[Limited Series]🥫SPAMAGEDDON🥫 11 Email Deliverability Hacks You Need Now 📬 | Ep. 360

0:05Welcome to Spamageddon. This is a special five part crossover series between the email after hours podcast and the Do This Not That podcast. We're going to keep these short. They're going to be fun. They're going to be awesome. We're teaming up to help marketers battle the ultimate inbox apocalypse. Is your email program doomed or can you survive the invasion of spam filters, block lists, and dwindling engagement? In this special series, we're going to bust myths, drop truth bombs, and give you the tips you need to survive the deliverability doomsday. All right, so your host, you got me, Jay Schwettlson from the Guru Media Hub and the Do This Not That podcast.

0:42And I'm Guy Hanson. I'm VP of Customer Engagement at Validity and co-host of our Email After Hours podcast. And I'm Danielle Gallant, also of Validity and Guy's Better Half on the Email After Hours podcast. We are back for Spamageddon, and this one is going to be awesome. This is the kitchen sink. we have danielle we have guy two of the greatest deliverability people on the planet and they are going to rip through so fast 10 tips about deliverability and stuff that everybody needs to know but before we get into this okay we're going to play our 10 second game so at the start of every spammageddon we play you have 10 seconds where i ask danielle and i ask guy two completely ridiculous questions that have no meaning in life at all and they each have to answer them and they're awesome are you both ready to do this yes yes i love it all right guy you are first here we go here we go this is very exciting guy you have 10 seconds name three words that mean something totally different in the uk versus the us table as in let's table this motion um and then i'll get the obvious ones just in terms of spelling you know our aluminium is your aluminum and oh i'm blanking on this one wait a minute i want to know about like what how do you say aluminum aluminium it has an extra i in it wow i love that can i please raise my hand and then use this as a credit toward my own horrible tense guy pants pants yeah or french fries chips no but they're they're they're the same thing i think what you are asking for is the same word which means completely different things and uh but doesn't pants i know the clock's ticking but i remember at a very early stage when i joined return path and we sat in a meeting where we violently disagreed with each other because you know the more somebody is saying you know let's table this discussion and i'm understanding it's let's put it on the table and talk about it now of course my u.s colleagues are going let's save it for another day and it took a while for us to realize that we were talking about different things what's the old saying two countries divided by common language oh i like that i'm gonna i like the aluminium or whatever the hell you said i'm gonna try to say that vibranium in uh marvel all right let's get into danielle are you ready for your question yes i'm ready you got this i feel like you got this here it is okay danielle you have 10 seconds name three songs that danielle would sing in a karaoke bar tequila it's one word lots of it um anything by the backstreet boys and the ghostbusters theme song i think ghostbusters that's the most random karaoke song of all time you were if i was at a bar and they go and now danielle's gonna sing ghostbusters i'd be like what you'd be thoroughly impressed don't lie come on i mean it would be one and done i've never heard that before but this episode's also one and done this is going to be amazing we're about to get into the kitchen sink 10 tips about deliverability that everybody will put this in the show notes because we're going to go through this so fast there's gonna be so much information so i'm going to toss it over guy you ready to start crushing these one after another yeah who are you gonna call

4:29all right ray parker jr are you ready okay here we go guy let's go okay so my first deliverability tip for 2025 i think we've spoken a couple of times on these episodes about the new sender requirements gmail yahoo introduced one of those was to publish a dmoc record to authenticate yourself as a valid sender. We won't go too deep into this, but DMARC comes with a policy, none, quarantine or reject. It's an instruction to the mailbox providers on what to do if they identify malicious email. Vast majority of senders went for the P equals none. It basically means, okay, we published the record, but do nothing, even if we see non-compliant emails.

5:14Fraudsters have already identified P equals none as a weakness, and they are attacking domains where P equals none has been published. In my mind, it's only a matter of time before Gmail and Yahoo particularly make it a mandatory requirement to beef up DMARC using a policy of quarantine or reject. Don't wait. And then it becomes a panic. You know, start putting some steps in place to make it happen now. I'm up next. And I'm going with another item related to those sender requirements from Gmail and Yahoo. That's about spam complaints. So even though Gmail and Yahoo have said 0.3 % spam complaint is a maximum, that is really, really generous.

6:05What senders want to do is keep their spam complaint rates below 0.1%. So if you're at that 0.3, odds are you are already going to be having deliverability issues. So the lower your spam rates can go, the better. 100%. My next one, guess what? We spend a lot of time reading the mailbox provider email best practices documents because we're email nerds. And it's important because you know what? Today's best practices seem to have a regular habit of becoming tomorrow's mandates. And if you read the guidelines from Gmail, Yahoo, Apple, they all strongly recommend using double opt in. So, you know, your subscriber signs up, you send them an email, you go cool, that's me and then you're live.

6:55They all strongly recommend that as the approved sign up mechanism. And again, I can see a future state where that becomes one of their mandatory requirements to don't wait for it, your programs is going to perform better because of the tighter consent anyway. Jay, I feel like you had strong feelings or had a question about double opt-in. I'm not a fan of double opt-in. I know that that sounds ridiculous because what Guy just said makes a lot of sense and it's 100 % true. I think the problem is that so many people get left in limbo. They don't think to go and actually double opt-in and they want to be on that list.

7:31They just asked to be on that list. And then marketers don't know to do with this portion of their database of people that opted in that said they want to do that thing. And then the people are left out because they just did opt in. So it's this awkward land of limbo. And so that bothers me a lot. But again, that might be an episode for another time because I'd love to go back. Yeah, I think we should table this conversation. I love it. I love it. All right, Danielle, go for it. All right. We're going to go to the next one, which is about data hygiene and making sure that your program is protected.

8:03So protecting your email list, your subscriber list from bot attacks and bad addresses. A good relationship and good deliverability starts right at the point of acquisition, how you're getting those subscribers, who's allowed to come in. So implement a multi-part strategy for your acquisition that includes, sorry, Jay, by double opt in, maybe address validation. So you are ruling out typos or anything like a role address if you don't want that. Captcha is cheap or free sometimes, and it's an easy way to get rid of bad addresses. And there are lots of additional security requirements. So definitely protect your sign up form.

8:47Tip number five, delete those dormants. I think Gmail and Yahoo particularly are actively deleting old dormant accounts. So, you know, that has an impact on your email programs. Make sure you're excluding all subscribers who have not engaged with their emails for 12 plus months. And it's going to have a positive impact on your deliverability. My next one is it's going to feel like a retread, but it's cut out the complaints. But I should say complainers. So we already know and we've talked about why it's important to keep complaint rates low. But those subscribers who mark your message as spam, you want to remove them from ever receiving any other mail from you.

9:30Because odds are if they think you're spam now, they're going to keep marking you as junk moving forward. So there is something called a feedback loop or an FBL that everybody should be enrolled in. The mailbox providers do it differently. differently. Your ESP can help you with this. And validity. Validity operates a universal feedback loop. So make sure you're taking advantage of feedback loops to get those complainers off your list. Definitely. Now, on a previous episode, we talked about Gmail annotations. This is some functionality that Gmail offers in the promotions tab to expose things like code snippets or your preferred image directly into the inbox, which is great.

10:13The only challenge is that they are now using AI to auto insert annotation schemas to emails that aren't already using it. And the problem is they might identify a code snippet or an image which you as the sender didn't really want them to use. So best way to overcome that is implement annotations and then you're going to have full control over what content is shown in the Gmail promotions tab when your emails are delivered. And I have some really bad examples like horror stories where senders didn't define annotations and now Gmail is pulling up just like the completely irrelevant stuff or images from that email.

10:53So totally. Yeah. Hey, you know, go and have a look at this expired offer. Yeah. So charming. Next one, anticipate AI generated summaries. So in Apple, even if it's not completely rolled out yet, if you're using the native mail app, And even if you're not, it's going to be more widespread than that. Preview text, so that pre-header that takes up a nice piece of real estate in the mailbox, it's going to be replaced by AI generated summary. So senders really need to start adopting SEO principles to ensure that the right content is being summarized and presented. And be aware of your alt text for the images in your emails.

11:34because if you're using recycled or old images that have completely random names, even that text can be pulled into your summary. For your bulk sends, don't schedule them to start at the top of the hour, because everybody does it and the mailbox providers hate it. Marcel at Yahoo told us that 70 % of all the inbound traffic that Yahoo processes arrives in the first 10 minutes of every hour. So it creates constraints for processing capacity and bandwidth and that has an impact on your deliverability. So offset the start time of your broadcast, you're going to face less competition and you are far more likely to reach your customers' inboxes.

12:16Accessibility. I can't believe we're still talking about this and yet 90 % of marketing emails still contain critical or serious issues that exclude customers that have an accessibility need. So it means reduced engagement and more spam complaints. Get on that, everybody. Definitely. Feels like we've spent the last three years talking about artificial intelligence, but not a huge amount of conversation about new AI legislation, but it's coming. In some cases, it's already here. And I think now's a great time for senders to be doing things like revisiting the legal basis that you're using to process personal data Evaluate the risk levels that your AI use creates and make sure you're updating your privacy policies and your user preferences so that you've got all of your ducks in a row and your boxes are ticked as that legislation starts to become effective wherever you are.

13:16And the last one, the last one in this kitchen sink, get recognized. Imagine you're on LinkedIn. You're one of those people on LinkedIn. You don't have a picture. That's kind of what it's like if you're not taking advantage of BIMI, Apple Business Connect, VMCs. You want to associate your logo with your mail in the mailbox. So making sure that your logo is trusted, available. You've got that blue checkmark that everybody recognizes as a sign of legitimacy. It just proves that you're a trusted sender and your subscribers are going to be happy about it. This was an awesome list. I just was taking notes.

13:54I just learned so much. And for all the listeners out there, you may be like, oh my God, I'm doing everything wrong. This is overwhelming. It could feel like a lot. Here's what I don't think a lot of people realize. You're sending platform that you're on. It doesn't matter which one you're on. They're on your team. They want you to have good engagement. You're on their pipes. You're on their IPs. You're on their infrastructure. They want you to be a client and they want your money, but they also need you to do a good job because the reputation of what you're doing impacts the entire ecosystem for their entire platform.

14:23and you need to push your provider. You need to reach out to them, set up calls with them, say, I don't understand all this stuff. What does it all mean? And if you don't get the right answer, go further, ask them for an internal consultant. And if they won't do that, they won't help you. That is a telltale sign you're on the wrong platform because they are on your team. And also, of course, check out validity because validity are the pros in terms of deliverability. So if your platform doesn't know it, no joke, and Guy and Danielle did not ask, me to do this, but Validity are the leaders in the space.

14:57And also listen to email after hours. It's an incredible podcast and you can check out Do This Not That. And let us know if you like this series, Spamageddon. Should we keep it going? Should we do more Spamageddon? Who knows? Drop us DMs, leave us messages, leave us comments. Danielle, Guy, this has been a blast. What do you want to say? Keep those complaint rates down. There it is. How do you listen to email after hours let's do it all right we'll see you later all right later that's a wrap on this episode of spamageddon but the battle for the inbox never ends if you love this crossover chaos you got to tune in the next time and make sure to subscribe to email after hours podcast it is one of my favorites and also check out do this not that podcast from marketers It is a blast.

15:44We'll see you at the next episode.