#83. Why Aren’t My Emails Working? Deliverability 101 with Klaviyo’s Francis Baker | Podcast

Vira: 0:16

Today we will be talking about your emails and why aren’t my emails working? And this honestly has been one of the most requested topics ever.

Alissa: 0:49

Hello. Hello everyone. Vira and Alissa here from Email Einstein. Welcome back. I actually have some cool and exciting news because I’m actually recording live from the official Flowium headquarters. Our CEO is actually in the office next to me. Andriy. What up, Andriy? So really, really exciting stuff. It’s also freezing. I don’t know why people live here because this weather is not okay for any human being. So really exciting episode ahead. But yeah, as always, Vira and I here we are two email market at Flowium and we are super passionate about email marketing. And because we love what we do, we want to share our insights with you. Flowium, our agency is one of the fastest growing email marketing agencies in the world. We specialize in providing a premium, full service, e commerce email marketing experience for all of our clients. And our service is tailored specifically for your business and is designed to help increase your online retail revenue. We deliver the right message to the right person at the right moment. That’s what we’re all about here at Flowium. Live from New York, New York, Vira. This episode, like, I am pumped that we’re repurposing it because it’s a real good one. It’s a serious one. Serious.

Vira: 1:56

That’s a good one. That’s a good one. Today we will be talking about your emails and why they are not working. If they are not working. So we will be talking to amazing Francis Baker from Klaviyo. Yay. This was like one of my favorite favorite episodes. Probably like from all of them. So deliverability 101, the word that I’m like really struggling with. And why aren’t your emails working? So. So let’s do this. But before we go there, I have like one more exciting thing that I want to share with you. I just like, I can’t, I can’t be quiet about it. Tomorrow I’m going to see my team in like in real life. I’m like so used to seeing your faces and like this little zoom, zoom windows, you know. But tomorrow, yes, zoom. And then like my Email inbox. And tomorrow I’m flying to New York to meet my team and I cannot be more excited about it.

Alissa: 2:48

It’s been two years that we’ve been working together and we’ve never met. And finally, no way, actually. So it’s February 1st for us today. For you guys who are listening when we’re recording this, it’s February 1st. So yesterday, January 31st was my two year anniversary of working here at Flowium. So, Vira, we’ve known each other two years and we will finally meet and never.

Vira: 3:09

Yes. Yes. I’m so excited. It’s like online dating thing, you know, it’s like it’s literally this, literally online dating. You know this, you know this video when like the boyfriend meets the girlfriend for the first time in airport, you know this like heartwarming videos. That’s how I’m gonna feel tomorrow when I meet all of you. But enough about us and our long distance relationship. Let’s go to the really good episode about why aren’t your emails working? Or how to make them even more effective or how to make them to be delivered to even like more inboxes. So let’s do this. Francis Baker. Hi, Francis.

Francis : 4:03

Hey, everybody.

Vira: 4:04

Hey. Francis is a senior deliverability and compliance specialist at Klaviyo. He’s our deliverability wizard. If we have any questions or any issues, he’s our guy. Francis has worked on the ground floor and helped build Klaviyo ascending infrastructure and deliverability monitoring tools over the past three years. And he has helped thousands of different accounts fight their way back out of the spam folders. And he continues to do that. He’s our deliverability warrior. And we’re so grateful to have you today on our podcast, Francis.

Francis : 4:41

Yeah, I’m extremely excited to be here. It’s a pleasure to be here. I love talking about deliverability and compliance. I’m excited to jump into this.

Vira: 4:48

I know it’s going to be like a party for three email marketing nerds.

Francis : 4:55

I love it.

Vira: 4:56

But before we go to some serious questions, and we do have, like, good, juicy email marketing questions, Alissa has a little game for you to get to know you better.

Alissa: 5:06

Okay, Francis, here we go. So this is our blitz Q and A session of the podcast. I’m going to ask you a few this or that questions. Just give us the first answer that comes to mind. If you have a follow up question, we might allow it. We’ll see how it goes. Are you ready?

Francis : 5:20

All right. I am as ready as I’m going to be.

Alissa: 5:24

Okay, awesome. First question. Text only. Emails. Yay or nay?

Francis : 5:29

I’m gonna go with nay.

Alissa: 5:30

Okay, nice. Yes. I love that. Okay. East coast or west coast?

Francis : 5:34

Ooh, that’s hard. Born and raised in east coast, but I love San Diego, so I’m gonna have to go with west coast.

Alissa: 5:41

Whoa. Okay, nice. Very cool. Okay, awesome. Third question. Eggs or bagels?

Francis : 5:47

And these are good questions. I’m a carb guy, so I’m going with bagels.

Alissa: 5:51

Nice. Yes. Okay. Sending emails to your entire list. Yay or nay?

Francis : 5:57

Nay.

Alissa: 5:58

That’s a big nay. A resounding nay for all of our, all of our listeners. Okay. Socks or bare feet?

Francis : 6:05

Ooh, I guess I’m gonna go with bare feet if it’s like, yeah, bare feet.

Alissa: 6:10

Okay. Pepsi or Coke?

Francis : 6:12

Coke.

Alissa: 6:12

Yes, always. And then last question. Is Santa real?

Francis : 6:17

Do we have any kids listening to this podcast? No, I’m gonna go with no.

Alissa: 6:23

Okay. We might have like some like, like young email marketing prodigies that are listening to this, but.

Vira: 6:29

12 year olds.

Francis : 6:30

I hope I did not just spoil it for them

Alissa: 6:33

But I would imagine they’re at least like 12 or 13. You know, like, it feels like a five year old doing email marketing is a little, A little much of a reach.

Vira: 6:40

Well, you know what, Alissa? Sometimes it feels like five year olds are doing email marketing when I’m receiving this. Like insane.

Alissa: 6:46

Yes. Especially when you have people who are like, send to my entire list of 200,000 subscribers and I’m like, who told you that? Who actually gave you that, that insight? Don’t do that. But anyways, okay, Francis, now we’re actually going to get started with like the really juicy stuff. This is the highly anticipated questions and things that clients and clients of clients are looking for. So first question is, what is the actual definition of email deliverability and how is email deliverability calculated?

Francis : 7:17

So email deliverability to me is the measurement of emails getting placed in inbox. And one thing I do want to say is I do include promotions as the inbox. I know that can be a topic that people might get heated or passionate about, but my point of view is promotions is 100% the inbox. People do go in there. I myself love going to promotions when I have time. And I’m a huge fan of the tab from Gmail. So glad that it’s there. And how is email deliverability calculated? I guess my counter question to this is are we talking about for a brand, how do they calculate it or how are inbox providers calculated? Calculating it?

Vira: 7:54

I guess the brand.

Alissa: 7:55

Probably for the brands. Yeah.

Francis : 7:57

Okay. So yeah, for that, I think one of the best things, and this is one thing that I love about Klaviyo and I love about working at Klaviyo is looking at your own data, looking at the open rates, the click rates, how your, you know, your community is responding to your emails. Ultimately, you know, there’s, that’s my favorite way of doing it. There’s other ways of calculating it. You know, looking at potentially leveraging third party tools like a seed list. One thing I always tell brands is if you’re going to leverage third party service, always also compare it to your own data. Right. Because your own data is not going to lie. Right. And so that’s one of the biggest things is looking at your open rates, making sure they look healthy, making sure they’re looking good and making sure there’s no big red flags.

Alissa: 8:37

What would you say is healthy and then what would you say is a big red flag?

Francis : 8:40

Yeah, so I would say big red flag is definitely under 5% open rates. And I would say even between 5 and 10, that’s still concerning for me. I would say very healthy, 15%, 20% in that area. If not higher, I love obviously seeing higher open rates. I think, you know, above 20% is very healthy open rates. You know, that means your community is really enjoying your emails and they’re clearly engaged. Then you know, they’re waiting for the next one.

Alissa: 9:08

Got it. So would you say that like it’s pretty, it’s pretty irrational for brands to be like, we want 75% open rates constantly.

Francis : 9:18

I guess it depends on the channel or the. Because I definitely have seen some brands, you know, and this goes really back to how you’re, how you have things set up, right. Companies that have, for example, double opt in, they have a really clear opt in policy and people understand what they’re getting or even they give the consumer their voice, let them be heard with a preference page. That’s one thing I personally love is when I go to unsubscribe and instead of letting me just unsubscribe, they also give me the option maybe downgrade to only certain categories of promotions or emails. Those are things. As a consumer and as an email geek, I’m a huge fan of cool. But you know, I do think, you know, 75 is very high, depending on, you know, the size of the company. You know, that also is a calculation, but the thing is like transactional emails, you know, I definitely expect to see 75 for that.

Alissa: 10:06

Yeah.

Francis : 10:07

So, you know, it definitely depends, but I don’t, you know, if that’s your goal, I’m going to root in your corner to get there, so.

Vira: 10:14

Okay, nice.

Alissa: 10:15

So it is, it is achievable. It’s not something that’s so outlandish. Just depends on how you get there. Okay, cool.

Vira: 10:21

And, well, this is where it gets confusing for me. So I understand what is email deliverability, but can you briefly explain what is sender’s reputation? Like, how is it calculated and how to check my sending reputation? Because we hear it all the time. Like, we hear this thing all the time. But like, what is it? Like?

Francis : 10:42

Yeah, yeah, Sender reputation is ultimately how the inbox providers view your mail stream, right? It’s, you know, your kind of your score. You know, everybody kind of, obviously everybody does it different what they look at and, you know, we definitely talk about that, but when it comes to like monitoring it, there’s, there’s a kind of a, I would say two primary tools that I am a huge fan of. One, Google Postmaster Tools. I recommend every brand to set this up. And the reason for that is because one, it tells you how Google is viewing you. Right? Breaks it down both on the IP reputation level, the domain reputation level, but also the great thing, if you’re a, you know, a techie person like myself, they recently just rolled out an API, which makes myself huge fan. It’s something that ESPs, you know, we’ve been really asking for and wanting for since, you know, Google rolled this out years back. And we’ve always been told it’s, you know, it’s on the roadmap or, you know, it’s being worked on and it’s finally in the lights and huge fan, you know, it’s free as well. Google Postmasters is free. The other one that’s I’m a huge fan is Microsoft SNDNs, which is their smart network data services. The thing with that is it’s IP only. So that’s one caveat to it. Right? So if you’re a smaller brand, it might not work for you. The other thing is, depending on your esp, they might give you access to it. If you’re on a shared infrastructure, they might not. For Klaviyo, we don’t, because it does potentially expose information about our other customers and we don’t want to obviously risk that. The Other thing with Microsoft DNS is it’s not as insightful as Google Postmasters. It’s still definitely useful and helpful, but it has kind of three categories of how it views the IP. Green is less than 10% of emails are perceived as is spam. Yellow, it’s between 10 and 90% and then red is greater than 90%. Right. So it’s like if you’re in that yellow category, you really just wish they’d give you a hard number because 10 to 90% is a wide range.

Alissa: 12:31

Yeah. That’s crazy. Wow.

Francis : 12:32

Yeah, yeah. And then the other tools that I do recommend is, I know, SenderScore, that’s one that I always hear brands bringing up. But you know, again, that’s on the IP level. That’s on the ip. And then Barracuda, I think it’s like Barracuda central. They also have a place where you can go in and kind of pop in your domain and pop in your IP and get how they kind of look at your reputation. It’s not super granular like Google Postmasters is, but it’s still something. And Barracude is definitely a big filter still out there that’s used in the enterprise space.

Alissa: 13:01

So you would say that in order to. Yeah, I know. I’m like, I don’t have enough notebook space for this. So. Okay, so in order to like really accurately configure, I guess you’re sending reputation or check it on a regular basis, you would strongly recommend getting some kind of additional support, whether it be from Google or a different platform that’s going to kind of complement what you’re already doing in Klaviyo and then having that as kind of like a referral, so. Or a reference point, I guess, so that you know where you’re at essentially.

Francis : 13:31

Yeah. Google Questions Tools is great. Huge fan of it. And for most brands. Right. At least with brands I work with, you know, we work for context. Klaviyo is we have a lot of worldwide customers. We have customers in Europe, in Australia, we have a lot in the US and for the most part, most of our volume, the majority of all our brands volume is going to Gmail. Gmail is the dominant inbox writer. So you keep them happy and you keep in their good graces. Most likely it’s gonna be a trickle effect where you might not have to really focus on these smaller ones, depending on your audience or who you send to.

Alissa: 14:06

Gotcha. Okay, cool. What would you say are the key points that influence. Influence your email deliverability and then also the reputation of you as a sender. And I guess this kind of stems back to, or stems from like, okay, there are all these platforms and stuff, but like, what are we specifically looking for that will influence how your emails are delivering and then also what your reputation is like for these inbox providers, essentially.

Francis : 14:30

Yeah. So before jumping into that, one thing I want to kind of like explain is not every inbox provider is the same, right? So Gmail might, you know, Gmail primarily looks at engagement very heavily, where, you know, maybe Comcast looks at, you know, engagement, but also looks at the IP reputation. And not everybody looks at the same block lists or maybe any block lists. So the biggest thing that I think is the most important part around reputation and email deliverability is how are people reacting to your emails? Are they opening, are they clicking? Are those people marking as spam? Other things that the inbox providers might look at are like, are they forwarding, were they responding? Those aren’t things that we might not necessarily be able to track on our end, but there’s still things that they enjoy seeing. Other things are, are you on any known block lists? Right. For example, are you on maybe Spam House or an impactful block list? Not all block lists are created equally, Right? There’s hundreds of block lists out there. Anybody can create a block list. The thing is, not every block list has an impact. The big one out there is obviously Spam House. They’re very respected in the industry. They do a lot of great things for the email ecosystem and the Internet in general. They’re still very heavily viewed by some, even major inbox providers. The other thing is, are you hitting the mailbox provider spam traps?

Vira: 15:46

Can you briefly explain what are spam traps for those who don’t?

Francis : 15:52

Yeah. So spam traps, there’s three primary kind of categories, right? There’s pristine, which are ones that have never been used by anybody ever, right? So these are maybe ones that have just been pasted around the Internet or maybe exposed on like a Pastebin or something like that. For the spamtrap operator, they don’t expect to ever see legitimate email there, right? So if they receive email there, they know it’s unwanted. Then there’s recycled, which are maybe a domain or an email that was primarily used, but then when obviously expired because of no usage, for example, Yahoo, Microsoft, if you don’t log in after a certain amount of days, they might shut off that email. Maybe after a year of it hard bouncing, they might turn that into a spam trap. It’s more common for people to do that with domains. A domain that expires, they buy it, sit on it for a little bit, then convert that into a spam trap to see if people are still following best practices around bounce management ultimately. And then the other one is a typo, right? So for example, instead of typing in gmail.com, you type in gmail.com, right? That one obviously is a sign of maybe someone not using Double Opt In. But are you hitting these spam traps that the inbox providers ultimately operate is a big thing. Not everybody operates their own spam traps, but some do out there, right? And it’s not something you’re ever going to be able to get like a metric on, but it really just goes back to making sure you’re following best practices around how you obtain emails. Definitely never buy a list, please. But we can definitely talk about that later. Double Opt in is great. If you’re not going to use Double Opt in, maybe your legal team doesn’t feel it’s needed. Use something like recaptcha at least. And the reason for that is there’s a list bombing out there, which is bots that just go to websites and just try to flood emails in there to get them signed up. A lot of these times these emails are legitimate. They’re real emails out there. So using a third party service that might verify whether an email is legit or not, it might not catch that. So you got to make sure you have a strong defense as well. Another thing is content. Nothing like using too many emojis or for the most part, all the big major inbox providers have moved to a more sophisticated system. So having the word free in your subject line in all caps isn’t going to cause your email to go to spam. But potentially linking to a known malicious site, for example. One thing I always like to mention here is avoid free URL shorteners. Don’t use a bitly or anything like that like that because for you it might track data for you, but for someone malicious it also masks where that link is potentially going. So that’s one thing to always keep in mind as well.

Vira: 18:20

I didn’t realize that

Alissa: 18:23

I’ve been doing it all wrong. Wait a second. I missed a lot. I missed a lot in the delivery.

Francis : 18:31

There’s a lot to this world and I love it because I feel like even being in it for three years, I know people have been in it for so much longer. I love talking with them because every time I walk away I’m like, like wow. I feel like I’M new here because, you know, it’s constantly evolving. There’s just so many things out there to learn, you know. That’s why I love it.

Alissa: 19:16

Wow. Geez Louise. Okay, so a lot of this has to do clearly with the inbox provider. So how can you actually train those inbox providers to recognize you as a good sender if you’re just starting out with email marketing?

Francis : 19:29

Yeah, love this question, by the way. One thing I will say is, you know, when you’re starting fresh, one of the biggest things I, and this is one thing I mention or recommend to every customer who’s new with Klaviyo or any ESP I’m talking with people in the industry is set up as much automation as you can. And the reason for that is for Klaviyo context we call it flows. When you’re setting up automation, it’s going to be action based. Someone going to your website and maybe registering, just welcoming them. When someone subscribes to your newsletter, welcoming them, just saying, hey, give them some information about you. Let them hear your story. Every brand I’ve ever talked to always has some cool story about how they got there. Whether it’s the CEO was doing something before and they just stumbled upon something that someone needed and he just built it, or it’s a situation where it’s like, you know, it’s, you know, it’s a family owned business. You know, people love to hear about who’s behind that curtain of that brand. Right. And so, you know, delivering that story is going to make them feel connected to you and you know, it’s going to make them, you know, potentially stay longer engaged. And then the other thing is, you know, with automation, what’s great about it is it passively earns you money as well. Which, you know, obviously is the big thing when it comes to email marketing is driving additional revenue, you know, for example, abandoned carts, subscription notifications, letting people know that they’re running low on maybe something they purchased from you, whether in your supplement business or something like that. But I think the biggest thing is definitely automation trying to automate a lot of the big things. Because when someone performs an action and then you send them an email, you’re relevant on their mind, you’re top of mind, they’re going to recognize you where campaign someone might have, they might not be in their email every day. So I think that’s one big thing. But the other thing is making sure you have a strong, clear kind of opt in practice, for example, like I was talking about before, double Opt in or recaptcha. But the other thing is setting the right expectations with your customers. And I think that’s a huge thing. Even from my point of view as a consumer, when I go to a website and maybe adding something to my cart, them letting me know that, hey, right now it’s checked. If you uncheck it, you’re not going to receive emails from us, but this is what you’re going to receive. I think that’s also a great point to even ask them their preference. Right. Try to learn more about your community, you know, listen to them. Right. Because you know when you listen to them they’re going to stay around longer. Right. And you know, one big part of email marketing is, you know, getting new faces in those funnels and it’s not always cheap and it’s not always easy. So if you can keep them there longer, it’s just going to obviously provide more longevity.

Alissa: 21:54

Right, right. And it’s always, I guess retargeting an existing customer is always going to be way less expensive than actually going out out and finding a new customer. So that makes sense.

Vira: 22:05

So, Francis, so you are recommending to start from the flows and only after you have them for a while do the campaigns. Correct?

Francis : 22:13

You can definitely do campaigns while you have automation going. But I think one of the best things when you’re starting out fresh is getting those automation set up as soon as possible. Because it’s one of those things. It’s like especially working with brands who are transitioning from one ESP to another. One of the biggest things when you’re transitioning is like, I have all this data in my old platform. It’s not necessarily quick to move over potentially. Right. For at least for Klaviyo, we have some integrations with other ESPs, but there are a bunch out there, there’s probably hundreds out there and we don’t integrate with all of them. And some of them it’s not always easy to get the data you need out. So if you set up that automations while you’re transferring everything over, it just makes it a little easier because you’re already starting to build up that reputation on this new email provider, on this new mail stream and you’re starting to warm it up already. So it’s going to make it a little easier for you later down the road.

Vira: 23:03

Are there any specific flows you recommend to turn on first or it doesn’t matter.

Francis : 23:09

That’s a really good question. I would say one that I think is huge and it’s a great one. Is the welcome series and that’s personally because one thing I love is when I opt into emails is just hearing stories like I was just talking about them. I’m really passionate about female world and you know, it’s always cool to hear how people got to where they are, you know, why they’re doing what they’re doing. So I definitely think welcome series is huge. Also. Welcome series is a great way to obviously drive revenue, right? You know, explain to them who you are and then you know, give them some credit. You know, give them like a coupon or you know, discount code or whatever it may be other ones that are, you know, really great. Abandoned car, you know, browse abandonment. Those are obviously great because they’re action based as well like we were talking about. But you know, I think you know, definitely transactional emails are great. You know, making sure that way people know when they purchase something that it was successful, right? And if your e commerce platform doesn’t offer that, it’s definitely important to have that. Letting them know that it’s been successful or there’s any issues letting them know just being. It’s always better to over communicate especially when it comes to purchase and under communicate because when you under communicate then they might reach out to support or you might leave a bad taste in their mouth, right?

Vira: 24:18

And usually welcome. Seriously like just looking at the stats from my clients welcome series, that very first email, it has like the best open rates and click through rates. So in a way you are training those systems to see you as a, as a good guy in email marketing. So that’s a good one. So I guess it’s not a good idea to start from like win back series or sunset flow or whatever. It’s better to start from those like high, high performing flow.

Francis : 24:43

Definitely. I would definitely not recommend and I’ve seen that before where brands will come over in the first campaign they try to send out this open back campaign and you know, it’s one of those things I always ask myself why. Usually at that point it’s a great education opportunity. Explain them how Inbox Fridays are thinking you’re a new sender and they don’t know yet how to trust you or how to handle your mail. One thing that I always tell brands is it’s easier to fix your reputation than it’s easier to build new reputation. Because one thing I always get asked is people are like oh maybe our emails weren’t performing great in our old espn. We’re coming over to Klaviyo and we just want to start Fresh. So we’re thinking about buying a new domain. And I’m like, please, please, please don’t do that. There’s a couple reason. Like I was saying, it’s easier to rebuild your reputation. But the other thing is domain age does get taken into account in certain multipliers. Right. So you have this fresh, brand new domain. It’s like you could try everything you want, making sure you’re following best practices, but you could still run into issues. That’s just purely because the domain is so new. Right? Domain age is definitely something that I know even on our side of the house, on the compliance side of the house, we take into account as well. And the reason for that is because malicious actors, phishers, people who are trying to maybe do something fraudulent, a lot of times those domains don’t last long. And so seeing a very older domain or more established domain, those are positive signals right out of the gate.

Alissa: 25:59

Well, yeah, and I guess it just shows the longevity. It’s kind of like, I guess like credit, when these credit unions and stuff are like trying to determine how high your credit is, your credit age has a lot to do with it. So I guess it’s kind of the same with your domain is like the longer in use your domain is and kind of the more credit you have behind that domain and it just makes sense to improve it versus, like, well, we’ll just start from scratch and I’ll start with a zero credit score and work my way up kind of thing.

Francis : 26:24

Yeah, exactly.

Vira: 26:26

Let’s talk a bit more about those, like new accounts. What are the safest ways to build your email marketing list fast? Is it a good idea to say, buy a list when I’m just starting out with email marketing?

Francis : 26:40

Yeah. So the short answer is no. Explain why. I know I mentioned this before, so I’m going to answer it kind of from like two different points. One, the compliance side, Right. Depending on where you are in the world, it might just be illegal right out of the gate. Right? So last thing you want to obviously do is start off, you know, start off your new business in breaking the law. Right. That might not, you know, land for a long successful business. But besides that, a lot of ESPs, like Kladiyo for example, we won’t tolerate that. Right. I’ve had those hard discussions with brands saying, hey, our road has come to an end here because of ultimately deciding to buy a list. And it’s never fun. I don’t enjoy that part of my role. But it’s one of those things that it has to happen because when people are buying a list, you don’t know where these lists are coming from. There could be a spam trap in there that might cause a spam house listing and that impacts not just one brand, but all our brands on our shared restructuring. My primary goal is to try to help as many brands get into the inbox as we possibly can. And so one bad actor does not outweigh all our good actors. And then from the deliverability side of the house, think about that user experience. One thing I’ve been talking about a lot so far is user experience or listening to your community. And if you randomly got an email from a brand you don’t recognize, how are you going to respond? I know personally I’m going to and this is mostly because I’m in the email space. I’m going to either a really make sure I haven’t ever engaged with this brand. Right. Maybe I haven’t gone there once. I’m confident that I haven’t gone there. I’m going to mark it as spam. Right. And those are not good signals that you want when you’re first starting out. And those aren’t user experiences you want either. Right. Because that person who you might have purchased that list that could have been a real customer instead of them being like, hey, I love this brand, go check out xyz. Instead they’re like, hey, that person spammed me. Don’t go check out xyz.

Alissa: 28:27

And so that’s interesting. That’s so funny. Your job is kind of like, like Dr. Slash, like referee slash, like mayor slash, like community ambassador.

Francis : 28:40

Yeah.

Alissa: 28:40

World.

Francis : 28:41

Yeah, I’m good cop and bad cop.

Alissa: 28:44

That’s great. Yeah, right.

Vira: 28:47

Magician. Magician. Magician.

Alissa: 28:49

Sorry, Vira, I interrupted you. What were you.

Vira: 28:51

No, no, I was just like wondering what are the most. Most deliver. See, it happened. What are the most deliverability friendly ways to build your email list? Yeah, they’re healthy and fast as well.

Francis : 29:07

Yeah, that’s a great question. And this is one area that I’m trying to learn more on because I have a lot of knowledge around email deliverability and compliance and I’m starting to learn more around the marketing world. I guess one thing I think that’s huge is thinking kind of outside the box. Right. You know, one thing that I see a lot of brands do when they first kind of get started, depending on and obviously the brand E commerce. This might not work. But one that I’m a huge fan. One website I’m a huge fan of is Product Product Hunt. I think that’s what it is. I’m now drawing a blank where you can go and find like new products that are launching and you can engage with them. And a lot of these times these are made by people who are just a side project or maybe a weekend project or something that they’re just spending time ultimately to sit down and build. And that’s how I find a lot of great tools that. That’s how one tool that I love is. That’s how I found Notion. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Notion, but it’s. It’s kind of like a note taking and then trello all in one. It’s really nice. Huge fan of it. And that’s how I found them. But I found a lot of products there. But the other thing I think for E commerce at least is just when you’re starting out is ultimately just trying to figure out a way to. The biggest thing is ultimately driving traffic. And once you get that traffic there, maybe it’s from Facebook, Google Ads, Instagram, whatever it may be at that point, it’s just really just trying to convince them that what you’re doing or what you’re going to send them is going to be interesting. So whether it’s like I was talking about you have a cool story or you guys obviously have your podcast, I’ve seen a lot of brands explore into different territories with COVID they’re starting to join, maybe podcasts with other companies or brands like themselves. That’s one way to obviously get some spotlight on you. You can do. One thing that, that I know is very common in the E commerce space is giveaways. I love giveaways, but I think the biggest thing is depending on the platform. And I’ll say that. And the reason for that is some platforms, they really try to make sure it’s clear and transparent when people are checking out this giveaway that they’re going to be opting in. I’ve seen some where it’s like you got to individually check every brand that is on there. I love it from the compliance side and the deliverability side because it’s super transparent. So I think that’s a good way if you’re going to do it right. I. Yeah, this is one area that I definitely need to get more knowledge on. But I do apologize.

Vira: 31:17

We all do. That’s like the question that we keep getting from the clients and we were like, well, you can do the exit intent, the welcome series.

Francis : 31:26

Yeah.

Vira: 31:27

You know, but yeah, sign up forms are great creatives here.

Francis : 31:31

Yeah. That, that is one thing, right? Is you gotta be creative. You gotta, you gotta get people interested, right? That’s the biggest thing. Once you get them interested in your brand, that point is just really, just convincing them that hey, what you’re going to send them is what they expect to receive. And I think that’s like I was talking about is one thing I love is when I go to a website and they just give me the option of what I want to receive, right? So it’s like maybe just product launches or maybe it’s just sale, you know, sales, you know, stuff like that. Or you know, depending on where your brand does, you know, you could also think of something creative there. You know, for example, if you’re in like a health space, you could also maybe you know, send not just campaigns about your products but, but you know, maybe workout related stuff, right? Things like that.

Vira: 32:11

And I also noticed that this campaigns about the community perform really well. So like here is the story of our customer. For some reason this campaigns, oh my goodness, they perform like magic. Do you have any, do you have any brands that you’re like waiting to get in your, in your inbox? Like yeah, brands of your.

Francis : 32:34

I wouldn’t say necessarily brands. One and I try to like when it comes to like subscribing to like News Lizard and stuff like that, I’m very much so the type of person where I love to just hear, you know, read about promotions and hear about the story. That’s my big thing is I love to hear about the story of like how they got started. But my thing that I really love is really good email. I love that newsletter. Huge fan.

Alissa: 32:53

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vira: 32:54

They’re great.

Francis : 32:55

And you know, it’s not necessarily a brand but you know, they’re, you know, they’re talking about what’s going on in the industry, what, you know, what’s new, you know, maybe what ESP is, you know, put out this article or what brand has done this, et cetera. I don’t know. I love that website. I go there. I’m just like, wow, this is really creative content. As someone who does not have that skill set of making things look beautiful, it’s cool to see people who do.

Vira: 33:14

Right, Right. So there’s the really good emails that come or what’s the, is that the one you’re talking about? Yeah, I love them.

Francis : 33:22

Oh my gosh.

Vira: 33:22

I’m like, I’m, I’m opening like each and every email that they are sending.

Alissa: 33:28

Every single one. Like actually every single one. So Francis, just a Few more questions. So this has more to do with like, like list cleanup because this is something that we get asked a lot as well as like list hygiene, list cleanup and specifically for better deliverability. So are there like any kind of like strategies or tactics that you would say that we should start start going about with regards to how to clean the list and then I have a few follow up questions, but we’ll start with that one.

Francis : 33:57

Yeah. So one thing I am a huge fan of is so yes, you can definitely list clean, which is great. One thing I think is also really beneficial instead of list cleaning. Kind of like making sure who you send to is just always engaged. Right. And the reason for that is because when they stop becoming engaged, they’ll then exit that segment or at least with Klaviyo we call it segments. I don’t know what other email service providers might call it, but just like, like a dynamic list ultimately based off of behavior. Right. Obviously you’d build these to be engagement related behavior, but when it comes to how can I clean my list better? I think one thing I always see brands do or they think might help them is including criteria that maybe the inboxer. I just don’t see for example someone purchasing or stuff like that. One thing I always tell people is I myself, I have a lot of different emails. I have some that are just purely for really important crucial things that are dedicated to say my bank or my Amazon account. So if anything ever happens, I know if I’m getting a notification there, it’s not good potentially. And then I have emails that are just strictly for promotion related like my general email. Right. And I go into that email as much as I can, but not every single day. And so if someone purchases it doesn’t mean they’re necessarily engaged with your email. Right. Maybe email isn’t the right channel for them.

Alissa: 35:10

Right.

Francis : 35:10

Maybe that person prefers an sms. You know, that’s something that’s obviously starting to blow up more is SMS marketing. You know, like we were talking about, you know, before, it’s easier to re engage or retarget people who are have shown interest than it is to get new customers. Right?

Vira: 35:23

Right.

Francis : 35:23

Right. Maybe creating like a custom audience with Facebook and retargeting that person on there to drive them back to your website.

Alissa: 35:29

Gotcha.

Francis : 35:30

It’s a great option. But I think one of the biggest things is making sure you don’t include criteria that box provider might not see. Right. Just because someone purchases does not mean they want your emails. Right. They might just want your product, which I See all the time. And I’m myself as I’ve done that before where it’s just like, you know, I might not opt into your emails because, you know, I know it’s just like I’m buying this product once and I’m going feel to be done with it. For example, water bottle, right? It’s like I’m not going to buy a water bottle every month.

Alissa: 35:55

Right, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So how, how often would you say you typically need to clean your list?

Francis : 36:01

Yeah, I would say it’s. It depends on like your setup. Right. So I’ve seen some brands that will. And this is like, you know, like I was talking about is like, you know, if you’re more targeting the engage people first and then you have like a sunset flow and then at the end of the sunset flow, you that maybe go in there once a month and just suppress those people or remove them from the marketing side of the house and obviously make sure they still get the transactional. Right. Because if they do come back, you want to make sure they still get those crucial important emails that let them know that hey, your product’s on the way or whatever it may be. So I think generally what I recommend is customers to do it depending on the situation. Overall your performance is good maybe once a quarter, maybe once every couple months. But if you’re struggling with inbox placement or you’re struggling with open rates and maybe start to do it more frequent or like I was talking about, instead of, you know, doing list cleaning, just target more engaged people. That way it’s automated and you kind of just do it. Right. And like, you know, at least for Klaviyo, you know, you can have profiles in there that you might not have to communicate with, which is fine, right? Because you know, you might communicate them through another channel, right? Like SMS or push or whatever maybe.

Alissa: 37:07

So when it comes to. Okay, so like for example, with like a sunset flow or like when you are doing that cleanup, when it comes to like deleting versus suppressing accounts, what, what’s the recommendation? Like, what is that supposed to look like? Sometimes I personally find, anyways, I have a hard time explaining to clients what suppressing an account means and why we do that versus deleting it or so yeah, if you could provide some clarity on that, that would be huge.

Francis : 37:31

Yeah. For us, Klaviyo, right? You can have as many suppressed profiles as you want, right? We’re not going to charge you. What’s good about having suppressed profiles or deleted profiles is, is when you suppress them, we keep that data about them, their purchase history, maybe if they filled out a preference page, talking about their pet, or giving you their date of birth, birthday flow or something like that, we still have that data. So if they ever do decide to come back one day, maybe in a year or whatever it may be, you have that data so you don’t have to react to them again. It’s just a nicer user experience. But the other thing is that data might be useful for you in case something ever comes up where they’re like, hey, I opted out of this. Why am I still receiving your emails? I’ve had those situations many times and it’s because people, instead of suppressing them, they go and delete them and then maybe a resync happens or import happens, something’s new and they’re just making sure all the data is in the account so they import it again. Most people are now being brought back in, but if they were suppressed, they wouldn’t have been reactivated and they would have received those emails.

Vira: 38:25

I feel like people don’t always realize that, no, they are not paying for suppressed accounts. So that’s like a big one, right?

Francis : 38:33

Yeah, I think, at least for Klaviyo, I know that’s how we do it.

Vira: 38:36

I don’t know about other platforms, but I’m just like speaking about Klaviyo. Yeah.

Alissa: 38:40

So obviously you want to keep that data in the background for a suppressed account, but what’s the process of getting that account reactivated? Like, can you as the brand, do it on your own? In the back end is the. Does the suppressed account have to actually go out and do it? How does that work?

Francis : 38:53

It depends on what they’re suppressed for, I guess you’d say. Right. With Klaviyo, again, speaking for context, a profile can become suppressed for. For a wide range of reasons. Right. Marked as spam, for example, unsubscribed manually suppress. Like for example, you going in there and doing it yourself. Depending on the reason the user might be able to do it. For example, if it’s an unsubscribe, the user, the marketer, like the Klaviyo account owner can do it or the user themselves can do it who unsubscribed by just resubscribing for marked as spam or hard bounce. Those take someone on our team to do it. And the reason we have that kind of safeguard is just in case something happens. Right. For example, typically when it comes to a marked as spam, it’s obviously that’s A bad signal. Same with the hard bounce. That’s saying the email’s no longer existing. And so we kind of have safeguards there and that’s just mostly to protect our reputation and our customers reputation for soft bounces. For example, inbox full stuff like that. A user can go in there and remove that suppression.

Vira: 39:46

Cool. Well, I mean I have like a gazillion more questions. Will not have enough time to ask them all. But thank you so much. Actually my notebook is like full of guys good notes and ideas like that to implement with some of my clients and thank you so much for coming, Francis. Yeah, honestly, honestly super helpful.

Francis : 40:10

Honestly, it was my pleasure. I loved it. I was super nervous and I still am. So if that comes through, I, I am sorry.

Alissa: 40:17

No, don’t be nervous. We’re nervous to talk to you because you’re like the ultimate Klaviyo, like deliver milk that we’re like.

Francis : 40:27

But no, it was great chatting with both of you and you know, I’m excited to see you guys keep growing and you know, I’m excited to see us keep growing too. But you know, if anything comes up, definitely don’t hesitate to reach out to me. If you know, if you get any good follow up questions and you want to get those answered, definitely don’t hesitate. You know, I’m here to help. I love talking to the community, I love helping people.

Vira: 40:46

Where people can find you actually if they have any follow up questions.

Francis : 40:49

I’d probably say the best channel is LinkedIn. I’m very active on there. You know, if you just look up Francis Baker, probably the only one that works at Klaviyo that I know of. So if I have someone else there, I got to talk to someone. LinkedIn, you know, is probably the best place.

Alissa: 41:02

Okay, awesome. And we’ll include a Link for your LinkedIn in the description box of the, of the podcast so people can click through and everything. So. And guys, just as a kind of reminder. So Francis is like the king of deliverability when at, at Klaviyo and it’s a relatively smaller department but it’s grown over time and, and he’s still kind of the, the big cheese over there. So definitely a really good resource and good reference point. If you do have questions and if you’re interested in finding out more about Klaviyo and like deliverability and you’re working with another ESP and you want to hop on. He’s definitely a great person to reach out to as I’m sure you’ve, you’ve heard. In the goodness in his voice. So definitely, definitely reach out. Definitely reach out. Guys, as always, thank you so much for listening this episode. We’d like to give a very special shout out to a team that’s based out of Greenville, South Carolina. I actually had the pleasure of meeting them last week at the UNSPAM conference. Difference from really good emails. It was a lot of fun. So Robbie and Avena and your whole team down there in Greenville, this episode is for you guys. We hope that you continue listening. Thank you guys for being such awesome fans. It was so cool meeting you guys. If you guys want to look them up. Robbie Fitzwater, he’s actually an MBA professor over at Clemson University. Super, super cool guy. Very, very knowledgeable. He made this funny, like, metaphor about email marketing when we met him where he was like, email marketing within the digital marketing world is kind of like the guy that your parents wanted you to date in high school, right? He’s not that sexy, but he’s pretty nerdy. But he has like a really good future ahead of him. Whereas like social media marketing and other forms of digital media marketing are like the cool, edgy like leather jacket wearing stud who rides a motorcycle and stuff, who you’re like, well, he’s a bad boy. I have to date him. But in reality, you always end up with the nerd from high school who does really well in life. So just remember that. Remember that nugget.

Vira: 42:55

And thanks to us, Robbie, because I this so much.

Alissa: 42:57

Hilarious. Hilarious. Hilarious. And as always, don’t forget to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends. Make sure that you leave a review. If you like what we do, go to flowium.com/socks if you take a screenshot of the review that you left us, we will mail you some socks to your home. I’m actually sitting in front of a giant pile of Flowium socks. Would you believe it? So they’re here, ready to be mailed out. We’re just waiting for people to go ahead and submit their review. And then just as a quick reminder, we are currently and actively hiring for project managers here at Flowium. So if you maybe aren’t necessarily as passionate about email marketing as Vira and I, but you feel like you could get there or you want to really dive into a career that is really exciting, especially within the digital marketing world. Make sure that you Visit us at flowium.com/career and check out the role. See if you think you’d be a good fit and apply. We’d love to have you join our team.

Vira: 43:49

Yay. And next week we will be talking not just about email, but also about sms. That sexy leather jacket thing or whatever. Yeah. So next week we will be talking about SMS and top three SMS automations you have to set up in 2022, so come back next Tuesday. We’ll see you there.

Alissa: 44:11

See you then.