About the Webinar You spend lots of time, effort, and budget making great emails - but very few people will see your campaigns if you have a bad sending reputation. Luke Martinez, deliverability expert from SendGrid, will share insider knowledge to stay on the "good" reputation list. After you master how to land in the inbox, Kelly Kenney, marketer at Sendwithus, will review ways to try new content and tactics while keeping deliverability in check. A Few Highlights 9 most important email engagement metrics for sending reputation Top 4 expectations for senders How to use A/B testing to try new things without impacting deliverability

1. Stay Out of the Penalty Box: Email Deliverability
with SendGrid + Sendwithus
With Luke Martinez (SendGrid) & Kelly Kenney (Sendwithus)

2. Hi, I’m Luke
● Deliverability Consultant | SendGrid
● Problem Solver, Deliverability Expert
● Recovering food service professional.

3. Hi, I’m Kelly
● Marketing @ Sendwithus
● Over 9 years in the Tech marketing field
● Email nerd, animal lover and cheese enthusiast

4. Housekeeping
● SendGrid / Sendwithus Questions
● Follow-up Recording
● Swag Giveaway

5. ● Email template management
● Iterate / Optimize without deploying code
● Set up A/B tests, drip campaigns
● Connect to Database directly, API from
app or upload via CSV
Sendwithus & SendGrid
● Email API: Infrastructure
● Email Marketing: Marketing Campaigns
● Email Experts: SendGrid Expert Services

6. SendGrid Overview
● Founded in 2009
● Based in Denver, CO with offices in
Orange County, CA and Redwood City, CA
● Leading delivery platform for customer communication
● Send 1B emails per day for companies worldwide

7. Sendwithus Overview
● Y Combinator company (founded Jan. 2013)
● Based in Victoria, BC and San Francisco, CA
● Control + Optimize Email
● Top 300 Email sender Worldwide

8. Today’s Objectives
● Deliverability: What is it and why should it matter to you?
● Most important email metrics for sending reputation
● Top 4 expectations for senders
● A/B Testing + Deliverability
● Questions? We got answers

9. Email: ROI MVP
Reference: http://www.emailmonday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/National-client-email-2015-DMA.pdf
$1
$38

10. Don’t let this happen to you
$6M

11. How to prevent lost revenue?

12. How to prevent lost revenue?
Monitoring engagement, and keeping a close eye on delivery metrics and trends
greatly reduces the likelihood of inbox placement issues.

13. How to prevent lost revenue?
Deliverability is a moving target.
Inbox providers and spam filters are constantly changing the rules that determine
whether or not your mail makes it to your subscribers.

14. What is Deliverability?
250ok?
End to end time?
Inbox placement?
Opens?
Clicks?
ROI?
What is Deliverability?

15. What is Deliverability?
Reputation
250ok
End to end time
Inbox placement
Opens
Clicks
ROI
What is Deliverability?

16. Back in the day...

17. Deliverability = Reputation
IP Reputation
2 + 2 = 4

18. Deliverability = Reputation
In 2016

19. Deliverability = Reputation
IP Reputation Domain ReputationContent Reputation
● SPF Domain
● DKIM Domain
● From Domain
● Template
● Links/URLs
● Syntax
● Dedicated/Shared
● IP Neighborhood
● IP Count

21. 9 Most Important Engagement Metrics
Engagement
● Open
● Click
● Unsubscribe
● Spam report
● Add to contacts
● This is not spam
● Move to primary
● Reply
● Forward

22. List Hygiene
List Hygiene
● Invalid addresses
● Spam Traps
● Time since last engaged
● Time since last engaged
● Time since last engaged

23. Sending to recipients who
haven’t engaged in six months
is the kiss of death for your
reputation.
Anti-Spam Team - Hotmail

24. Top 4 Expectations for Senders
Monitor engagement and send accordingly.
● Send less mail to less engaged recipients.
● Remove recipients who do not engage
for an extended period of time.
● When open rates drop, send less mail.

25. Top 4 Expectations for Senders
Honor unsubscribes and spam reports.
○ Keep spam report rate below 0.08%
○ Make it easy for recipients to leave your
mailing list.

26. Top 4 Expectations for Senders
Honor unsubscribes and spam reports:
○ Make it easy for recipients to leave your mailing list.
Marketing
Perspective

27. Top 4 Expectations for Senders
Honor unsubscribes and spam reports:
○ Make it easy for recipients to leave your mailing list.
Marketing
Perspective

28. Top 4 Expectations for Senders
Honor unsubscribes and spam reports:
○ Make it easy for recipients to leave your mailing list.
Marketing
Perspective

29. Top 4 Expectations for Senders
Honor unsubscribes and spam reports:
○ Talk to your customers in their language, not yours
Marketing
Perspective

30. Top 4 Expectations for Senders
Text to Image ratio
● 2-4 sentences of text per image is
a good rule of thumb.
● If an email consists of only a
single image, ISPs have no way of
determining the nature of the
email.

31. Top 4 Expectations for Senders
Whenever possible, be consistent with your
sending domain(s) and IP(s)
● New IPs and domains are inherently
untrustworthy.
● Work on establishing and maintaining a good
reputation rather than trading IPs and
domains when deliverability problems arise.

32. You’ve got great Deliverability - now what?

33. Transactional Email
● Sent automatically in response to a user’s action on your app
● Welcome email - 4x more opens and 5x more clicks vs marketing email
● Notification email - second highest engagement rate
● Receipt email - 64% of consumers consider these the most valuable messages
● People expect them and read them - take advantage!
Let’s start with Transactional Emails

34. Let’s start with Transactional Emails
Inbox providers are generally sympathetic to
Transactional mail that ends up in the spam folder.
● Password resets
● Confirmation emails
● Receipts
● Invoices
● Legal notifications
Marketing/promotional email gets treated very
differently by the Inbox provider - ideal to segment to
protect these messages.
Tech
Perspective

35. Transactional Emails: A/B testing
● Don't assume - A/B Test!
● Treat email like a landing page
● You can test:
○ SUBJECT LINES
○ INTRO TEXT
○ BODY STYLE
○ HEADINGS
○ CTAs and MORE!

36. Email A/B Testing Basics
High Low
High Yay! Subject
Low Body, CTA Subject, Body,
CTA
Open Rate
ClickRate
● Segment to a subset of your
most engaged audience
● Test 1 element at a time
● Apply learnings to the entire
list and/or other emails

37. Email A/B Testing Basics
High Low
High Yay! Subject
Low Body, CTA Subject, Body,
CTA
Open Rate
ClickRate
● Segment to a subset of your
most engaged audience
● Test 1 element at a time
● Apply learnings to the entire
list and/or other emails

38. A/B Test offer in
Transactional email
● Prompt users to perform an action
● A/B test messaging and offers
● Retail brand examples:
○ Added something to cart
○ Completed purchase
○ Review product
○ Repeat purchase

39. Wrapping Up
● Sending Reputation =
● With list hygiene, time since last engaged is key
● Make unsubscribes easy + honor their request
● Be consistent with IP addresses + email frequency
● A/B test messaging, offers to a segment

40. Questions?
kelly@sendwithus.comluke.martinez@sendgrid.com