Edward Ma

I understand why some senders have poor email deliverability. It's because they believe in the "myths" that are no longer true. Here are my 5 favorite myths I hear often and what to think instead: 1. Promotions Tab is a bad folder to be in So, what do people do? Find ways to "trick" the system and get themselves into the Primary tab. But, really, the Promotions tab is where you belong. That's how it is designed - so that all marketing and promotions can be in one spot for any intentional shoppers to browse the folder. Embrace it and know that users go into that tab to engage with brand emails. Trying to take a shortcut like using "fake engagement" services could cause some real challenges. 2. Your content and subject lines can move your email to the inbox "If I change one small thing in my subject line, will it go into the inbox?" NO! Your deliverability is like a balance scale. How is a few peanuts going to balance with an elephant? That means you've been doing something for a while that this just factored into the spam filtering. It's more about your reputation with the mailbox provider and your audience activity. So, make that change first and then see if you send enough positive signals for them to change the algorithms. 3. "Delivered" means the inbox Wrong. Delivered means that your email message made it into the ether and through the mailbox providers' gates. That doesn't mean that it landed within the inbox. If your message was undelivered, then you may have a data issue like inactive addresses, mailbox full or even a block. The best way to take look at the situation is by pull the raw bounce codes provided by the mailbox providers. 4. DMARC, DKIM, and SPF passed, so I'm in the inbox. It's a requirement from the mailbox providers to have those already. If it's required, that doesn't mean that you are getting into the inbox. Authentication is to help your domain not get spoofed because the emails are legitimately coming from your brand. That doesn't ensure your emails are landing in the spam folder. 5. Unsubscribes are a negative signal It's a positive signal. Why? It indicates that the customer may not be interested in your content anymore. That's okay - you are cutting the fat off and keeping only the quality meat (or subscribers). This helps to increase your deliverability and overall engagement. I mean, would you want to keep sending food to a table that is just going to spit on it and throw it away? Nope. So, don't waste your resources and just send the good stuff to the people who actually want it. btw, if you are not honoring their decision to unsubscribe from your email list, it's against CANSPAM laws and Google's compliance dashboard. You'll get in trouble. Don't get in trouble. So, the more you educate yourself and your email marketing team on the truths of the industry, you'll actually get better results and more revenue. What's your favorite email myth?

Thanks Kit! They are right! It's about visibility and trust within the emails, so if Gmail or Yahoo sees that your links are hidden using these services, it could cause them to flag it as spam. It's not to hurt you or your company. It's to protect their users and recipients from clicking any false or fraud links. You never know who sends these links via email. So, if your team is doing this, stop for your own sake. #emailmarketing #emaildeliverability

If you have a bad email reputation, here is what you should do… Kind of this “clean slate” or “new leaf” or whatever you want to use. #emaildeliverability

New to email marketing? Audience segmentations can seem a bit overwhelming... (Save this for later and share this with a new email marketer) Segmentations: Ways to organize and group the specific subscriber groups based on their interests, behavior, location, and whatever else you know about them. Like opens, clicks, purchases, webtraffic, replies, etc. VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: Just because they've opened your email within X time, doesn't mean they actually did. Do your research and understand that Google Proxy Opens and Apple MPP have caused the open rate to become less reliable. (It pretty much made Gmail and iCloud opens rates bigger than they actually are) So, back to the topic. Segmentations help your email program to send emails to a more active and unique group. For example: If you are trying to send an email newsletter to people in Chicago who has opened or clicked an email within the last 30 days, you can. Or, a thank you email to every person who has clicked on an email and purchased one of your hand carved soaps, you can. That's the purpose of segmentation. It's targetting the email so that you aren't just throwing 100,000 knives until you hit one. It's a very strong tool that can be used for your benefit as an email sender. Here's the thing: If you aren't utilizing the segmentation feature within your email provider, you are likely going to deal with some deliverability challenges one way or another. Sending to your full email list will probably bring you lower engagement, high spam complaints, or blocks. You aren't targetting. You are guessing. The more information that you are get from them like a preference center or survey, the more targetted you can be. That's the recommendation. So, keep testing and keep documenting what works for your audience. If you like this, don't forget to follow Edward Ma 🐣 for more email marketing and deliverability content.

If you aren't following the updated best practices for email marketing, your chance of being spam filtered/blocked is extremely high... Here's why: Email filters are always changing and updating. This is because every software and tool needs to improve in order to be effective, efficient, and protect its users. If you are still sending bulk emails to your full email list from the past 6 years, the mailbox providers like Gmail and Yahoo are probably seeing weak signals from your program. Thus, causing the spam filtering. We don't want that for you. So, instead, be sure to read up on the most updated news. I've included some of my recommended articles in the comments below. Stay educated and apply the lessons to your email program.

What NOT to do in email marketing: Lie or trick your recipients into opening and clicking on your email. This is a legal violation against CANSPAM. It reminds me of the Old Navy class action lawsuit that happened because of subject lines that contain false or misleading information, particularly regarding fake "limited-time" sales that are repeatedly extended. People don't want to be tricked. They will mark your email as spam. Your brand reputation definitely gets smeared with mud.

Ever seen this in Google Postmaster Tools Compliance Dashboard? 🚨 Honor Unsubscribe: "Needs Work — Remove users from mailing lists within 48 hours of receiving unsubscribe requests. This indicates that those who unsubscribed might still be getting your mail. (That's a CANSPAM violation) If Google is telling you your unsubscribe mechanism is broken, here is the exact step-by-step instruction checklist to diagnose, fix, and properly verify it: Step 1: Audit Your Mail Headers Just because you have an unsubscribe link in the footer or header of your email text does not mean you are compliant with Google's one-click rules. Google looks strictly at your technical email headers and sees if there were/are any signals of unsubscribed users continuing to receive mail from your program. 1. Send a test email from your system to a personal Gmail account. Click "Show Original" in Gmail and search for these two headers: > List-Unsubscribe >List-Unsubscribe-Post: List-Unsubscribe=One-Click If these headers are missing, your marketing system is completely out of compliance. If they are there, you have a different problem: you aren't honoring them. Step 2: Verify Your Fulfillment Window If Google sees you have the headers but still flags your domain, it means your backend system isn't processing the requests fast enough. When a user clicks that one-click button, the action must happen server-to-server instantly. Legally and technically, you must completely process and honor that unsubscription within 48 hours. If your database syncs on a delayed weekly batch, Google will flag you. Step 3: Run a Domain-Wide Audit A common issue for growing companies is saying, "But we only send transactional emails, we don't even have an unsubscribe list!" If any stream under your domain is blasting marketing mail without headers, Google flags the whole domain. So, take a deep dive by setting up DMARC monitoring to investigate further. Step 4: The 48-Hour Later Once you fix the headers, sync your database, and shut down rogue sending streams, do not expect an instant reward. Google Postmaster Tools is not real-time. Google explicitly states that its system rechecks domains in cycles. Expect it to take 24 to 48 hours for any architectural changes to be recorded and for that "Needs Work" red warning to finally switch back to green. Don't fight Gmail or any of the ISPs. They are not trying to make you look like the bad guy. They only show the red flags if they are seeing it happen in their system. So, continue adjusting your email program, because that's what email marketing is all about. Want to learn how to fix complex technical errors within Google Postmaster and improve your email deliverability? 👉 Click through to my profile, hit follow, and let's get into the inbox.