In most cases, when encountering an issue resulting in declining sender reputation, a shift in email marketing strategy is needed. There are 3 steps that you can take to create a full cycle of stellar reputation and clean contact lists. Unfortunately, it is not a quick fix but, in the email industry it is well known that it is a lot easier to damage the sender reputation than it is to fix it.
Homework – confirm whether there is a reputation issue
Before delving into the 3-step program to fix your sender reputation, please make sure you confirm that such an issue exists. In most cases, largest audience of a sender's contact list is with Gmail, which is why we recommend setting up Google Postmaster Tools for your email sending domain(s)?
Google does not send back information about spam complainers to any sender, which is why Google Postmaster Tools is the only place where you can see your spam complaint rate with Gmail addresses. You can find steps on how to set it up here:
https://support.google.com/a/answer/9981691
Pro tip (for SAP Emarsys clients): In the “Step 3: Give others access to your Postmaster Tools dashboards (Optional)” you can add gdeliv@emarsys.com mailbox, so that SAP Emarsys Deliverability team would have access to this data for your sending domain. You can remove this access at any point.
In addition to spam complaint rate, Google shares other metrics that only they see. This includes email delivery error rate, domain reputation, IP reputation, authentication and such. You can find more details on the data available on the Google Postmaster Tools dashboards here:
https://support.google.com/a/answer/14668346
Use these dashboards to confirm whether your IP and domain reputation is declining. Once you can confirm that it is indeed a declining reputation issue, please consider the steps below.
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Resolve the issue at the source.
Downwards trending sender reputation is in most cases related to the quality of the contact lists. It is natural that over time more and more of your contacts become inactive.
Pro tip: Whereas protected subscription forms do not directly impact the activity of your recipients, it helps to make sure that only contacts who explicitly want to receive emails from you end up subscribing to your lists. In addition to that, it helps avoiding excessive amounts of bounces, which could also affect your reputation as a sender.
As you continue to send emails to those inactive contacts your sender reputation is impacted slowly over time. As such, please investigate and make sure that your subscription forms are secure and protected in order to make sure that only real and engaged contacts end up in your contact lists.
You can find more information about options on how to do it and why it may be important in these resources:
Basics:
https://expert-connect.emarsys.com/hc/en-us/articles/18257202502546-Insights-Different-Opt-in-Methods-for-Email-Subscription-Risks-and-Rewards
More details:
https://expert-connect.emarsys.com/hc/en-us/articles/22806356923410-Insights-Clean-Start-Validation-Email-Sign-Up-Best-Practice
Worst case scenario if not taken into consideration:
https://expert-connect.emarsys.com/hc/en-us/articles/17032996553234-Insights-Email-list-bombing
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Demonstrate a positive shift in email marketing practices.
At this step it is important to consider the perspective of the mailbox provider that is seeing your emails arriving. As mentioned in the first step, over time larger portions of your lists become inactive. If a mailbox provider is observing that the percentage of the audience that is actively engaging with the emails you are sending to their users is decreasing over time, they will start filtering more of your emails to spam folder and your sender reputation will be impacted. Considering the mailbox provider perspective, imagine them seeing that 2 years ago they were noticing 40% of the users you are contacting engage with your emails and interact positively - that is good, it tells them that their users are happy to receive emails from you, which also tells them that you are a good sender. Then after one year they may start seeing that a portion of your actively engaged recipients drops to 25% - this already alarms them that only every 4th user of theirs is considering your emails desirable. This still may be considered "good enough" but, at this point mailbox providers are more skeptical of the emails you are sending to their users, and any small negative signal can push your sender reputation over the edge towards negative. Now fast forward to today and they see that only 10% of their recipients engage actively and positively with the emails you are sending - that tells them that only every 10th user of theirs feels that emails you send are wanted.
Having that in mind, it becomes crucial to segment your contacts based on engagement activity and sending more emails to active contacts that you would send to inactive ones. This will allow you to demonstrate to mailbox providers that majority of the emails you send are welcome. Usually, this is achieved by segmenting your audiences based on activity and adjusting the frequency of emails sent to each of those segments. Please note that it is well known how inaccurate open rates are nowadays and, because of that we recommend relying on clicks more. Even though clicks are usually a lower metric, over time it shows more accurate stage of the lifecycle of your customers than opens can. Also, please note that the time frequencies will vary depending on your business vertical and current email strategy.
Here is an example of the segments and frequencies that you should consider to achieve balance between active and inactive contacts:
- Most active segment. Add contacts who recently shown signs of engagement with clicks. Usually, we are recommending to include contacts who demonstrated positive engagement in the last 3 months. If you have additional metrics like web visits, account logins, recent purchases, etc. - we recommend taking them into consideration. This segment should receive every single email send out you have planned.
- Less active segment. Contacts who have demonstrated positive signs of engagement a bit more in the past should go into this segment. Again, please take into consideration your customer lifecycle and perspective of the mailbox provider. As an example, the period of the last engagement activity tracked for this segment could be 3-9 months. This segment should receive only every 2nd email send out you have planned.
- Inactive segment. As an example, consider contacts who have demonstrated positive engagement signals in the last 9-12 months for this segment. You should send even less emails to this segment, consider every 4th or 5th planned campaign to include the Inactive segment.
- Long-term inactive segment. This segment should contain contacts that have not displayed any signs of engagement for a prolonged period of time - for example 1 year or more (again, depending on your customer lifecycle and business vertical). You should no longer send regular campaigns to this segment. Instead, consider re-engagement campaigns/automations. This segment should receive some special offers or a sequence of re-engagement emails urging them to demonstrate that they are still monitoring their mailbox and paying attention to your emails. As an example, such automation could include a sequence of 3 emails like this:
a) "We have missed you, here is x% discount in case you missed us as well" (1st email)
b) "We have noticed that you have not shopped with us for a while, would you mind completing this survey and sharing with us what we could do better?" (2nd email one month later)
c) "Please click this link to confirm that you still consent receiving emails from us about our special offers" (last email 2 months after the first one).
Such or similar email automation sequences will help you to refresh the engagement status of your contacts and add them into more active segments. Consider that from the mailbox provider perspective, if they do not positively engage with your emails, then those emails seem unwanted. So, once they demonstrate engagement, you can safely add them back to your email marketing strategy cycle. If they still do not demonstrate any signs of engagement, please consider the actions in the 3rd step.
Additional information about contact activity and its effect on your sender reputation can be found here:
Basics:
https://expert-connect.emarsys.com/hc/en-us/articles/18254084370066-How-to-Acquire-high-quality-contacts-and-keep-your-list-healthy
More details:
https://expert-connect.emarsys.com/hc/en-us/articles/18255279605394-Insights-Inactive-Contacts-in-Email-Marketing -
Contact "sunsetting" policy. As discussed in the first two points, mailbox providers care how engaged their users are with the emails you are sending. If you are sending hundreds of emails to one contact for a year (or thousands of emails in multiple years) and they have not demonstrated any positive signals of engagement for a prolonged period (years, not months), it becomes unprofitable for you to send emails to such contacts. Not only that your Return Of Investment (ROI) suffers, as most services like SAP Emarsys charge you based on the amount of contacts you maintain uploaded, you are also putting yourself at risk of degrading email sender reputation.
In addition to that, please keep in mind that most mailbox providers do not send back spam complaint information to the sender, and you cannot suppress those contacts who mark your emails as spam (including major providers like Gmail and Apple). As a result, this means that if you are not sunsetting inactive contacts, then your contact lists are filled with recipients who have already reported your emails as spam, and you keep on sending emails to them. Such contacts will make your efforts to fix your sender reputation a lot harder. As such, it is strongly recommended to cut ties with some of these contacts after a certain threshold.
Pro tip: In addition to strengthening your email marketing program, having a clear sunsetting policy also supports your compliance obligations under GDPR, ISO 27001, and similar global regulations. GDPR requires that personal data must be accurate, up to date, and not retained for longer than necessary - which means you are required to delete data. Similarly, ISO 27001 emphasizes data governance and risk management, to ensure that outdated or unnecessary personal data does not create security vulnerabilities. By regularly reviewing and removing inactive contacts, you are not only improving deliverability and engagement but also aligning with these legal and security best practices.
Obviously, considering your business needs, you should not simply delete your contacts but, before deleting them please make sure to:
- Send them re-engagement email(s).
- Take into consideration any other metrics you may have available at your disposal (web visits, account logins, recent purchases, etc.) to determine contact engagement and customer lifecycle.
If you adopt all the 3 email marketing practices mentioned, your reputation as a sender will fix itself over time and you will maintain high quality and engaged contact lists. This will create the perfect cycle of stable email marketing strategy and the highest chances for your emails to land in the inbox for each single contact in all your segments. Do not forget that this is not a "one-off" fix, this should become part of your email marketing strategy, as a process to regularly maintain your contact lists clean and engaged.