Master The Inbox

Keeping Your Black Friday Emails Out of the Spam Folder, Interview with Deliverability Expert Matt Brown

• Monica Badiu • Season 2 • Episode 5

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Black Friday is all about the sales pitch. So you’ll be sending sales emails - quite a few of them, over a short period of time. So what does that mean for your deliverability and spam complaint rate? Is there something you can do to avoid triggering the spam filters and making sure your Black Friday promo emails are visible in your audience’s inbox?

In this episode, Monica Badiu and guest Matt Brown discuss how to avoid triggering spam filters with Black Friday emails.

They emphasize the importance of working on deliverability in advance and maintaining high engagement and a clean list. Matt explains that Google and Yahoo have specific guidelines for spam complaint rates and recommend using Google Postmaster Tools to monitor reputation. They also address the use of emojis and discount words in subject lines, the impact of frequency on deliverability, and the pitfalls of buying email lists. Overall, they encourage running a Black Friday campaign and offer advice for success.


Takeaways

  • Start working on deliverability in advance to avoid triggering spam filters with Black Friday emails.
  • Maintain high engagement and a clean list to improve deliverability.
  • Use Google Postmaster Tools to monitor reputation and spam complaint rates.
  • Emojis and discount words in subject lines can be used if you have a high sender reputation.
  • Buying email lists is not recommended and can harm deliverability.
  • Running a Black Friday campaign can be highly profitable, and deliverability issues can be fixed afterward.


Meet my guest, Matt Brown
Matt is a copywriter, full-stack marketer, and email deliverability expert. Over the past 5 years, he's managed lists from 1,000 to 200,000+ active subscribers in a variety of markets – including SaaS, Ecommerce, Online Education, Coaching, and more.
 
Now, he partners with entrepreneurs and business owners to fix deep-seated deliverability issues, boost email performance, and grow revenue.
 
He's the author of the Deliverability Now newsletter, where he sends out weekly tips and strategies designed to help you win big with email.
Matt lives in Portland, OR with his wife Lisa and cat Clementine.
Connect with Matt:https://deliverabilitynow.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/himattbrown/ S

Hi. And welcome.
My name is Monica Badiu. I am a marketing consultant turned conversion copywriter and copy coach. I help online course creators and info product businesses sell more through persuasive, non-spammy, no fluff copywriting.

I teach about copywriting, digital marketing, and conversion strategies tested in my businesses and with my clients.


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[00:00:00] Monica: Black Friday is all about the sales pitch, so you'll be sending sales emails, quite a few of them over a short period of time. So what does that mean for your deliverability or spam complaint rate? Is there something you can do to avoid triggering the spam filters and making sure your Black Friday promos are actually visible in your audience's inbox?

[00:00:27] Monica: Hey, you're listening to Master the Inbox? The podcast where course creators, coaches, and consultants learn how to sell with email in a non spammy way. I'm your host, Monica Badiu, a customer centric copywriter, course creator, and fellow entrepreneur. And today, along with my guest, Matt Brown, we're going to dive deep into how not to trigger.

[00:00:46] Monica: The spam filters with your Black Friday emails. Matt is an awesome guy. He's a copywriter, full stack marketer, and email deliverability expert. He's the author of the Deliverability Now newsletter where he sends out weekly [00:01:00] tips and strategies designed to help you win big with email. And over the past five years, he's managed lists from 1, 000 to 200, 000 plus active subscribers in a variety of markets.

[00:01:11] Monica: Now he partners with entrepreneurs. And business owners to fix deep seated deliverability issues, boosting my performance and grow revenue. Matt, welcome to the show.

[00:01:22] Matt: Hey, Monica, thank you so much for having me. I'm really happy to be here today.

[00:01:26] Monica: I think it's going to be a really cool episode because we're talking about Black Friday and competition.

[00:01:33] Monica: Yeah. Competition for visibility in the inbox is insane during that last week of November. So here's my first question to you. What can we do? To make sure that our Black Friday emails are actually visible. They're hitting the inbox or promo folders instead of the spam folder.

[00:01:53] Matt: Yeah. So the first thing to do and the most important thing to do is to start working on your [00:02:00] deliverability now.

[00:02:01] Matt: So I'm not sure when this episode is going to go out. Let's say this goes out in a week or two weeks. We're going to be really close to September, which means you basically have a two month runway. To start looking at these issues and fix any issues that you may have, you know, deliverability problems can be very simple if it's due to a technical issue or a configuration issue, but those are very rare and those are very easy to fix.

[00:02:28] Matt: Those can be fixed in a day. The other type of deliverability problem where you're getting poor placement, poor email performance, you know, messages are going into the spam folder, those can be much trickier to fix. And they can take. A long time. You know, the shortest amount of time that I typically spend working on a deliverability project is two months.

[00:02:50] Matt: And my longest project to date has been eight months. And I mean, there are some projects that I'm just working on continually. So deliverability is not just something that's set it and [00:03:00] forget it. And if you want your emails to perform extremely well, this black Friday, You need to start looking at them.

[00:03:07] Matt: Now you need to understand, do you have a deliverability problem? Now, if you do, you need to fix that problem. If you don't, you basically need to be doing everything you can to maintain as high engagement as possible, as clean a list as possible, as neatly defined segments as possible heading into November, because.

[00:03:29] Matt: In my experience, you know, for the past like four or five years of doing this from November 1st to like January 15th, you know, we have this whole set of Western holidays, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas, New Year's, Hanukkah, all these different things, the spam filters and the promotional filters in Gmail are cranked up to their highest point.

[00:03:53] Matt: And we're in a completely new era of email this year as well. After February. First 2024 [00:04:00] when Google Yahoo introduced all their new rules, so we really have no idea what this Black Friday is going to be like compared to other years. So it's like we're heading into an Iron Man race. You just got to be in shape and as finely tuned as possible to make it to the finish line.

[00:04:19] Matt: So that that's my advice.

[00:04:22] Monica: That's kind of scary. I'll be honest. Guys, I didn't think about it this way, but you're right, I mean, this Black Friday is very different to previous years because of what has changed in terms of, like, new rules. Very interesting. So how would I know if my emails are going in the spam or promo folder instead of hitting the inbox?

[00:04:46] Matt: Yeah. So one of the best ways to kind of get a broad strokes understanding of where your emails are going is to look at your engagement, you know, look, go into your email platform, [00:05:00] ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo, Drip, whatever you use. And if you're consistently getting a 50 percent plus open rate on all of your emails, if you kind of do like a monthly average of all of your open rates, you're It's probably a sign that you're mainly going into the primary tab may have some promo tab, uh, mixed in there as well, but that's a 50 percent plus open rates is, you know, generally a sign that you have a healthy list and engage list relevant content and you're in good standing and you have a good sender reputation with the inboxes.

[00:05:38] Matt: If you're between like 20 and 40%, That's kind of a sign of like mixed placement. You know, a percentage of your emails will be going to the primary tab. Percentage will be going to the promotions tab. You may have a small percentage that are going to the spam folder. It really depends on what you're sending, who you're sending it to, your list makeup and everything like [00:06:00] that.

[00:06:00] Matt: But then if you're like below 10 to 15%, That's a sign of a, of a standard reputation, deliverability problem, definite, you know, you can have some spam placement in there, disengaged list, old contacts. So that would be the first thing that I'd look at. And then there are a variety of tools that you can use to test your deliverability and placement.

[00:06:22] Matt: Um, I really like a tool called Glock apps. There's another tool called emailable. Uh, there's a placement testing features in zero bounce and in litmus. So all of these platforms, depending on your budget, genuinely have a way for you to send emails to a seed list and get a report about what percentage go to the primary tab, the promo tab, and the spam folder.

[00:06:46] Matt: These tools, in my experience, are becoming less and less reliable after February 1st of this year, just because I think that the spam and promotional filters in the inboxes are way more fine [00:07:00] tuned and personalized at this point, but they're like a good litmus test. You know, they're a good, uh, thermometer to say like, Are we on the side of a problem or are we on the side of being okay?

[00:07:12] Matt: So I would recommend running a few of those tests as well most of the tools offer like three or four free credits to Kind of get a sense of where you're going. So

[00:07:21] Monica: I like that. That's a very actionable step And

[00:07:25] Matt: yeah, just, just test it.

[00:07:27] Monica: It's, it's kind of scary. Cause you, you mentioned, I think it's twice now that the spam filters are going to be kind of set on, you know, high alert, let's call it that.

[00:07:39] Monica: And it's, is it, is it by default because it's like Q4 and there's so many people, you know, selling stuff, uh, people actively looking to buy things. So is this like a way to protect the consumers? I mean, what's your take on that? Because it's kind of scary.

[00:07:56] Matt: Yeah, and this isn't new, you know, like, in my [00:08:00] experience, Google has always really ramped up their spam and promotional filters during the holiday sales season.

[00:08:09] Matt: So, I think it's progressively gotten more intense, like, each year has gotten more intense. But if you look at it from Google's perspective, their number one priority for Gmail, for their free, you know, email accounts, even for Google workspace, the people who are paying for emails, their number one priority is to provide a good experience to their free users so that they'll continue using Gmail so that they can harvest their data and sell that data to advertisers.

[00:08:38] Matt: And use that data for, you know, to make other sorts of decisions for retargeting and YouTube and all of this stuff. So Google wants to make as user friendly and good of a product as possible with Gmail so that the maximum amount of humanity uses this thing, everyone's data, whether you think that's dark or not, you know, it is what it is.

[00:08:59] Matt: And so one of the [00:09:00] ways that they do that is by creating these algorithms for email placement and engagement and all of that. And just from a numbers perspective, they, they know how many emails are being received to all of their, you know, millions or billions of accounts. If you just look at a graph, like most of the year is probably at like a, you know, pretty steady pace.

[00:09:21] Matt: And then November hits. Black Friday, like you could double, triple or quadruple the total amount of email volume that's being sent by marketers. And so they need a way to counteract that and filter that to continue providing that good experience to the, their free Gmail users. So it's just like the nature of email, basically.

[00:09:43] Monica: That's a very good explanation of the context. We're heading.

[00:09:50] Matt: And so what's new this year is that, yeah, it's like. They've always ramped up the promotional filters, but now we have their new mandated sender guidelines [00:10:00] about email authentication, about spam complaint percentages. So like what I recommend for people this year is just like, you really got to be paying close attention to your spam rates because Google could overcorrect and penalize you and send all of your emails to the spam folder or not deliver them.

[00:10:17] Matt: So like that would be worst case scenario. But if you're a good sender and you're sending to people who expect to hear from you, most people just accept that their email inbox is going to be filled up with offers during black Friday. I would just, I would recommend against like adopting an entirely new strategy or pivoting or a new offer.

[00:10:38] Matt: re approaching really cold, yeah, changing your name, definitely don't do that. Just like if you, if you kind of just like get in line with everyone else that's promoting their stuff and you're in the high on the highway, like you're going to be okay.

[00:10:53] Monica: So is there a specific threshold that is okay when it comes to like a spam complaint rate or [00:11:00] unsubscribes versus what's considered a red flag?

[00:11:03] Monica: So if I look right now in my email dashboard and I check those scary statistics. What's the number that should have me, okay, I need to fix this now.

[00:11:14] Matt: Yeah, absolutely. So Google and Yahoo, if you go and you read their sender guideline documents for this year, you know, they both introduced new sender guidelines, February 1st was Google.

[00:11:27] Matt: I don't remember the exact date with Yahoo. Uh, they've been kind of gradually ramping up the enforcement of that. I do believe we are in a quote unquote, hard enforcement period now where They've got enough data from like six months of implementation of these rules and that they've actually begun acting on these rules.

[00:11:46] Matt: Like they said that they were going to do on February 1st. And so in those guidelines, Google says that I haven't read the document recently, but the last time I checked, they wanted you to keep your spam complaints below 0. [00:12:00] 3%, which means for every thousand emails you send, they only want to see three complaints.

[00:12:06] Matt: Um, which is very low, you know, and the other important thing about this is that Google does not report spam complaints from Gmail and Google Workspace users to your email platform. And the only place to see those is in Google Postmaster Tools. So if you're just going off of the data you see in ConvertKit or Drip or ActiveCampaign, that data is incomplete and inaccurate and you really need to be looking at Google Postmaster Tools.

[00:12:35] Matt: To see what percentage of Gmail users, which is likely the vast majority of the people on your list, are reporting spam complaints. And so, I have my own theories about this. You know, that Google has said that 0. 3 percent is the threshold. But in my experience, I think that there is a slightly more weight given to volume versus percentage.

[00:12:57] Matt: So let's say that you have an [00:13:00] automated series that's going out that sends out a hundred emails a day, and then you send out broadcasts to a hundred thousand people, you know, to your regular emails. So if you, if you send out these automated emails and you get two spam complaints out of a hundred cents per day.

[00:13:16] Matt: You're already at like a 2% spam complaint rate for that day, but it's only two total complaints versus when you send out a hundred thousand emails, if you get a 0.5% spam complaint. I'm totally gonna mess up the math on this, but that would be like 500 or five, you know, it'd be like 500 complaints. So even though the 500 complaints is a lower percentage, I think it is.

[00:13:44] Matt: Uh, penalized quicker and more strictly than a lower volume of complaints, if that makes sense.

[00:13:50] Monica: Mm hmm. That does make sense. I think it's actually policy geared towards, you know, people we have with big lists and [00:14:00] big senders. I mean, I, I recently talked with someone who was building a platform for people who were sending like millions of emails.

[00:14:10] Monica: Yeah. Not daily, but. Weekly. I mean, it's kind of scary when you're looking at that and the way they were setting up their deliverability, uh, kind of filters. That was very smart. I mean, it was built with the idea of focusing on the big numbers rather than, you know, the low everyday normal kind of usage for a Small business.

[00:14:37] Monica: So I think that's that's who they're targeting. But how about unsubscribe rates? Does that play a role? I mean, I assume with like sending well, I don't assume in practice I've seen so lots of people they're starting to send Black Friday emails after a period when they haven't really been consistent Or haven't really been visible or present in the [00:15:00] inbox So, as a result, when, you know, you go into your inbox, you're looking for Black Friday offers, maybe you open that specific email and you're like, who the hell is this person unsubscribed?

[00:15:11] Monica: So, because of that, I wonder, is there any potential damage to getting a higher increase in unsubscribers?

[00:15:19] Matt: Yeah, so there's kind of a divide in the deliverability world about whether or not unsubscribes hurt or help your deliverability. Some people are like, no, unsubscribes are really good. It's not a signal that Google uses to determine your quality as a sender, your sender reputation.

[00:15:37] Matt: Other people are kind of like, no, unsubscribes are not good and it can be perceived as a negative signal. But the thing is, is that nobody, unless you work at Google and design Gmail really understands all the factors that they're using to calculate sender reputation, they have some documentation about it, but like when you get into the fine print, it's like we use thousands of signals [00:16:00] to determine spam, promotional placement, your sender reputation, all of this.

[00:16:04] Matt: So in my experience. I have never seen a really, really big spike in unsubscribes per deliverability. And if anything, it's going to help because by removing those people who don't want your emails, your next email is going to get a higher performance than the one that came before it. So I think unsubscribes is good.

[00:16:26] Matt: Obviously Google is prioritizing unsubscribing now because they've enforced the one click unsubscribe feature that your email platform has to comply with. So next to your sender name, now there's the unsubscribe link. A lot of times you can just unsubscribe right from the inbox. So they want to make it as easy as possible for people to unsubscribe.

[00:16:48] Matt: And I think that when you see a big spike in unsubscribes, as long as it doesn't come along with a spam complaint, Because there's that also that option when you hit the spam button, Google asks [00:17:00] you, do you want to report spam or do you want to report spam and unsubscribe? Um, as long as it's just a pure unsubscribe without a spam complaint, I think that that's a signal to Google that you're complying with their new guidelines and you are a responsible sender.

[00:17:14] Matt: So. I think it's probably neutral, but I don't think it's necessarily going to hurt you unless it also comes along with a bunch of spam complaints.

[00:17:24] Monica: That's a really cool perspective on the unsubscribe rates. I mean, a lot of people, they're so afraid of that. Like I've worked so hard to build my email list and then I'm going to send these emails and I'm going to get, I don't know, 100 unsubscribes.

[00:17:37] Monica: Oh no, what will I do?

[00:17:38] Matt: No, let them, let them go. I mean, there's a hundred more people you don't have to pay for.

[00:17:44] Monica: I mean, only marketers are so easy to say this, like drop the dead weight, let them go. And then all the business owners are like, no, but I have, I

[00:17:54] Matt: have my own email list. And I see, whenever I see someone unsubscribe, unless it's someone I [00:18:00] really like and respect, which actually hasn't happened yet.

[00:18:02] Matt: But if it's just like random people, I don't know that joined the list. I'm like, Hey, you got 10 emails from me. You didn't like the content. You unsubscribed. Great. That's opens up a seat for someone else and prevents me from upping my active campaign bill, you know, so I, I'm all for it.

[00:18:21] Monica: I'm, I'm ruthless about it as well.

[00:18:23] Monica: Okay. So I, I've been collecting, uh, questions that over the years I've received from clients, from coaching clients and They're very related to what happens during Black Friday, and I think our listeners can find value in this. So you can answer yes or no, or you can add more value if you want, um, I'm all for it.

[00:18:48] Monica: So, is it true that using emojis or words like discount sells in my subject lines will get my email marked as spam?

[00:18:58] Matt: Yeah, so the the [00:19:00] answer to that is it depends and I use emojis and I use direct language and subject lines all the time and I don't have an issue with those emails because in my experience The content of your email has less to do with your email placement and performance than your reputation as a sender.

[00:19:20] Matt: So if you have a really high sender reputation and you've established yourself with the inboxes as somebody that people want to hear from, people who open, click, reply, forward, buy from your emails, all of that stuff, you can pretty much say whatever you want in your subject lines and your preview text and your body copy.

[00:19:42] Matt: By now emojis, it's not going to impact things, but if you have a medium or a low sender reputation, then things like that are going to trigger the spam and promotional filters, and they can send your emails to the spam folder, but it really just [00:20:00] depends on how good of a sender you are. So earlier when I said, you know, what can you do to make sure your emails go to the inbox?

[00:20:04] Matt: So earlier when I said, you know, what can you do to make sure your emails go to the inbox? Really what we're talking about is developing and establishing a sender reputation that's so high that you can essentially say whatever you want in your emails.

[00:20:19] Monica: I'm getting emails from Chris Orzykowski and last year for Thanksgiving he sent I think 50 emails.

[00:20:28] Monica: Uh, turkey. Turkey.

[00:20:29] Matt: Emojis. Yes. In the

[00:20:31] Monica: subject line. And that was it. And I opened that email several times and I was like, this is genius. And he had another one, I think, for the holiday season. Same thing. 50 emojis, nothing else in the subject line. American

[00:20:47] Matt: flags.

[00:20:49] Monica: Yeah, yeah. That's really cool. I mean, it's a very disruptive way to show up in the inbox and be liked.

[00:20:55] Monica: This is who I am. I'm authentic as hell. I live up to my brand and I [00:21:00] do it. And hearing you explain this, it does really, it's really interesting and it should be like an inspiration to others. But how can I find out how good my reputation is?

[00:21:13] Matt: Yeah. So the first place to look is really in Google postmaster tools.

[00:21:18] Matt: So if you haven't already configured Google postmaster tools, you need to do that today, like pause this interview and do that right now, if you have a Google workspace account, you're already paying for it. You don't have to pay an additional fee for it. It's workspace subscription. If you don't have a Google workspace subscription, you'll need to sign up for that.

[00:21:37] Matt: But basically you just verify your domain and then Google will start tracking. All sorts of great stuff about your emails, the performance of your emails, your reputation as a sender, and it'll give you a report about your domain reputation. So how does it view emails that are sent from your domain? You can have a high, medium, low, or bad [00:22:00] domain reputation.

[00:22:01] Matt: It'll give you information about your IP reputations. So these are the actual IPs that are being used to send your emails from your domain. Email platforms, mail server. So those can also have a high, medium, low, or bad reputation. This will be where you can find out your spam complaint rate. So this is like, if you're sending to a high volume of Gmail subscribers, this is where you can get actual data from Google about how it views you as a sender.

[00:22:29] Matt: Um, and then from there you can get into the more nuanced, you know, things where you start doing placement testing, using the tools I've talked about earlier. If you're getting a vast majority of your emails going to the inbox or the primary tab, that's a sign that you have a high sender reputation. If you're going to promo and spam, that's a sign you have a medium or low sender reputation.

[00:22:50] Matt: So, and Chris is a perfect example of someone who sends daily sales email or near, he sends, you know, five or six sales emails a day. Every [00:23:00] single one of his emails sells something. He's extremely divisive in his content and his approach and his language. He gives zero Fs about the stuff that he talks about, putting 50 emojis in his subject line.

[00:23:11] Matt: And every single one of his messages goes to my primary tab. I don't even open all of them. But that's a sign that he has a really high sender reputation. And there's a lot to be said about his approach, because people that hate him are going to unsubscribe right away. And that's going to help them because they're not going to report spam later.

[00:23:29] Matt: You see what I'm saying here?

[00:23:31] Monica: Yeah, that's a really good way of explaining why unsubscribes are really good for you. That's, that's awesome. So for Google Postmaster, is there a specific threshold of how much data it needs to go through before it can give me a score on my reputation?

[00:23:53] Matt: Yeah, so there's a delay with the reporting, so it's not instant.

[00:23:58] Matt: And if you have [00:24:00] never set up Google Postmaster before, it'll probably be like three to five days before you start seeing any data there. And it'll only start collecting data once you pass a certain threshold of email volume. And also too, you need to be sending authenticated mail in order for Google Postmaster tools to even register this and find it and create these reports.

[00:24:26] Matt: So like. Basically, Google Postmaster only works for DKIM authorized mail. So I know we weren't going to do acronyms and all of that, but this is like an important nuance here. And your email platforms that you're using should have prompted you in February or March to set this up. And so you probably have authenticated your emails with DKIM already, or whoever set up your email platform at the beginning probably already did this.

[00:24:52] Matt: If they didn't though, and you're still sending through like a kind of like a proxy, a proxy way of sending emails, like [00:25:00] via convertkit. com or via active hosted five, six, three. com or at kajabi mail. com or whatever. You're not going to be able to see that data because it's technically you don't own that data and it's not going through your domain.

[00:25:14] Matt: So Google Postmaster can only report on emails that like flow through your domain and are authenticated because that's how you prove to Google you own this data stream, basically.

[00:25:28] Monica: And how it's connected to your reputation as well, right? Exactly. Because it can follow more data when it's connected. It's crazy to me.

[00:25:37] Monica: So you talked to me before about SEO and how, you know, Google does its algorithm, whatever. But then the more we talk, the more I understand how it's basically doing the same thing with email as well.

[00:25:50] Matt: It's very similar. In a lot of ways, what we're talking about with email, email engine optimization, EEO, as I like to call it, [00:26:00] it's much simpler than SEO.

[00:26:02] Matt: Because. With SEO, we're talking about you're ranking a website with hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of pages. You have all of these different backlink sources that are pointing to your domain. You're talking about content types, images, like page load times, like all this stuff is very, very complex.

[00:26:21] Matt: And, you know, this is why people spend their entire career in SEO. With email, it's much simpler because it's while, while there are, while I do believe that certain SEO factors about like backlinks and things like that will impact your email performance, you can really start competing with larger domains right away as a new sender.

[00:26:42] Matt: So. Like if you were to go register, let's say you've had your WordPress site that you're trying to rank articles for a year on, you know, and you've gotten some backlinks and you have 50 great articles, like sure, you're going to be able to start ranking some things, but a Forbes. com or a bigger website [00:27:00] decides to write an article on the same topic.

[00:27:02] Matt: They're going to be able to outrank you easily, much faster with very little work. Whereas with email, once you've passed like that, the domain age threshold, which is about a year from when you register a new domain and start sending email from it, then you can send an email a minute after Forbes and be above that.

[00:27:23] Matt: You know, there's just less factors that impact that. It's much simpler, you know, in a way, but it is similar cause it's the same company and, you know, obviously they have siloed teams, but, you know, They're all based on algorithms and things like that. So

[00:27:39] Monica: that's a very good reason for people to start paying more attention to their email marketing.

[00:27:44] Monica: I mean, it's hard to compete on SEO, but email marketing is still up for grabs.

[00:27:50] Matt: Yeah.

[00:27:51] Monica: Okay. Let's go back to my list of questions. So with Black Friday, there is usually an increasing frequency when it comes to sending [00:28:00] email. Is that something that can impact my open rates, my spam complaints, Send a reputation deliverability.

[00:28:09] Matt: Yeah, it can certainly impact your, send a reputation, domain, reputation, all of that in a positive way or a negative way. So this kind of is connected to this idea of frequency being an accelerant for your email performance. So if you have a really good sound strategy moving into Black Friday, let's say you send two emails a day.

[00:28:36] Matt: For a two week period, you know, Black Friday is a, it's like a month long event at this point, but. Let's say you send two emails a day for, you know, 10 days to two business days, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, Small Business Saturday, all these different days, a morning email and a night email.

[00:28:52] Matt: If you have a good strategy and you get really solid engagement, that can boost your reputation and actually help you in the long [00:29:00] term. Once Black Friday is over. But if you don't. The more you send, you know, to disengaged contacts, to bad addresses, to spam traps and things like that, you could dig yourself into a hole that you wouldn't be able to get yourself out of during Black Friday.

[00:29:16] Matt: You know, it's going to be kind of too late at that point. You're going to have to do the cleanup work after Black Friday.

[00:29:24] Monica: Yeah, I've seen that in life. I also saw what happens when you don't do that work before Black Friday and you get like 2 percent open rates. Wow, heartbreaking. Yeah. Yeah. So, I've been asked this next question quite a few times.

[00:29:43] Monica: So because they don't want to damage their reputation, but they want to blast emails for Black Friday and basically all of the holiday season, a lot of people, they're kind of using two different domain spaces. And kind of different [00:30:00] IPs. So they're kind of isolating their cells messaging from the regular sending.

[00:30:08] Monica: And instead of sending from hello at Monica body who. com I'm sending from hello, Monica one, but you will. com. So changing the means now, sometimes they're very different. Sometimes it's just like adding one number or whatever to it. Does that work? It feels like it's Black Hat, you know, Black Hat SEO practice from early in the days.

[00:30:36] Matt: Yeah, so I mean, a lot of companies use multiple domains and subdomains to send emails and it can definitely be a smart idea to quarantine certain mail streams. So, you know, reputable companies can have a mail stream and a domain for their marketing emails. They can have a maelstrom for their transactional [00:31:00] emails that they can have a maelstrom for cold outreach.

[00:31:03] Matt: So there's definitely a case for doing that. There's a time and a place for it, but you need to be smart and strategic about it and the time not to do this or not to implement this strategy for the first time is black Friday. Like if your client. You know, the week before black Friday is like, Hey, I saw on Facebook.

[00:31:21] Matt: It's a good idea to send from another domain. I just registered Monica hyphen by do. com. Uh, let's send all of our marketing emails from that. Like that is the worst idea possible because one, it's a brand new domain. I mean, Google and the other inboxes treat newly registered domains with much more suspicion than established mature aged domains.

[00:31:42] Matt: Two, you're going to have to warm up that domain and that IP that's going to be connected to send the emails from that, which takes a lot longer than a week if you have a list of any meaningful size. And so that's basically a guaranteed way to fail. And it's just, you know, It's not going to hurt [00:32:00] your main domain, but it's not a good idea.

[00:32:02] Matt: So I would recommend against that. But if they said, Hey, we have these two domains. We've been sending from both of them for five years. We've always sent our promotional emails from this domain and sent our. Transactional or content or one on one emails from this domain. How about we use this one for Black Friday?

[00:32:22] Matt: That makes sense because it's consistent with the strategy that's already been in place. So, that's kind of the short version of that.

[00:32:30] Monica: That's such a good explanation. Whenever I'm going to get this question again, I'm just going to play this recording.

[00:32:35] Matt: Point them to the recording exactly.

[00:32:39] Monica: Oh my god. Okay.

[00:32:41] Monica: And I know

[00:32:42] Matt: this firsthand because I've tried that in the past when I was younger in my career and it did not work. And I actually got a Google account shut down. So just don't even, don't even try it.

[00:32:52] Monica: I mean, I've seen people doing it. That's why I'm asking the question and like, I'm good with [00:33:00] data. I understand technical things.

[00:33:02] Monica: I started in marketing by doing SEO like 17 years ago. So I get how this works, and I understand the element of, like, reputation and all of that. But it's very hard to explain this to someone who's focused on, I don't know, I just bought, like, six months ago, I bought an email list, it has 100k people, I've been nurturing them, I've been whatever.

[00:33:30] Monica: But, for Black Friday, I don't want to lose people. That's just what I've built with that audience so far. So let me just like move right here and just blast the emails for a couple of days, and then just forget about that domain for the rest of the year or forever. So that's a very good. Very good. Very good explanation.

[00:33:52] Monica: And I also mentioned like the taboo word to buying a list, right. You know, I,

[00:33:58] Matt: you saw me roll my eyes. [00:34:00] So there you go. That's another, um, uh, Fast track to failure right there. Do not do that. I've never seen it work out. Every client I've ever had, he's like, man, we bought these 40, 000 names. We get a 1 percent open rate.

[00:34:10] Matt: What's going on? It's like, well. They're probably all fake addresses anyways, who did you buy them from, you know, and it just doesn't make any sense.

[00:34:20] Monica: There was one client,

[00:34:22] Matt: there was

[00:34:22] Monica: one client who bought an email list, 40, 000, 50, 000 people and he kept saying, let's email this list, let's do something with this list, let's, let's, let's.

[00:34:36] Monica: And eventually we were like, okay. Let's do something and he was like, let's send a flash sale right? No, no, no No, we're first going to try to kind of re engage to see is there anybody there? Who's actually a real person would they even be interested in the topic and let's just allow them to opt in [00:35:00] Receiving your emails and let's take it from there.

[00:35:03] Monica: And what a surprise the Re engagement rate was I don't know, 7 percent or something like that. And we did like, I think two series of re engagement over like six months or something like that. And it did not go well. I mean, the amount of money he invested in trying to make that list work, did not bring a return on investment for what he had paid or the time we've all invested in this, it's marketing.

[00:35:33] Monica: So we learned something, but still. It's, I know it's very hard to work with bot lists right now. Maybe it was a lot easier 15 years ago, 10 years ago maybe, when there wasn't that much competition. Even the consumers, they weren't that much educated about what's happening in their inbox, who they're getting emails from.

[00:35:56] Monica: There weren't so many guidelines to protect consumers from all of [00:36:00] this. But right now, I mean, We've got social media, we've got ads, we've got so many different opportunities to build an email list of people who are actually interested in what we have to offer. So I can totally get the appeal of more people to sell to, but that's not what's actually going to happen now.

[00:36:20] Matt: Yeah. I've never known that to work and maybe there was a day and age when it did work, but I honestly relic from the past. The like direct mail days where you could buy a list, you know, of people who subscribe to, you know, food and wine magazine. These are foodies. They love this. And there you have zip codes from, you know, every state in the United States.

[00:36:47] Matt: And you could send out a targeted piece of mail and there's no spam filters with direct mail, you know, like Google is not going to decide whether the message makes it to that person's mailbox or [00:37:00] not. And so they're just working on volume. We're going to send out a million mail pieces. If we get a 2 percent response on this, this thing is going to go gangbusters.

[00:37:09] Matt: Like that was success. And so like, I think it just does not translate to email, but you have people who kind of were list brokers for physical addresses, which was a very important part of a direct marketing company back in the day. That may be transitioned or someone to borrow that idea for email.

[00:37:31] Matt: Maybe it works for a bit, but it just does not work anymore. And a lot of email platforms will kick you off if they catch you using purchase lists, because it brings down their reputation and that's how you can get downgraded to a bad IP pool or kicked off. So don't do it.

[00:37:47] Monica: Awesome. Okay. So we're getting close to the end of this.

[00:37:52] Monica: So with all of this in mind, which was a very valuable episode, I learned so much. What's a [00:38:00] final piece of advice you have for the people who are wondering, should I be running a Black Friday campaign this year with the context of the new changes, new changes, of the changes that are coming up this year with the Competition.

[00:38:17] Monica: That's insane. What do you think?

[00:38:19] Matt: Yeah, absolutely. You should absolutely be running a Black Friday campaign. I mean, it's like, you know, people have reasons for not doing that. And if your brand, for example, is opposed to like this sort of reactive consumerism and that's your stance. Then taking a powerful stance against it could help you with the campaign before or after black Friday, you know, but if that, if you, if you just want to tap into black Friday, this is a time when most Americans, you know, and the people around the world are looking for deals, ready to buy, expecting offers and expecting sales.

[00:38:54] Matt: And you can make a ton of money by putting together a black Friday campaign. And the thing I'll say too, [00:39:00] is that, you know, we've talked about all these deliverability problems and things to avoid and. Like, if you're on the fence about whether or not to do this because you're afraid you might encounter deliverability problems afterwards, I would say don't worry about that because deliverability problems, it's actually a great problem to have because they're incredibly fixable, you know?

[00:39:20] Matt: So like, even if you do kind of dig yourself into a bit of a hole through Black Friday, unless you do something seriously wrong, you can work your way back. By January, you know, so like the risk versus reward is certainly much higher on the reward side so it's just like I'd say just go for it and If you do encounter problems then fix them after black friday But you'll make more money than by just sitting out because you're afraid so

[00:39:49] Monica: very good point So if our listeners want to learn more about deliverability from you, where can they find you?

[00:39:57] Matt: Yes, the best place to find me Is through [00:40:00] my newsletter, go to deliverability now. com. There's an opt in page. You can sign up for my weekly emails there and yeah, make sure you open and reply to my first email. So you'll continue getting all of my, uh, subsequent messages and your primary tab.

[00:40:17] Monica: And that's a cool engagement tactic.

[00:40:19] Monica: I use that as well. Thank you, Matt. This was amazingly valuable. Thank you so much.

[00:40:26] Matt: My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Monica. I really appreciate it.

[00:40:29] Monica: You've listened to Master the Inbox. In this season of the podcast, we're focusing on strategies to help you, course creators, coaches, and consultants, run successful Black Friday campaigns.

[00:40:40] Monica: And if you found this episode useful, then please help us spread the word. Like, share, and subscribe wherever you're listening.