Social media to improve email delivery

Mail delivered to the bulk folder is likely to continue landing in the bulk folder without intervention. Sometimes a sender can talk to the ISP involved and get mail moved back to the inbox. Sometimes a sender can make hygiene changes and get mail moved back to the inbox.
The most effective way to get mail delivered to the inbox, however, is for recipients to go into the bulk folder and mark the mail as “not spam.” Nothing is more effective at getting mail delivered to the inbox.
But there is a bit of a catch 22 there. If mail ends up in the bulk folder consistently, recipients tend to forget about it. Many people trawl through their bulk folder sporadically, if at all. If recipients aren’t engaged with mail and don’t know when they should see it, then they won’t miss it and won’t look for it.
So if mail is ending up in the bulk folder and recipients aren’t expecting it what can a sender do? One of the obvious answers is find another channel. Let recipients know through some channel besides email that they need to look in their bulk folder for a particular email.
In the past it was difficult to find non-email ways to connect recipients. I worked with customers who really had no other way to interact with recipients than email. They weren’t running a website, they didn’t have any other contact methods, they were really stuck. But a recent tweet from AppSumo shows how social media can be used to improve email delivery.

AppSumo requesting recipients pull mail out of their bulk folder
Using social media to improve mail delivery
Of course, not every AppSumo recipient follows them on twitter. But every recipient that does pull the mail out of their bulk folder tells Gmail that the mail really is wanted. Most ISPs heavily weight users removing the mail from their bulk folder. ISPs know that users who look for mail in the bulk folder really are engaged and really do want that mail.
Using social media is a great way to contact recipients through another channel to address delivery problems. Even just a few people pulling the mail out of the bulk folder will tell the ISP the mail is wanted. Plus, those people will now find that mail delivered to their inbox by default, no matter what happens with other users.
 

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Recipients are the secret to good delivery

Many, many people hire me to educate them on delivery and fix their email problems. This is good, it’s what I do. And I’m quite good at helping clients see where their email program isn’t meeting expectations. I can translate tech speak into marketing. I can explain things in a way that shifts a client’s perception of what the underlying issues are. I can help them find their own way into the inbox.
But…
Most of what I do is simply think about email delivery from the point of view of a recipient and help clients better meet their recipient’s expectations. This works. This works really well. If you send mail that your recipients want your mail gets to the inbox.
Here’s the secret: ISPs and most spam filters have a design goal to deliver mail their users want. They only want to block mail their users don’t want.
Filters are not designed to block wanted mail.
Sure there are complicated situations where senders have gotten behind the 8 ball and need some help cleaning up. There are situations where filters screw up and block mail they shouldn’t (and aren’t quite designed to). Spam filters are complicated bits of code and sometimes they do things unexpectedly. All of these things do happen.
But these situations happen a lot less than most senders think. Most of the time when mail is hitting the bulk folder, or is throttled at the MTA the issue is that recipients don’t care about the mail.
Recipients aren’t engaged with a particular sender or particular brand. So ISPs react accordingly and that mail ends up slowly delivered or bulked. This upsets the senders to no end, but the recipients? The recipients often don’t care that some mail shows up in bulk or arrives Wednesday afternoon instead of Tuesday evening.
When recipients are engaged with a particular sender or brand, though? Delivery is fast and reliable. Mail is rarely delayed or bulked. When recipients want mail, they interact with it. They look in the bulk folder. They miss it when it’s not there. They complain to the ISPs when they don’t get it. The ISPs react accordingly and prioritize or “red carpet” that email.
The secret to really good delivery is to get your recipients to handle your ISP relations for you. Send mail they miss when they don’t get it, and you’ll discover most of your delivery problems go away.
 
 

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Mailing old addresses: 5 questions to ask first

James asked the question on twitter:

If you haven’t mailed an address in 5-10 yrs, would you include it in a re-engagement mail?

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Is your mail being bulk foldered?

Daisy at Signup.to posted a list of 11 things to do when mail is going to the bulk folder. Her suggestions are a good start to troubleshooting and fixing persistent bulk foldering of mail.
One thing she doesn’t mention is that while bulk foldering can sometimes be the result of poor content, more often it’s the result of unengaged recipients. Think of bulk foldering this way: the ISP has some subscribers they’re pretty sure want your mail, so they’re not going to block your mail. But they’re pretty sure a lot of subscribers don’t want your mail so they’re not going to deliver it to the inbox.
The trick to getting mail moved out of the bulk folder is to get more people engaged with your email marketing. This is tough to do if they’re not actively checking their bulk folder for mail but there are some ways I’ve helped clients get mail into the inbox.

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