked. Well, actually, if I do that thing that. I can do everything comes easy and it’s, I think it’s fair to say 18 months ago, I was in a sticky situation of the business wasn’t doing well, suddenly 18 months on everything has changed and it’s just by focusing on one thing, sticking with it
and
everyone.
Absolutely. Totally.
Yeah. I’m looking at that because as I say, a couple of weeks ago, we did run that training around emails and. And I think a lot of our members, because all of a sudden coaches specifically are lost in the world of social media. Right? So they’re thinking that social media is everything to them.
But when you look at, you know, running groups and having pages and the, the amount of eyes that you get seen on your content is so small now, like three to 5%, we’ll probably see your posts that lone taken the action from it.
So,
could you just educate people a little bit about why your, you think email marketing is something they should be involving in their marketing strategy, why it’s important and how it competes with the world of social
media?
Yeah, definitely. Really. It’s really interesting because I’ve seen so many changes. I remember I used to go to seminars five or six years ago. Whenever I’m saying all social media is a waste of time. Don’t do it. And I was at that point, I was very much seeing the, the, you know, the benefits of social media and sort of, why were all the gurus saying don’t do it.
Um, And at that point, social media was a great place to be because not everybody was doing it. And the people in the world, social media had the exposure. And now, you know, we fast forward five or six years and suddenly, you know, we we’ve lost control, you know, fake Facebook, Twitter. So Instagram you’re at the mercy of their algorithms.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve got 5,000 friends or 10,000 followers on your page, then it’s completely up to someone else as to who’s going to see your content. And the thing that I really love about email is that. You have a lot more control. Yes. There are other things you’re taking into account as we’re going to talk about today.
Um, but. It is much easier to get your email in front of people that want to see it rather than doing the same thing on social media. Yes. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all those things are really useful as a way of building your audience. But if you can get people to sign up for an email list and send them what they want, then.
As long as you’re sending what they want to, the people that want to see it, they’re going to look out for your stuff and they’re going to open it. They’re going to consume it. And you don’t have to worry about the hours changing and things like that. As long as people are engaging with your emails, that they will keep engaging.
That’s the big difference with social media? We’re at the whim of Mark Zuckerberg and I’ve seen my reach go right there. I used to get lots of engagement on Facebook. I don’t anymore. Email on these a hundred is just getting better and better and better for me. So it is
because if you think about it, if you think about marketing, we used to get all the stocks through our letter boxes, right?
That was the junk mail. Then the junk mail went into our email system and it was junk mail. And now, now literally. The whole of social media is like
scrolling through.
Yeah. It’s the stuff that is relevant. And so we’re going back, you know, how hardly, you know, lumpy mail now is a great thing to do direct mail because most people don’t get anything through their letter.
Yeah. Actually what you’re saying there, the word, yeah. Control. We have control on what we send them and who we send it to and making sure it’s relevant when we do it via email, because at least we know that it lands with that person. If. That using your deliverability techniques, right?
Absolutely. Because the thing is, I mean, the, the, the whole issue of spam and things like that, hasn’t gone away, um, on T on a typical day, there’s around 500 billion email messages sent every single day.
But the real shocking thing is that 85% of those we do about 425 billion emails everyday are considered spam. So only 15% of the emails that get sent are considered legitimate.
Okay. Yep. Clarification of spam, or let’s say the Internet’s clarification of spam is not all clarification spam, right? So can you just demystify what that is?
And then, you know, maybe a little bit, yeah, I’ll stop. Just so you know. Yeah,
because the, the reason that the mailbox providers, the Gmails and the Hotmails and the G suites and Microsoft three 65 people, the reason that they are trying to hide all this spam freeze, because you generally don’t want to see it because you know, the simplest definition of spam is anything you don’t want to see.
Um, you know, it’s not just Viagra emails. It might be something where someone else is sending you a promo that they think you’re interested in, but you’ve never asked for it. Um, you know, it doesn’t matter whether someone’s following the rules or not. If you receive any emails that you don’t want, then technically that’s fine.
Um, and there’s different versions of that. Um, yeah, if people really think something spam, they’ll just vote with their feet and click the report, spam button on their email client. But more often than not most people don’t do that, they just ignore it. Um, so even though ignored email, isn’t. Technically classed as spam, then it’s nearly as bad because you just get your inbox filling up with, you know, if you’re on someone’s mailing list and you’re not interested anymore than, you know, you don’t really want to receive their emails, but people don’t always unsubscribe.
So
need even more don’t you buy the not unsubscribing. You’re actually just begging. Oh, but they don’t do anything about it. So.
But, but actually what’s really interesting. And this is the bit that I’m so excited about you talking to people about is, and we will get onto this one. Yeah. Is, is that actually you do more than more harm by actually being one of the people that lands in the inbox in that way.
So I love one of your calls to action, more than anything around kind of the 90 day cleanse as such. Um, yeah, so, so, so. Given all of that. Now people are probably going, huh? I don’t even know what’s happening with my emails in all sorts of ways. So, so can you talk us through, obviously you’ve been looking at this for a while.
What are some of the common mistakes that you see people make when they are emailing their database? Cause people are probably really listening right now. So
the biggest mistake, um, I wrote a blog post about this a couple of weeks ago, because I’ve been talking about all these different, bad types of email addresses, because if we get down into the techie bit, there’s things like there’s spam traps and there’s, you know, bots and all these nasty techie things, and yes, they’re bad, but the worst type of emails that you can say, and I, it was the worst email address that you can send to all the people that haven’t opened your emails for a while, because what’s your.
But let’s, let’s imagine for a second that the typical email audience, more than half of your audience probably lives on either Gmail or GC sweet, another mm, Don Microsoft or the Hotmail, or my three, six, five, 10% on yard. So it’s booking three quarters of a typical email list is controlled by these big three email providers.
We’ve got Google, we’ve got Microsoft, we’ve got Yahoo. And what they’re looking for is. She me the free email platforms, they would make money out of advertising, but the only way they’re going to be able to do by an advert to you is if you open an email, so they are not going to be, that’s kindly disposed of showing your emails to people if they’re not being opened.
So that means that every time you’re sending them, People that haven’t opened anything in a while, then you’re effectively, you’re hurting your email reputation because Google, as an example, say, okay, so Kelly sends out an email to 20,000 people and only 10% of them have opened something. People, obviously don’t like Kelly’s stuff.
They’re not likely to open our emails. So let’s just start putting everything she sends into the spam folder because she’s meeting people that don’t care. And that’s it. In a nutshell, the more people you’re in that don’t open your emails, the more you’re hurting yourself. So there’s all these unengaged people that you’re continuing to mail.
That’s the biggest mistake you can make. And it’s the world has changed so much. If you go out five years, Then it was a very different world. Wasn’t it? You built the biggest email list. You could, you could mail the hell out of it. And what was it until they buy the guy or the unsubscribed that was the old, um, and some people still do it now and they wonder why they’re getting an open rate at 3%.
Yeah, because you keep up with the changes.
So two things on that. Adrian one good for you. Cause I know we, we, we know each other and we’ve spoken with times before to give people an understanding of what a good open, maybe click through rate of the industry after to understand that. But two, I really want to clarify, cause I know when we spoke recently, this blew my mind that I was like, okay, I’m using the CRM system of say active campaign
and
the, the big boys, the Googles, the Hotmails the crimes of the world.
Have access somehow to know my open rates from my CRM system. And therefore if my open rates are low, they will then put my emails into somebody into the people’s spam folders.
Yeah.
Because it’s looking at the engagement ratio. So this was like, first of all, I blew my mind. Secondly, it really highlights to our audience that.
Data
segmentation is important. Right? So look at your email database to actually start segmenting out the list. I know who are your commonly open people that are open all the time that are engaged, and then only start to mail to those people, your newsletters, your protocols, your promos, blah, blah, blah, and maybe have this additional list as a side list that you might use far less important information, or maybe mail completely differently from a separate email address.
So can you just clarify those two things, standard email, open rates, and also, what do people do do with this list? The data segments, height.
Okay. So open rates is interesting one because you can’t really compare your open rate with anyone else because the, the, the joke that I normally make is I can do it.
Anyone’s open rate overnight. I can, I can double it in seconds. And the way that I’ll double it is I will remove half of your email addresses from your audience. I will remove the ones that haven’t opened anything for awhile, and suddenly you’re sending emails. The same number of people are opening them.
Guess what? You’ve just doubled your open rate alone, because that is, you know, it’s a very artificial number, but what you can look at is the trend. And I can share some, you know, some, some ranges, if you like. Um, because these days, the better you manage your engagement with the higher, your open rate is going to be, because let me just say, if you’re only sending to people that have opened your stuff recently, then the chances are they will continue to open your emails.
Therefore you will get a better open rate. Um, if you’re managing your engagement really well, then you, you can expect to get maybe 35, 40, 45% open rates. Um, and I’m seeing with clients very large lists. Um, you know, my, my email list, it’s about 1300 at the moment and I’m typically now getting 40 to 45%. Um, I cheated a little bit, a couple of weeks.
Um, I I’d have a very, very. Good subject line. That was the subject was just literally please help. Will it all smiley emoji after it, I’ve got maybe 62% open rate to my, to my normal list. Um, I wouldn’t expect together all the time, but it just goes to show when you’re managing your engagement and you’re being very careful what you send it, how you send it, you can do really well.
If you’re out the 20% Mark, that means that you’re doing okay. But your point not managing your engagement in that. Well, if you’re below 10%, it means that there’s a lot you can do to really, really improve things. And like, I talk about virtuous circle. And what I mean by that is the higher, your open rates are.
The more likely your other emails are to go into the main inbox, rather than the spam Boulder high open rates. The people that weren’t seeing your emails before might start seeing them. So to start with your, you re you reduce the number of people who made in your open rate goes up, but it’s the same number of people.
But then after that, your reputation is better. Then more people will see it and the open rate will stay the same. Your list gets bigger and even more people then see and open your emails so that the percentage is high, but then numbers as well matter. And that’s, it. That’s the best. It makes a difference between staying the same and growing.
And, and, and it’s not that I really love. I love that you put the focus on, you know, because, because actually it can be really tempting to go, Oh, well there, the look of the gods now of the tech gods, you know, sort of in, and do it in that way. What I love about what you’ve just said, and I know you use an acronym.
For this, but, you know, reputation, your own reputation is something that you can via emails. Yeah. Sort of your email reputation is something that you can be fully in charge of. It is not. So, so, so the invitation here for everyone listening is to not think of email as a. Massive thing, but think of it almost in the same way that you think of your social media engagement, you want to be thinking about email as an engagement piece rather than a I’m sending an email because I think there is a switch there that people aren’t necessarily paying attention to.
And it is this, I manage my, my email reputation and that then allows me to be seen more and have more impact and effect. Right.
Yeah, absolutely. So that’s covered, that’s covered the, you know, the typical open rates, but then talking about how to segment, how to manage things. Because I think that the things are very in mind is that Google.
I’ll use Google as the example, because they’re slightly ahead of the curve with this Microsoft always trying to play catch up and do what Google do. Google we’re monitoring engagement management as well. 2012. I went, I remember going to a conference back then and people started sharing the evidence they had that Google was starting to play a much clever again.
So, what we’re doing now is they’re not necessarily looking at the data inside your CRM, their system, because obviously they even Google on that to have it. But what they’re looking at is less opposing. You’ve got a list of say two 20,000 people that you send emails to. Yeah. Let’s say hard for those live on Google.
So Google can see what’s happening. Every time you send emails to
10,000.
So, what they’re doing is they’re doing two things. The first thing yeah, they do is they do what’s called personalized segment, personalized filtering. What that means is supposing I’m emailing both of you at the moment, and let’s say that, um, hello, you don’t really like my emails and you ignore me, which is very mean thing to do, but that’s what you’re doing with Kelly, wrapping up everything that I’m sending and you’re opening every single email.
Now after a few months, cause that Google is going to realize what’s happening. And Kelly, you will keep seeing my emails in your inbox, but Helina Google realized that you voted with your feet. You’ve got no interest in what I’m saying whatsoever. And they’ll say, well, there’s no point showing her agent’s emails.
Let’s just pop it in the spam folder. And then we’re saving her the hassle. Um, and that is exactly what they do. Wow.
Sorry. It’s just so interesting, cause I’m sure a lot of you right now listening are going, Oh, I just really liked that person stuff, but only now. And then, so, you know, sort of it’s this whole thing of actually, if I don’t open it on a regular basis or over a period of time, if I just got busy and I wasn’t necessarily reading the blogs or the things that they were putting out to me, then actually I might stop
seeing them.
Yeah. And there is, there is a risk of that. Now, you know, don’t panic though, because it’s not quite as extreme as it might sound. You’ve got to go a while and completely ignore someone before, before you stop seeing them. But I have seen it with I’m on lots of people’s email lists, and sometimes I’m just there for research purposes or whatever, and I don’t open their mails and they start to disappear.
But what, but the real learning there is if one person complains and says all of your emails or go into my spam folder, don’t panic and assume that’s happening everywhere. That’s why your open rate. Figures are important because as long as your open rates are holding up, if a few people tell you that your emails are going to spam, don’t panic, there’s more than one reason for it.
But then the other thing is looking at the, the, the global view. So going back to this 10,000 group of people that you might be mailing, which is everyone that you’re mailing, who lives on Google, Google will be crowdsourcing. The there’s the herd mentor, right? Absolutely. So, you know, stay very well known speakers and marketers in the UK that have big lists and some of them, um, I’ve worked with some, I won’t mention any names here at all.
I will, you know, I won’t even change the names to protect the guilty or to stay very quiet on who, but some people will just set that up. Yeah, literally mail after mail to everybody and their open rates are declining. They’ve gone below 10%. They’re down to 5% because they’re still doing it the same way.
They’re not taking the advice because Google is seeing what’s happening. They’re seeing that all their emails are being ignored by all these people. And you will say, well, firstly, these people are probably don’t want to see the emails anyway. And secondly, if they’re not opening the emails. We’re not making any advertising revenue from this person.
So prison, they want to make money out of it. Um, and sometimes they get it wrong, unfortunately, which is why it, if you, if you’re sending emails to people, you need to show them how they can be sure to get your emails. There’s something called whitelisting. And you can put white structures. So when they sign into your mail list, you get a thank you page.
You can say, here’s how to make sure that you always get my emails and you give people those instructions. But, you know, there’s just some very simple things. And that’s one that’s often overlooked by people is yeah. Honestly, I do. I’m a, I’m at the women Google. Um, so supposing, I dunno, one client, you sent out a rude word in the subject of one of his emails once and he got instantly put into Google jail.
Um, because you know, you’ve got so many complaints, things like that. They just put his reputation down to zero overnight. Now the people that have whiteness is him on Google, on Google, you can create, what’s known as a filter that says, never send this person’s emails to spam. Yeah, they continue to receive his emails, even though he was generally in Google jail.
So his open rate was about 0.5% with Google, which is shocking. It’s absolutely horrendous, but some people were still getting them because they have that filter set up. So they explain people how you can do that means that even if Google hates you, then there’s still a very good chance I was getting. If you’re explaining to people how to white list you so very, very important.
That’s it?
And so on that I love that render is currently looking at yesterday, talking about it, he listening to this, but yeah, all that, this, again, I’m always going to have two questions, Adrian. This one question, unrelated to what you just said, because I always have this. Query of what actually classes isn’t open.
Like if I using Mac I’ll email and I’m still rolling, I don’t double click and open an email. I’m just reading it on the screen. Does that
count as an open. So the simple answer is unfortunately, yes, it depends because there’s so many different male clients. Are you reading on your phone or your using your Mac mail or, or whatever you might be using Microsoft look from 2012 or something like that.
Um, and in, in most cases then, The majority of people these days now use the native interface, the mail they’re using. So if you’re using Hotmail, you’re probably logging into hotmail.com and using the web interface. If you’re using Gmail, you’d be doing the same. We might as a Google mail app on your phone.
So what that means is the majority of the people, the mailbox providers have gotten very clear insights into what’s the majority of the way. Um, and they do print to send those open statistics back to your CRM system as well. Right? So you might see a 30% open rate on your CRM. And in reality, it might be 31 32% because not everybody’s opens get recorded, but I wouldn’t get too wrapped up in that because the majority of people will get reported.
The majority of the time we deal with now. It’s it’s it’s it’s the, the macro level. Anytime you go and start looking at individual people with emails, when you’re doing marketing, you’re going to die of frustration because it is just so difficult to get down to that level
in, in, in which case, Renee, like, please stop mildly panicking, even though
we fixed.
Am I smoking question on, on what you were just saying then? Because there are some things that people I’ve got questions around. Like I know you. Putting the swear word in the subject. It’s to always, I think most people’s common sense would be like that it’s going to be considered a spam, but is there things like if you put things in capitals or free or have it’s lots of exclamation marks, are there things like that that really do affect the open rate and the deliverability?
It matters a lot less than it used to. So if we go back then yeah. If you put the word free or Viagra is always the one that I jokingly referred to because that’s kind of, that’s the obvious spam trigger word because no one sends emails about that stuff, but yeah, I think lots of exclamation marks things.
Yes. They still matter a bit. But you, you, you know, but people still try looking for lists of spam words, stuff like that. And you know, to be honest, Google in particular, and you know, Microsoft has got as many research people and they are same. They have put machines, the learning and artificial intelligence that learns so quickly.
And so cleverly ends up, you can’t stay one step ahead of them. Um, so it’s no longer work, things like that. They’re looking at trends. They’re looking at, have your emails changed, um, you know, Does it from really short to really long it’s changes that are looking at as much of anything, but lots of exclamation marks when you don’t know we do that, then they’ll spot that as being something slightly different.
So, you know, it’s more about to be consistent and be congruent. I think that’s the important thing. There’s a lot of the more real you are, the more you’re just getting your own personality across in your emails. The the better. Um, so, you know, so someone who’s just sending spam promo after spammy promo, then the, the, the machine learning will realize this and thought, right?
Let’s put all that in the promotions tab because that they’re not adding any value. They’re just trying to sell all the time. So it really. It’s the, it’s the big picture of the content. I mean, there are some things like if you’ve got too many links, too many images, things like that, then yes, we usually the chances of going into the promotions tab, but on the whole, it’s just, you know, keep things as, as authentic as possible.
That’s what makes the biggest
difference. And, and, and I think there is definitely something in, Towson’s just actually sort of saying, you know, I do get, um, notifications from Gmail asking if I want to keep writing emails from a particular email, if I haven’t opened them for a while. So, you know, Yeah, there’s, there’s a smartness and it’s great because you get to choose at least then.
Yeah, exactly. From my perspective, I’d rather someone unsubscribes and ignore it. Um, you know, even a spam complaint is better. Cause at least if you get a spam complaint, you know, you’ve upset someone for that point where they hate you, which means someone else probably loves you. And if they’re aren’t subscribed because they’re saving you the bother of having to kick them off yourself.
Because going back to the whole, how do we segment people now? Then what we’re going to look at is how long is it since someone opened an email from, if it’s more three months, then that’s time to definitely get rid of them. And if you, if you feel that you might have a particularly bad day reputation or your open rates are really low.
You actually dial that back to 30 days and stop mailing people if they haven’t opened from you in 30 days. And that’s the, that’s the more extreme, aggressive level of engagement management you can go to. But I suggest starting with three months and see how that works, because for most people that makes enough of a difference that they get much better results.
So this is going to bring up a question, I think for people about frequency, right? Because when you’re talking about change, which maybe someone’s going on a course, I know that we’ve got some people in the hub, the actually marketeers that recommend that you email on a daily basis, right? That’s their hallmark trashy, right?
If you’ve gone from only the owners emailing once a month to once a day, then they’re going to
pick up.
So you’re saying if you haven’t heard from someone on it in 30 days, but actually you only send a monthly newsletter. What’s your advice on frequency and to help increase the deliverability and open rates?
It’s interesting because. To a certain extent, the more frequently you mail, the more people are going to see your emails. I explain why in a minute, but at the same time, if you get to it sending every single day frequency, I’ve seen that people start to ignore you bit more because emails me every single day.
I might open half of them. If they email me once a week, we’re open all of them. So there is a little caveat to that. Um, but at the same time, the best example that I can use is a launch that I ran. I did a very small launch back in, um, just after Thanksgiving last year. So I’ve got to end in November, December, and in 15 day period, I sent 12 emails to my list, which is the most I’ve ever done.
Um, but I looked at those 12 emails. The average open rate was 30%. Okay. Um, cause at that point I hadn’t quite made, got the results I was getting now. Um, but in those 12 emails. At least one email was opened by 80% of my audience. So even though my open rate was 30%, 12 emails reached 80% because what I call the scatter effects is a different collection of people that open each email.
Okay. So imagine the, what email a month. It will take me a whole year to reach the 80%, whereas instead of, to me, 15 days,
interesting. That makes sense also because of the rhythm of, you know, and that’s actually part of the wider strategy that Kelly and I always talk to people about is around, you know, you need to know your own rhythm and when you do what you do.
So it might be that somebody only really looks at those newsletters and things that they find interesting on a Friday afternoon or whatever it is. So you’re benefiting from the habits and patterns that people are actually doing in their day to day living. So, so, so, so. Around Kelly’s question then is, you know, there, isn’t a hard and fast rule for someone it’s more about back to this consistency and congruency that you’re talking about
for you and it’s well, how can you do it without putting yourself under too much pressure is it’s like, I, I set intention to send two emails a week.
I found it. I learned the hard way that that was just too much for me, because at the moment I’m creating all of my own content. I’m not outsourcing anything I might do, but it’s very difficult to find someone who’s got my voice and, and, and all those kinds of things. So, so the decision I made was rather than trying just came us over a week, writing two emails and blog posts and all that.
Then I just went down to one and I feel a lot less pressure with that. And that works. Yeah. Good engagement still. Um, someone else who’s more of a natural writer than I am. They might be. They might just churn the content out and got to rights, you know, months and months with the content. And then just start to schedule it.
In which case send it every couple of days every day, then that’s absolutely fine. What I would say is that monthly in this day and age is probably a little bit too infrequent for might. Um, but the more often you can send the better, your chances are of continuing to engage with the majority of your audience.
So that’s the important thing, ignorance. People that are never over thing, but just look at the, you know, you’re going to have a core which may be, it may be less than half of your list right now. Um, but make sure you’re focusing on them sending them content. And if people haven’t opened for a while yeah.
Only occasionally give them another little nudge and say, Hey, do you still want to hear from yes, sir, probably never will. Again, um, I, we, if I send, what’s known as a ring engagement email, or if I just mail the cold segment of my list, that’s 90 days or longer since they engage. I will get between a two or 3% open rate.
Um, and this is, this is a little rabbit hole worth going down because the most common discussion I have with business owners is with around their fear of Tim. Go of those people that haven’t opened it. Sweet. How’s my buy something from me and yeah, they get a 2% open rates. So someone he’s right by continuing to mail those unengaged contacts, you are hurting your email reputation.
And my best guess now is that you will re you will reach 10% fewer contacts, Justin. You might get 2% that might buy something. So their brain has just let them go. Listen to the what what’s the frozen movie, sing the song. Let it go. I’m just, when you want to hear your stuff, it’s as simple as that.
It’s
ringing me.
So, so Kelly and I was smiling. You weirdly there simply because the comment that had just come in just as you were talking about this from Joe fellows was we’ve segmented a big list and mail those who weren’t engaged with the re-engagement campaign, which did bring some people back in.
And it will do it totally will.
And once in a while, that is okay. And what you can do, particularly if you’ve got the more sophisticated, uh, marketing marketing automation software is you can also make the process. You can say when they reach 90 days without having opened anything, put them into an automated campaign that will send them two or three last chance, tick or emails.
Um, this mean goodbye. And you’ve ignored me the last three months. I’m going to stop mailing you because it puts my email reputation and all my, all my other subscribers.
Okay. And what would you mean when we speak? Cause we don’t have egos. Yeah. Give me that last chance and just if they, if they, if they don’t respond to that tickle, they’re probably dead. Um, so. Because if people are going to spam, you constantly magically you unspin them. They’ve just gone. So you’ve got to give up gracefully, but just give them that last chance.
And here’s why going back to what you said about whether an email council’s having been opened or not Kelly, um, because if for some reason there’s a someone who’s, who is reading all your emails, but they’re using outlook 2012. When the open notification doesn’t make it back to your CRM, you need to give them the links to click on, to say, Hey, I still
want to see.
Well open fucking is not a hundred percent accurate. If someone clicks on a link in your email and you’re using something like Infusionsoft or active campaign or MailChimp or whatever, that click will always be recorded. So someone, if someone opens and it doesn’t get through, but they click, you can still keep them on your list.
Otherwise
you’ll lose a few people on the way. If you’re not giving them a link, a link to click, but that’s why, you know, typically emails should always have a call to action and you should be getting them to click on those links.
Yeah, I it’s. So I was just going to highlight here that Angela saying that she’s got a rhythm, you know, she settled in on Monday, she does an infographic or a motivational something.
Wednesday is a blog post and Friday is a value giving or a sale or a recommendation Monday. And yeah, so two values versus one sale or recommendation type of thing, which I think is. Appropriate, right.
It’s that continuity that you’re talking about. Right. So that predictability, so the audience, I’m not quite sure I need is ready to give up grace for me though.
I think she might
be prepared to give up emails gracefully.
That’s what I’m thinking. So
before you do that, so Adrian, I definitely cause you know, the geeks that we are, we’re already 45 minutes in, so I really don’t want you to go. Before you actively tell people a little bit more because you know, we’ve raised some of these things, but I know you’ve got something amazing that helps people really understand the health of their database and how they can actually do some of these improvements we’ve been talking about.
So do you want to tell us about that?
So I will. And just what we do that I’m also going to take out a link. So I have got a couple of links that I can share that I’m just,
I’ve just put, I just put Adrian a link to the deliverability dashboard in there for us, so that that’s in there for people so that they know your company and you know what you do, and check it out a little bit more
on there.
Yeah. And let me just put another couple of links or just share these. So there is, um, I’ve got another link that we a better one for you to share for deliverability dashboard. I’ll talk about that
first.
So I’ve been a key software developers
which is a long, long time ago now. Um, so I’ve always been creative and. The, the deliverability of dashboard that I’ve created, it helps you get an understanding of how well you’re managing the engagement and other important things inside your email. So it wasn’t in called that the email health check.
And what you do is you connect your CRM system up to it. And it also works with MailChimp Infusionsoft, right? The campaign constant contact campaign monitor. There’s all different. Platforms that I’ve connected it to, and they will analyze your sending patterns and your engagement health score is zero is a really bad score.
100 is a really good score. Um, and that’s based on how well your audience is engaging with you and how you’re managing that engagement. It takes a few minutes to run. If you’ve got a really big email list, it might take a bit longer, but on the whole it’s a five minute job. It’ll give you a nice, simple result, and they’ll explain how you can then go on and improve your score.
And manage your engagement. And also, unless you unsubscribe, you start getting my emails that have got hints and tips and blog posts of how to improve your deliverability as well. So that is a really cool
sign up for it. She’s
just like, that’s what we like quickly. Um, grab another link. We’ll talk about this one in a second, but let me just make sure I have got that.
Um, right. And yeah, Helene or Kelly, if you can make sure the link works before you share it. Um,
Because that’s always the problem with getting things created. Um, last minute, um, sometimes they don’t always
know. It’s just like it is so all. Good,
good. That’s what technology works. So health check in a nutshell, because going back, I’m just very quickly going to touch on the acronym that you mentioned earlier as well, Kaleena, because that’s what it is.
I guess a thing to remember. Um, cause obviously, you know, a lot, a lot of people who speak have got their own unique framework and things like that. And no exception. I call that when I talk about winning the email, race and race stands for reputation that we’ve got two lots about two about authentication content.
And engagement. If I had to focus on one thing, it would be engagement, which is why we spent most of the time talking about that. Um, because engagement influences your reputation, but there’s all these other areas as well. And I think it’s quite nicely timed. Isn’t it? That I’m talking about all these things.
When yesterday I started my five day email deliverables and workshop. So now it’s probably a good time to about that very quickly because. To be fair, even, even in a week, we can’t cover everything. I’m running a one hour call Monday through to Friday this week where we go through the really important things.
You need to do the things you can take action on to improve your email deliverability and to get more emails into inbox. So yesterday we covered reputation with this year off today, and then we talk about authentication, which is how to digitally sign your emails. So that. They are legitimately seen as coming from you, how that helps your reputation, talking about content, things like links, images, frequency, all that kind of thing.
Engagement tool systems. Um, and what is a one hour per day session? 6:00 PM. If you’re in the UK with the first one was yesterday, the next one is 6:00 PM today. And then it’s every day for the rest of the week. Um, the recordings are made available. So if you join today, then you will get yesterday, including straight away, you come live onto everything else is Q and a.
Session with each one. Um, and it, I did the usual pricing approach where you say it’s $147. I had super early bird pricing. I had early bird pricing and then on Friday I switched that off and then put it up to one $47 for anyone who was a bit late. However, um, it would be a bit unfair to penalize people if they’re only seeing the officer’s
age.
That’s about it now.
Yeah. So I’ve dropped it back down to $97, which is a steal. Um, yeah. And the link that we shared there at the bottom of the five day workshop and you are up and we will look after you. There is a lot of information. We can share that if you’re watching the recording and it’s Saturday and you’ve missed it, don’t worry, sign up.
We will send all the recordings out. So you weren’t miss anything. If you’re watching the a bit late.
On that Adrian, because a lot of people watch out cause we have our director of all of our recordings. A lot of people watch it maybe a year or so down the line. I want to highlight that the first thing that we put in, which is your health check, people can do that for free, right.
And then words, and they need you to actually to stop then go and do that. I mean, everyone should do to help is so it raise your awareness of so much. No idea about right. I
agree. Renee is, is actually already looking at his wedding. Right. It’s not as bad as a thought,
but then if people are watching this a year down the line and say, for example, the five day workshop is obviously over.
Could they still get the recordings of things much later on
the full again, as all good speakers and marketers, I’m recording this. I’m going to turn it into an evergreen products. So if the, if the, if the raw recordings out there, there’ll be some kind of new improved version because. Ruben nice and simple.
There’s a definite demand for the, you know, for learning important stuff for a reasonable price point. So there’ll be something there. Um, you know, if you can’t find it and you’re watching this a year from now, then just, you know, do the health check and I’m sure there’ll be some kind of automated thing somewhere that suggests it as an upsell or something like that.
We’ll probably be using proper AI and stuff in a year’s time. But in the meantime, Adrian’s in the connection hub. So you can always touch him. And, you know, you know, he’s responsive, he’s in the hub. If you’re watching this a year down and tag us in the comments of the, of the, of the Facebook live and we’ll make sure that we, one of us will get back to you in some way or another with some information.
But I think today just, it puts email back on the map for a lot of people. If they’ve had bad responses and not getting those open rates, it’s not just about, you could write amazing content. But one, if you’re putting things in there that aren’t getting opened, that’s the thing that’s damaging your deliverability.
So we need to deal with that first with data segmentation, we need to learn all the things you were saying. Like we didn’t even know about. Oh my goodness. I think the, okay. I really learned about that this month, all these things you teach us amazing about improving your email deliverability. Then we start work on the consistency, the rhythms, the flows, them and the content.
And this is basically how we can get control of our marketing backwards.
Absolutely.
Okay. So, so the thing, the thing that I really want to highlight here is that. Email, isn’t a scary thing. Email is actually something that is yet another connection tool.
And, you know, that’s what we’re really talking about. The world of business as a speaker author coach, the world of impact as a speaker, author or coach is based around the relationships that you build. An email has the power to do that. And the reason that we’re putting Adrian in front of you is simply because he, whilst he is.
Deeply geeky, techie, gorgeousness that we appreciate. He also has the capacity and has chosen some really cool teammates to kind of play with around this course as well, too, to really help you understand how you can through email, really develop those, those relationships and actively improve your ability to make the impact that you want as a change maker.
And that, you know, That’s invaluable. So when you find good people do use them, that’s what we’re saying.
We need to stop it now, when he’s grateful, thanks as ever to you Adrian. And, um, you know, whether you’ve watched live or whether you are watching this on the replay, you know, do share your, your findings from your own deliverables dashboard, the stats that you have and that sort of thing.
And just think about how can I look to improve it just a tiny little bit. Thank you, Adrian.
The reiterate yet I am in the hub, I’m in the Facebook groups. So, um, you know, we’ve got our own Facebook group for the dashboard and stuff like that. But if it’s easier just to post a question in the hub where there other, you know, your, your, your, your speaker, friends and community, what can see and benefit, then you’re welcome to post in there.
You know, a couple of times Kelly’s very Connie tag me. I’ll put a few answers in there and you know, I’m quite happy to keep doing that and just share, share the knowledge because there’s. If you can just take a couple of really simple things away from this, I can promise you it will make a massive, massive difference.
So we’re pleased that at least one thing from watching this until you
put your Facebook group URL in the comments when we finished agents, so people can go straight to your group as well. Thanks a lot when people are saying they’re signing up to the DD, so it’s all good. It’s all good.