#167. BFCM: Best Deliverability Practices | Podcast

Vira: 0:41

Hello, hello everyone, and welcome back to Email Einstein, the podcast by Flowium. I’m your host, Vira Sadlak, And today we will be talking, guess what? Black Friday, Cyber Monday stuff again. And today I’m joined by a very familiar face. You guys met this guy multiple times. Today I’m joined by CEO of Flowium, Andriy Boychuk. Andriy, say hi.

Andriy: 1:04

Hi, Vira.

Vira: 1:06

I’m very—

Andriy: 1:07

This time you remember my last name.

Vira: 1:09

Yeah, I had this blank moment where I completely forgot your last name and we had to re-record it from scratch. It’s easy to forget your last name when I know you only for what, like 7 years, 8 years? Happens to the best of us. Well, Andrii, thank you so much for coming today. And I hope that you will help us to navigate this crucial subject of deliverability. I know some of you guys are probably been with us when we discuss deliverability, but today we will be talking about deliverability specifically in the context of Black Friday, Cyber Monday. But before we go there, Andriy, what’s your prediction for Black Friday, Cyber Monday season 2023? Are you team everything going to be okay, we’re going to be growing like crazy, or are you team it’s the economic crisis, people will not going to buy stuff and it’s all gloomy and dark?

Andriy: 2:09

I think it was the big news last year, oh, economy is going down, recession, and it’s not news anymore. more. Yes, economy might go bad, but I think this year would be better than last year. Maybe not by much, maybe not like by 10-20%, but at least we’ll hit the same revenue or more during Black Friday, Cyber Monday. So this is my prediction because people are used to—

Vira: 2:37

Buying stuff, right?

Andriy: 2:39

Yeah. No, not used to buying stuff, used to hearing that panicking that the economy is bad.

Vira: 2:47

Yeah, that’s, that’s interesting. I found like different articles online and last year the growth was like 3.5%. That’s what I found on like Klaviyo blog. So it was like the best year globally for the entire e-commerce industry in 2022. But that like 3.5% was like on par with inflation last year. So that’s where we were with inflation last year around like 4%. And that’s pretty much made up for the difference with inflation. Anyways, that’s like what I found. But like, I’m not seeing big signs of like slowing down with the accounts that we are working with anyways. So I have high hopes for this season as well. Yeah.

Andriy: 3:30

And since we are talking today about deliverability, one thing I want to say before we start as to in the past, let’s say in the last decade, the deliverability was like the inbox providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and the other did not update their algorithm so much. They did not invest resources in like spam filters, promotional folders. They did not like invest resources in those. Now it’s changing and it’s constantly changing. It’s not something that what you did today will work tomorrow. Yes, I’m not talking in terms of days, but in terms of maybe every 6 months. make sure your deliverability is good. Like, you have to, like, you need to keep track on that KPI if you have a good deliverability, good sending reputation. Because if you miss that, it’s like, you know that story about frog in the water, in a pot? When it’s like, when you put the frog there and start heating it up, the frog does not feel it until it starts boiling and dying.

Vira: 4:42

Right.

Andriy: 4:42

So same thing with deliverability. You do something today, you will not see drastic effect. But over a long time, it will hurt your brand.

Vira: 4:52

Yeah, I know that deliverability is huge. And I like how in like your presentation, you said that inboxing is the foundation of a successful email marketing channel. And I do agree with you. But because you can be creating like the most beautiful emails, you can have like the most sought-after strategy. But if it’s not being delivered into your recipients’ inboxes, then you’re not doing something right. Okay, Andriy, let’s start from like the basics. What are some good practices? What should people be doing before Black Friday, Cyber Monday to make sure that their emails are being delivered? Let’s start from like the basic, basic dedicated domain. I know it’s a big topic in the industry. Let’s talk about like dedicated domain. What is it and why should people implement it?

Andriy: 5:47

Sure. First of all, it costs a little money to do this. It’s just your time or your people’s, your team members’ time to set it up. It’s not hard, but it’s important to do it right. So basically what it does, it says you are using a server to send out emails. So either you use Salesforce, HubSpot, Klaviyo, doesn’t matter which ESP you use, you are using their servers to send your email out. And on the receiving end, let’s say I’m receiving that email and I use Gmail, Google use their servers. So from your server to my servers, like you send this email and with dedicated domain, it’s settings inside of your domain, like flowium.com or adidas.com or nike.com. Inside of that domain, you’re making certain setup saying, yes, I’m nike.com and I’m sending this kind of emails. And Gmail receives it like, oh, it’s nike.com and it was sent from nike.com dedicated domain, so let’s pass it to inbox. In most cases, out of the box, when you start using Mailchimp, Klaviyo, HubSpot, whatever, you don’t have dedicated domain. It says nike.com sent via Mailchimp XYZ, and they use weird domains. So when you send those kind of, that kind of email, when Gmail receive it like, oh, Nike, it looks like Nike sent it, but on their on their server records, it’s Mailchimp. So there’s disconnect and they either put you in spam folder or like drop you in some other weird folders.

Vira: 7:43

Okay, Andriy. So in what cases does it make sense to have the dedicated domain? Is it like practice that every business, like no matter how big or small, can implement? Or is it only for like big and established businesses?

Andriy: 7:55

No, no. So this thing needs to— now it’s, it’s must. It’s not an option. So, you know, we developed email marketing strategy for Dignitas Ukraine, the Ukrainian nonprofit. You and me, we work on this. So I was sending, I was helping them with campaigns and we were sending campaigns. And one day I’m opening Klaviyo, we use Klaviyo for this nonprofit. I’m opening Klaviyo and trying to send it out and Klaviyo said, Sorry, you was one of the selected ones. You won a prize. I’m kidding about the prize. We will not let your email go through. And I’m like, what the? Like, how? And then I read that now ESPs, they this is normal process. So every year, every quarter, they extending their their. Kind of pool of domains that must have dedicated incident domain. If you don’t have it, some ESP will not even push it through. So this is what happened to me with Klaviyo.

Vira: 9:07

That’s so interesting. And it’s like pretty simple process to install it, right? It’s like literally a little code that you’re, or like whatever, that you’re adding to your domain, right? That’s the process.

Andriy: 9:19

Yes, it’s a CNAME record or something. And like, yeah, I’m honestly, I never did it myself. We have our like amazing tech team at Flowium who knows what they’re doing and like they are better than me in this. But yeah, so it’s not complicated if, if you understand what you’re doing.

Vira: 9:39

Right. And Andriy, tell me about this little thing. I’ve started noticing that Gmail started having this like little blue icons. Like as of lately, it’s probably like not related to dedicated domain or anything. But what’s the deal with them? And like, what are these blue checkmark icons? And can they help to get your emails straight to the inbox? What’s this whole thing with these blue icons now?

Andriy: 10:36

Since this is like pretty new things that I started noticing personally in the last probably 6 months. So I’m not sure how, if it helps deliverability or not. My prediction, it does, because what does it do? You have to go through certain certification and approval things to get this checkmarked. And it’s very logical that all ESPs, oh, sorry, all inbox providers will consider if you have all those certification and records that you are verified, you are not spammer. So listen, the idea, why is deliverability important and why it’s affecting us? Because inbox providers, there is so much spam sent every day.

Vira: 11:28

Mm-hmm.

Andriy: 11:29

And sometimes even it does not get into your inbox folder, that inbox providers stop it Like even entering to your emails, it’s it’s crazy how many how much emails. So you probably get only three percent or five percent of all emails that sent your way. The the idea here is for better user experience because if you start to receive all the emails and everything spam, you will probably abandon Gmail, for example, and you will switch to to Yahoo. So different protocols are like like this one BIM. BIMI or VMC. Those protocols created, so you have to pass it through to prove that you are legit, you’re not spammer. And my prediction and my hypothesis is that inbox providers were more likely to put you in the inbox.

Vira: 12:24

Right.

Andriy: 12:25

Versus a spammer.

Vira: 12:25

For now, it’s just like a Gmail thing though, right? It’s like this blue mark specifically. Yes.

Andriy: 12:31

As far as I know, yes.

Vira: 12:33

Interesting. Yeah, I wonder how do you even get about, how do you even go about like getting that blue mark? And is it only for like business accounts or for like personal as well?

Andriy: 12:44

Oh, no, no, no. It’s business because it’s only for businesses who use, it applies only for marketing emails.

Vira: 12:54

That’s interesting. That’s interesting. Yeah, I hope it will help with like deliverability for those like bigger accounts. Interesting. Another big Gmail thing, maybe it’s not in Gmail only, but I know that Gmail is notorious for clipping. So it’s a It’s a big deal. Your email deliverability can also be affected by email clipping, believe it or not. Andriy, for those of our listeners who don’t know what it is, what is email clipping and how does it affect your deliverability?

Andriy: 14:13

Sure. So in most cases, it’s— it’s how it looks. By the way, right now we are sharing slides. And if you listen on a podcast, we strongly recommend for you to go to our YouTube channel, check out the slides we’re sharing and If you’re not subscribed, please subscribe as well. So the clipped emails is basically Gmail, when they receive marketing email and it’s either too long or too heavy, in most cases too heavy, it clips in random places, meaning it cuts the email and shows message clipped, view entire message with a link. So now you have to click on the link to see the full message. And sometimes it’s like, from visual perspective, sometimes it’s not a big issue because typically it cuts your footer, not the entire message, but your footer. And on one hand, it’s like, it’s not a big deal, they cut it like my address, my unsubscribe button, so I don’t care. So however, there’s a few issues. First issue, in most cases, the tracking pixel are in the bottom, in the footer of your email, meaning to track who opened, who clicked, typically in the bottom of the email. So if people open and clicked, Ooh. your ESP cannot read that information because it’s missing the pixel. But again, we can say, I don’t care about the numbers, analytics. I mean, it would be weird, but let’s say I don’t care. The bigger issue here as you’re breaking the law. So we are all aware about CAN-SPAM Act. According to CAN-SPAM Act, you have to clearly, clearly include in the email your business address, mailing business address, and option to unsubscribe.

Vira: 16:14

Mm-hmm.

Andriy: 16:15

When your message is clipped, those 2 things do not, you do not comply with those 2 things. So you are, I mean, like, you are against the CAN-SPAM Act. Does, will anybody pursue us for this? I don’t think so. Because even big brands like Home Depot, their messages are clipping. So I don’t think—

Vira: 16:41

These big guys, they are not like poster children when it comes to like emails, their emails are so outdated. But that’s a topic for another Yeah.

Andriy: 16:52

No, but if I am a lawyer, for example, or if I’m like, I want to go after some big brands, listen, I received it, you’re against the law, like you can kind of build a case about it. And typically those brands don’t like to go to court, they do the settlement. So it’s like, so what I’m saying, it’s a potential liability, but for big brands, they might settle and then don’t care. For some smaller brands, it might wipe them out if they such a lawsuit happens.

Vira: 17:24

What is the even bigger problem? And that’s, I’m saying, like, as a user for, like, deliverability, when the message is clipped and I don’t see that, like, unsubscribe link, like, normally what I do, I just, like, mark this as spam. And if that starts happening, like, more and more, you guys, you don’t want to raise any, like, red flags with your platforms, especially before Black Friday, Cyber Monday. So be very careful, make sure that your emails are not more than I think 100 kilobytes, right, Andriy? You don’t remember?

Andriy: 17:57

Yeah, 112 or something.

Vira: 17:58

100-something. Try to be like under 100 to be on the safe side. And yeah, always preview your emails, make sure that they are not getting clipped because it’s a, it’s a big deal, honestly.

Andriy: 18:09

And also I have a video that I recorded, what, 3 years ago about Gmail clipping. So go to YouTube, you will find my face there. Just type in Gmail clipping Flowium. And you will find the video and I’ll go step by step how to check if your email’s too heavy and how to fix it.

Vira: 18:30

Actually, guys, we will link this video and all of the videos that we will be mentioning in this episode. We’ll link them in the description box. So just like go scroll down and you’ll find all of the information. Okay, Andriy. So any other big tips and tricks for email deliverability, especially like around the holiday season?

Andriy: 18:50

Yeah, so we all, we do set up for all our clients and we strongly recommend for you to do the same, to set up sunset automation. Basically, if people start engaging with your emails, you send them either 1 or 2 or 3 final emails and tell them like, hey, if you don’t engage, I mean, of course not in that words, but if you don’t engage, we’ll unsubscribe you. And yeah. And if they don’t, we put them in special segment and we manually unsubscribe them. If your ESP doesn’t have this functionality, some, some ESPs like ActiveCampaign, you are able to automatically unsubscribe. So you just set up that automation and it’s like people just go through and you automatically unsubscribe them.

Vira: 19:40

Right. And that’s definitely not something that you exclusively need to have before Black Friday, Cyber Monday. That’s just like one of our standard flows that we always, that we always do when when we set this like lifecycle emails. That’s a huge one. It’s pretty much think of it as your auto cleaner or whatever. This is like the automation that will help you like automate your list cleaning process. And this is huge. Andriy, I know there is like—

Andriy: 20:08

IRobot for email marketing.

Vira: 20:10

Like Roomba. Think of it as your email marketing Roomba. Andriy, I know you have one little trick in your sleeve. And this is like the one, the, the strategy that I really do love. Tell us more about it. You have it on your screen already, so you kind of spoiled it.

Andriy: 20:26

Oh, sorry about that. But if people listening, they’re, they’re not sure what, what we are talking about.

Vira: 20:32

Cool. So what’s the deliverability practice? Like a little trick that you can try before Black Friday, Cyber Monday?

Andriy: 20:39

Sure. Like just simply ask people to, to reply your email and like to, you can put some incentives. Like let’s say, hey, I’ll give you 10% off or free gift or something, or 1% off if you reply to my email, or reply to my email to get the discount. And you will say, hey, yeah, it sounds cool, but I have 100,000 email subscribers. If I send to everybody, it will take me like whole year to the next Black Friday to reply back to all of them. In that case, I strongly recommend to set up out-of-office sneaky reply with the code and say, hey, I know that I’m running— sorry, I’m out of office, but we are running this promotion, so I don’t want you to wait until I’m back. So that’s why I included the code in my out-of-office message. So this is one way to—

Vira: 21:33

Yeah, because I literally had this strategy with one of my clients. And you guys, the reason why you want to ask your customers to reply to your emails is because when platforms like Gmail or Yahoo or whatever, when they are seeing that someone is actually engaging with your emails or replying to your emails, they are giving you brownie points because they are seeing that you are legit. And I had this campaign with one of my clients and it was like a smaller account. So we were only sending to a few thousand people and maybe less than 100 replied, but we were actually manually responding to those emails. Because I didn’t even think about the autoresponder hack, Andrii. That’s sneaky and I love it. That’s so cool.

Andriy: 22:18

Thank you.

Vira: 22:18

Cool. Okay. So if you would summarize good practices for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or I must say before Black Friday, Cyber Monday, what would they be like? Good deliverability practices. What should you start doing in September, October to make sure that your emails are freaking delivered to the inboxes during the holiday season?

Andriy: 22:37

Do you want to summarize what we just spoke about? Because we—

Vira: 22:40

Yes, yes, let’s summarize it.

Andriy: 22:42

Oh, okay, I see, I see.

Vira: 22:43

That’s the idea.

Andriy: 22:45

I see, I see. So the first thing is dedicated sending domain. It should not set up, it should not take you much time. Second, if possible, if you have time to apply for those blue checkmarks. Third thing is make sure your emails are properly designed so they are not clipped. Have a sunset flow. And then brownie point for asking them to reply. And extremely, extremely important because it’s news in the industry. December of this year, 2023, sorry, not Klaviyo, Google will start deleting their unengaged kind of like all accounts which were 2 years or older who never engaged. They will stop kind of like—

Vira: 23:36

Existing, right?

Andriy: 23:38

Yeah, like they will delete them. So it might extremely affect your deliverability if you have many old Gmail accounts. So list hygiene is extremely important here as well. We, for our clients, we do list hygiene once a month, but if you have limited resources, at least like once per 3 months to do the list hygiene. So listen, I will prepare the— I will do the list hygiene for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and it might be even step number one before I do the other things.

Vira: 24:11

Wow. No, that’s, that’s huge. And I didn’t realize about like those accounts being like, I guess, suspended starting 2023. That’s crazy. I’m just like thinking of all of the accounts that will be affected by that. So if you’re like never cleaning your accounts and now you’re starting to sending emails to this like ghost accounts, right? And the emails are like bouncing back. It might hit you hard. So yeah.

Andriy: 24:38

Yeah.

Vira: 24:38

You have to be very, very careful with that. You guys, all of the resources that we mentioned in this blog, they will— that we mentioned in this podcast, they will be in the description box. So go and check out our Sunset Flow blog that we have. Go and check out one more podcast about deliverability where we talk with one of our Flowium colleagues also about the ultimate deliverability hacks and Gmail clipping video as well. Andriy, thank you so much. And you guys, don’t run away. Definitely stay with us because we will be recording one more podcast. So Andriy is actually the guy who you will see on our podcast next week as well. So come back next Tuesday and we will record the podcast for you right away, actually. So a little sneak peek behind the behind the scenes. Andriy, thank you again, and I’ll talk to you, Andrii, in a few minutes, and we’ll see you guys next Tuesday. Bye.