The Best Email Marketing Tip That No One Has Ever Told You

Hey guys, today I want to talk about an email marketing topic that I've never ever heard anyone talk about. I've never heard anything about this, and I think it's so important, especially after the things that we're seeing last week that happened with my accounts, my clients' accounts. Honestly, it sounded like 50 to 100 of you guys have commented or reached out to me directly saying that you guys were having the exact same issue. First, before I talk about that, though, I want to talk about email deliverability, and these two are going to tie hand in hand. So the tip and the solution I have will tie hand in hand with email deliverability. So I'm sure most of you guys are familiar with what it is, but for those that aren't familiar with email deliverability, at the really kind of core, what it means is email deliverability is the ability for you to deliver emails into your subscribers' or customers' inboxes, right? So if you press send on an email, hopefully you're getting routed to the primary folder or the primary inbox, and at the very least, hopefully you're in the promotions, and ideally you're never in spam, or worse, your emails might not even be delivered at all to any folder whatsoever. So that's kind of a high level of email deliverability. Since I've been in email now for about seven or eight years, the biggest change that I've seen is back then you could just batch and blast, right? You could send to your entire list, and that used to be okay, right? You could still hit the inbox, you could still be in the promotions, maybe you'd be in spam, but you would definitely get your emails delivered irrespective of who you sent to. Today, that cannot be farther from the truth. Today, everything is about the quality of the person you're sending emails to. Do the people on the receiving end, do they open, do they click, do they forward, do they buy? What actions are they taking? The positive actions, the ones I just mentioned, the open rate, the click-through rate, the forward, those types of things, the replying, marking that's important, starring the emails, you know, whitelisting, all these things are super important. And then on the opposite side, right, the negative side, we have marked as spam, we've got things like that. That is how Google and the other ISPs, the internet service providers like Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, Outlook, that's how they determine who should be in the inbox, right, whether that's the primary or the promotions, or who should be in the spam, or again, kind of even worse, who should not be delivered at all, right? So that's email deliverability. And email deliverability really is the longevity of your email channel. If you have strong deliverability, then great, you're going to be able to make money and drive engagement from email. If you cannot deliver your emails over time, or at least, you know, at some point, you're not going to be able to make any money and engage and kind of nurture subscribers or customers. So that's email deliverability. About a week or so ago, maybe a little bit less, we were, a lot of us were seeing issues, depending on what ESP you're using, with having emails successfully delivered. So in most cases, when you send an email, you should have about 100% give or take successful delivery, you know, plus or minus maybe, you know, 0.110 or 0.5, right? So those successful deliveries, basically saying those that received email, and then anyone that bounced rate will basically be subtracted. So say you had a 1% bounce rate, in theory, you should have a 99% successful delivery. However, last week, there was an issue on some accounts where there was this deferral thing, or maybe even emails were not being queued up properly. So a little bit in the gray with what's happening, but I am now on my accounts and my client's accounts, seeing things resume them back to which is great. But for a period of few days, you know, I sent an email, let's say on a Monday, some people got it on Monday, some people got it on Tuesday, some people got it on Wednesday, some people got on Thursday, right? Or traditionally, when you send an email, in the course of a couple minutes, maybe, you know, an hour at most, depending if you have a list that's in the hundreds of 1000s, or maybe millions, everyone should, in theory, receive that email that didn't bounce, right? Those that are opted in, should have that email delivered, you know, where it goes, again, is dependent on your engagement, your deliverability, and a bunch of other things. So one thing that really came up that, for me, was I'm now creating a backup of having an ESP on another account. So what I basically mean is as follows, well, for one, you always should be exporting your list, or we should be backing our list up, just in case anything happens, just in case your account goes down, just in case you get blocked or kicked off the platform, you always want to have a backup of your CSV of your list, right? Do that on a weekly basis, if not more frequently. Every single Monday, I have a reminder that goes off, where I export my list, just in case anything was to ever happen. Now, these things are few and far between, but they do happen. But really kind of the long story rounding this out, what I'm getting to, what I wanted to start and kind of end this conversation with, is it's kind of advantageous to have a backup ESP. So say you're using something like Klaviyo as your primary ESP, or MailChimp, I'm not sure who is using MailChimp, but obviously, they sold for $12 billion. So someone's using it, it's just not me. So say you're using Klaviyo, right? You might want a backup on something like a Sendlane, or Drip, or an OmniSend, or a Privy. So this past week, when I was having issues with my account, Jimmy from Sendlane helped me open an account pretty quickly on his, so I could deliver mail in a timely fashion for my Black Friday Summit, as well as for my weekly newsletter, right? So now I'm going to be paying a small fee every single month, whether it's to Jimmy on Sendlane, or JT over at Drip, or Ben at Privy, or Ritus at OmniSend, right? So it doesn't matter which one you use, find a backup ESP, have your list there, maybe send a few emails once in a while, just to keep it warm enough. That way, if you ever run into issues on your primary ESP, that you have a backup. And that's not something I've ever seen anyone recommend, that's not something I've ever seen anyone talk about, but I think it is so important, right? With Facebook, and Instagram, and WhatsApp going down, right? Seeing those behemoths be able to go down for 12 or 24 hours, however long it was, basically means that you really need to protect and secure everything that you're doing. And with email, email is a really great channel, right? You have direct access. In theory, you're not going to get shut down unless you do something wrong. But there are glitches, and there are things that happen with these ESPs that prevent you from sending or successfully delivering mails. Oftentimes, it could be across the entire network, you know, Sendgrid or AWS might go down, which might affect every ESP. And other times, right, it might be isolated to a single ESP, right? Maybe MailChimp is having issues where you can't send for whatever reason for 24 hours. But if you have something that's urgent and time sensitive that needs to go out, you might want to send on the Klaviyo, or Drip, or Sendlane, or Privny, or OmniSend, right? You know, it really is up to you, maybe find one that's cost effective and has enough of the features. Because again, you're not going to be using this unless you get desperate. But when you get desperate, you really do need this. And I'm filming this video right now in October. And we have Black Friday coming up, and we have Cyber Monday coming up, and we have the holidays coming up. And it's going to be a really small price to pay to have a backup ESP. Again, I don't care who you choose. If you're using, you know, OmniSend, get a backup on, you know, Klaviyo. If you're using Sendlane, get a backup on Drip. It doesn't matter who the backup is, just find someone that's affordable and cost effective, and is willing to work with you and help you. So that's really my best tip is have a backup, it will really pay dividends in the long run, if something were to happen. So go get that set up. If you have any questions, let me know. If you're still seeing issues with your account, regardless of DSP, let me know. And let me know if you like this tip. Drop a like on this video, drop a comment, shoot me a DM. Just let me know if this was helpful, and I'll continue to make more content like this as I think of these ideas. Alright guys, thank you. Go crush your Q4. Always here if you guys need me, and cheers.