Urban Email Deliverability Legends

“ Urban legend: is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories usually believed by their tellers to be true. As with all folklore and mythology, the designation suggests nothing about the story's veracity, but merely that it is in circulation, exhibits variation over time, and carries some significance that motivates the community in preserving and propagating it.”

Email marketing “urban legends” have been around for quite sometime now. One would think that as technology evolved and email marketing was used more, most of these urban myths would go away.

So how can one marketer be more educated and evolved?

Keeping up with the latest digital marketing news would help drastically. Here at Kobemail, we make it a priority to keep pace with the ever so fast evolving digital marketing world.

Now on to some legends…

1. “I have to have a perfect deliverability rate at all time” – Great IP reputation only comes with a healthy list. In reality, perfect deliverability rate of 100% is simply unattainable. Consider using a process called “confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request initial information. This way, before adding the person to your list, they must click that unique link to verify that it is their real email account. This can dramatically increase your deliverability rate to 20-30%.


2. “I am mailing from a large corporation, I will be in the junk box” - ISP’s do not care if you are mailing from a large to mid size corporation or a small independent company. Everyone is equal in the eyes of the ISP world. To avoid spam filters in general, try optimizing your creative and focus on subject lines. I would suggest trouble shooting your mailings once a month to monitor which creatives go to inbox and which gets spammed.


3. “A bigger list is always better”- In this case, it’s more quality over quantity. The size of your list only matters if everyone on your user list wants to be on it. Try to re-examine your mailing frequency and check your bounces. Bounce rates could be telling you the effectiveness of your sending frequency. Another thing you might want to look out for is the non-engaged users. Cleaning up your audience means following up with non-opens as well. This will help you concentrate on the users that are engaged and help segment that non responsive users for a different call-to-action campaign.


4. “Persistence is a virtue” – At times it is, not in email marketing. Continuing to mail them is counterproductive. What do I mean by this? Consider changing your content around and try to focus on what engages your users. Also, try to find out who your loyal customers are. One example is setting up a free “Pro Account” and invite users to join this exclusive email account adding bonuses for being a “Pro member”. Require an opt-in process and start a whole new mailing campaign to these loyal users. This is a great way to find your most loyal customers, who in the future will open more, click more, forward more, and complain less.

Email Deliverability urban legends are prominent is this age of modern technology. As with all legends, there is often a grain of truth, but it’s up to you to consider the source and do your homework.

Happy Messaging!

Author: Rebecca Allas
Editor: Caitlin Durand