GUEST!! 🚫 The Truth About "SPAM WORDS" in Subject Lines w/ZeroBounce COO Brian Minick | Ep. 473

0:01Jay Schwedelson:Welcome to Do This, Not That, the podcast for marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. We are back for Do This, Not That, and we have a repeat guest. You know when a guest is great, when we bring them back, because we almost never do that. Who do we have? We have Brian Minnick, who's the chief operating officer at Zero Bounce. Now, Brian won't say this about himself, but I will. First of all, Zero Bounce, the reason I asked Brian to come back is the basics of email performance, getting in the inbox, not going to the junk folder or spam folder, deliverability.

0:43Jay Schwedelson:Everybody's always trying to figure out what they got to do. And Brian, he's a super technical dude because he oversees the fact that Zero Bounce helps hundreds of thousands of companies with better email validation, better email deliverability. But the reason Brian's cool is that he's normal. Usually get a tech person on here. They're like a big nerd. I don't know what they're talking about. They use big words. I don't understand. But Brian, while he knows the words, he doesn't use them because he knows I'm very simple minded. So we're going to break it all down here. He's awesome. Brian, welcome to the show.

1:13Brian Minick:Thanks, Jay. I'm excited to be back and I'll keep all geek terminology off to the side here today.

1:19Jay Schwedelson:so it sounds good by the way just i mean we didn't talk about this i'm just curious right out of the gate are you like star trek or star wars or are you neither because you're not that

1:27Brian Minick:big of a whatever i'm neither because i'm much more into stupid comedy movies that like step brothers bridesmaids that just allow me to actually escape so i i i uh i can't say i'm good into the star trek and star world star wars world that's my wife for sure do we just become

1:47Jay Schwedelson:best friends. Okay. That was my stepbrothers thing. So there you go. Anyway, so let's jump into it here. I want to get into dispelling some myths about email deliverability. I want to tell everyone some table stakes things. Everybody's out there is like, okay, I don't think my emails are all going to the inbox the way they should. I think a lot are going to spam. I think it's because of this reason or that reason. And usually people get it wrong. So when someone comes to you and says, hey, I have 100 % deliverability, I'm crushing it. Or hey, my deliverability is terrible, what's going on? What are the basics that you kind of dig into that everybody needs to know?

2:28Brian Minick:Yeah. So number one, 100 % of anything, not possible. So if you think you're 100 % in the inbox, I can, with certainty, tell you, you're wrong, unless you're sending emails to yourself, and only to yourself, like you send one email. So if you send mail in any sort of size, thousands of messages, hundreds of thousands of messages, you will definitely be in spam folders at some point. And this can be due to just user behavior. So if they have marked you as spam or if, you know, we're G Suite, I use G Suite and Gmail. If you hit mark spam, it then says, do you want to also block this person? And if you say yes, it doesn't actually block the message.

3:05Brian Minick:It throws it in the spam folder. So you can, you know, have even just individual users that can change the behavior of where your mail ends up going. But the aggregate of those signals can really start to influence what's happening on that network. And so it is definitely important to understand 100 % is not possible. And what you want to achieve is maximum capability of being in the inbox. And you definitely want to be shooting for 98 % and above. And this can be done, but it's not easy and it does require some work and it requires some effort to make sure that you're doing the right things.

3:42Jay Schwedelson:All right. I want to ask you a series of true, false questions related to deliverability. And I want you to answer true, false, and then maybe give you one or two sentences afterwards that support whether it is true or false. Okay. About deliverability. Okay. Sounds good. Okay. True or false. That if I put words like free in the subject line, that there are certain words, if I put in my email subject line, it will cause me to go to the junk folder more by using those words.

4:09Brian Minick:Totally false. Now, there are some words, I want to say that there are some words that we probably all know, that should not be used. And it's not going to be those free or marketing type catchwords, they're going to be more words that are adult type words, these type of things. But no, absolutely not. That's not going to do it. Now, if you overdo it, you put it all over the place, and you do it 100 times, maybe. But generally speaking, no, that's not going to put you in the spam folder.

4:34Jay Schwedelson:All right. Everyone stop believing that you can't put words in the subject lines. All right. Next one. Is it true that if I get unsubscribes, even really mean unsubscribes, this will hurt my deliverability and this is the reason I'm going to the spam folder?

4:51Brian Minick:This is false as well. And actually unsubscribes send positive signals towards your deliverability because it actually means someone opened and clicked. So just because they're not unsubscribed, this is why I preach this. Don't make it impossible for people to unsubscribe. You are doing yourself more harm than good because if they don't want your email and they can't unsubscribe, they will mark you as spam. And that is way worse than an unsubscribe any day of the week. So no, that is not going to put you in the spam folder. What it can do is do it on that user. So it can have some influence on that user, but no,

5:26Jay Schwedelson:it's not going to hurt your deliverability and unsubscribes are okay okay true or false my emails are going into the promotions tab and i want to get out of the promotions tab because that's a bad place for my emails to go uh should i try to get out of the promotions tab true and false is

5:48Brian Minick:my answer it depends so uh if you don't want to be in the promotions tab don't send a promotion that's that's step one if you want to be in the promotions tab send a promotion because that's what people are looking in that tab for i don't think there's a problem with that if i'm looking for sales and i'm in the promotions tab what's the problem that's exactly what i signed up to look for so i don't think that's necessarily the issue uh where i think people are trying to game this system is they want to send their promotions and get them into the inbox and i think that's really, that might be the false part where you want people to, people want more visibility in the inbox, but also just bear in mind that the providers want to put the mail where the user would expect to receive it with the mindset of clicking something.

6:33Brian Minick:So I think they're doing their job there and people are too offended by this promotions folder. Okay.

6:40Jay Schwedelson:Now this one, a hot take here. I want to know true or false. My deliverability stinks. So what we're doing as a company, we're going to switch to another email sending provider, another platform, and that's going to solve our problems because it's going to be a new thing. True or false?

6:56Brian Minick:Ooh, this is a tough one to answer on a binary level. Let me stay non-technical here. Maybe. So you can have bad infrastructure on an ESP or your sending platform and migrating can help you. It can hurt you as well if you don't do it the right way. So the quality of that infrastructure and the reputation of that previous system to the new one can definitely play a role in what happens in the future, both good and bad. So here's the how you get around this. Here's how you fix this. You keep both systems running for a small period of time, maybe 60 days and attempt to use both at the same time and a b test that now if that's too technical here jay i'm not sure that anything i say today will resonate but if you can keep both of those systems running for let's say 30 to 60 days which you're gonna need to kind of do anyway uh try sending half and half off each of those esps and get an idea on the performance and that will give you a much better inclination what's going to happen okay i want to try to see if you

8:05Jay Schwedelson:You can explain something in the least technical way possible that I think impacts people's deliverability, email deliverability, and they don't know that they're doing it, which is if you are a relatively small marketer, maybe your database size is 50 ,000 names, okay? And you're sending out on whatever platform you're sending out on, and you're sending out on a dedicated IP address as opposed to a shared IP address. And that in and of itself, in my opinion, could be the root cause of your problem because you're not sending out enough. you can't generate enough engagement, all these weird things that it's going to get weirdly technical.

8:40Jay Schwedelson:Can you explain to everybody why it's important for them to know if they're sending out on a shared IP or a dedicated IP and what the impact about the good and bad about both are in the least technical, non-boring, nerdy way possible? Sure.

8:57Brian Minick:So the shared IP, just to define this means that you are on a IP address that is being sent, mail is being sent out of from lots of organizations. So meaning that you and maybe 50 other companies are sending mail. And the downside of that is the impact of those, let's just say 49 other companies may hinder your ability and your deliverability if they are sending bad email or they're a bad sender or things of this nature. So where dedicated IPs come into play and definitely can help is if you are a good sender and you want to make sure you don't have outside influence that's impacting your deliverability, meaning and outside of your control, you don't get to control who's on that shared IP.

9:44Brian Minick:Dedicated IP is definitely the way to go. And for most good senders, I would highly recommend you be on a dedicated IP to improve your deliverability. Okay. You don't agree with me. You don't have to agree with me, that's for sure. But what we can say and where I can kind of say with certainty is that you have full control of your own dedicated IPs, whereas the shared environment, anything can happen and you really don't have any control over what's happening with it and you don't know who the culprit is. So the only thing, if you have a problem, here's why I don't like it. If you have a problem, you can only go to your ESP and complain to them and then hopefully they do something if you have your own ip address you know what that ip address is and you can go to bat with the people you have a problem with so that's kind of uh one of the big difference you have much more control with a dedicated ip all right can i ask you a question though because

10:37Jay Schwedelson:you're the deliverability guy i'm not so this is what my thought process has been and then you can tell me why i'm wrong and i will trust you so first off for everybody out there when you send out an email, your email is going out through some form of an IP address, a set of numbers. Okay. It is this mechanism where your email is actually going out into the universe. And this idea of being on a dedicated IP address where you're the only sender, the only marketer whose email goes out via that set of numbers is a dedicated IP address. I like shared IP addresses, and you'll tell me why I'm wrong.

11:11Jay Schwedelson:Because if you're a relatively small sender, right, you got 50 ,000 names on your list and you send out an email maybe once or twice a month or whatever, you are not generating a lot of engagement. So it's hard just to have the only traffic on that IP address be whatever mail that you're sending out. Now, if you're using a reputable sending platform, one of the big sending platforms, and they stick you on a shared IP address, So now that you're sharing the same sending mechanism as like 50 other marketers, right? And this is a really rapid little platform. And these 50 other marketers are doing good stuff and they're generating a lot of engagement.

11:51Jay Schwedelson:Then when you send out, you get to piggyback on their back because you're on a shared IP address. I always felt that you have a greater likelihood of going into the inbox if you are sending out on a shared IP range as opposed to a dedicated one if you're not a big marketer.

12:10Brian Minick:So it's an interesting take on it. And you're not wrong, where I would argue is 50 ,000 to me is not so minuscule that you can't build reputation. Now, if you told me 50, 100, okay, that's not enough traffic to really even warrant having a dedicated IP address, and I would agree with you. But$50 ,000 is plenty to establish and kind of get sending reputation on it. And as long as you stick to your patterns, your behaviors, you know, you send mail this time of day, these days of the week, these type of things, you shouldn't really have any issues with it. It also doesn't make financial sense for really small businesses to go towards a dedicated IP address because there's a cost associated to it.

12:51Brian Minick:But$50 ,000, I would definitely argue, you know, you should consider it, especially if you're having problems. That's really where you might be able to make that decision after the fact, and that's okay. But an IP address can make or break your deliverability. And me personally, I'd rather have control over that to be able to say the good and bad of it rather than rely on that third party to make me feel good. The one other part, which I just want to say, is we have absolutely seen once a sender maybe does something wrong and tarnishes reputation on that IP, and this can be you as the client, the one who's sending the marketing, that the ESP can actually downgrade you into a lower tier IP address.

13:38Brian Minick:behind the scenes. You'll never even know this took place. And that's going to absolutely impact your deliverability. So the question they take as a business is, do I still want this person's money? Well, yeah, because I need it for the ESP and I want that. But do I want to put them with my infrastructure of really, really high quality people? No. So let's downgrade there where they might be. And that will happen. You'll never have a clue that took place.

14:03Jay Schwedelson:So for everybody out there who just was like, wow, the last five minutes of this show were really boring. I don't know what they were talking about. What is important to take out of this? If you're like, I don't even know if I'm on a shared IP or a dedicated IP. That in and of itself is very important for you to know and to check in with your platform and to get a baseline understanding of it. Because if you're having deliverability issues or they're whatever, that could be one of the reasons why. And I think that you need everybody out there um needs to consider that um all right brian so i'm curious before we run out of time here so you don't watch star trek or star wars but i clearly established everybody now knows you are a nerdy dude i mean you the last five minutes proves it what nerd things do you actually do if you don't follow the normal path of star trek and star wars wow

14:56Brian Minick:I'm really gonna embarrass myself here. I think what I were probably my bad habit is that what we're going to talk about here? What's my bad habit? I don't know.

15:05Jay Schwedelson:I just feel like what do you go at home and do you have like a tattoo of like the Pythagorean theorem or something? I don't know.

15:11Brian Minick:Oh my god, that's hilarious. No, I'm much more not that that nerdy. I think it's just aimless scrolling on social media, probably like the other people would be the the the bad habit that I would probably consider i don't think tv is a bad habit just to be clear but no i don't really watch tv i'm trying to watch the olympics but man bobsledding is just not that exciting wow so you

15:31Jay Schwedelson:know things like that wow you're just not a nerdy guy for everybody out there i'm gonna get hate on star trek star wars i like both okay i'm way more star trek than star wars a thousand times over so uh because all the new star wars after uh uh return of the jedi i forget it they're all terrible um very very important topic here that we're covering um so i did like mandalorian i will

15:55Brian Minick:say that and so i have i do watch star wars but and i watched the mandalorian can't say i loved it it was all right uh but i like future stuff techie techie kind of routes there so that's

16:06Jay Schwedelson:that's where it was so all right everybody what brian's company zero bounce does is pretty wild and they have a lot of free stuff and access to stuff so brian do it do a commercial here hit everybody up with how they should get consumed in your world and what they can get access to.

16:21Brian Minick:Yeah, sure. So like Jay said, we help so many people that do email marketing and we were founded because we have companies, sister companies that we came from, which are email senders that needed help with tools. They were having issues with deliverability. They were having issues with bad data. And so that's how Zero Bounce was founded. So we help people clean up the email, their email list and the data. We're the data cleaner uppers of the email world. And on top of that, we also offer a bunch of free tools that are very powerful to know if you're in the inbox or spam folder and some different technical tests that you can run, blacklist monitoring, things of that nature, and also email warmup.

16:57Brian Minick:So if you are a new sender or you are migrating or you're on a dedicated IP and don't have enough traffic, you can use tools like warmup to help boost, repair, and establish reputation on your domain. So our goal is to get you in the inbox. Inbox is where the ROI is. Inbox is what really is going to make your campaigns make money.

17:17Jay Schwedelson:Listen, we're going to put it all in the show notes. But first off, you can go to zerobounce.net. They're incredible. Find Brian on LinkedIn. We'll put his info in the show notes as well. He's a really great dude. Just hit up, ask questions too. He's super accessible. He's awesome. And I've been, he didn't ask me to say this, but I've been a longtime Zero Balance customer. I'm a huge fan of what they're doing over there and they're good people. So appreciate you, Brian, man. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me, Jay.

18:12Jay Schwedelson:for cancer research. Go on Amazon, buy stupider people that have done it. That way you can help kick cancer's butt with me. And if this podcast wasn't the worst podcast you've ever listened to, it might have been, leave it a review, follow the show. You are awesome. Go out there and crush it.