Email Deliverability
People look at the FROM NAME
There are two things to think about with email deliverability: the plumbing and the behavior. If your plumbing doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter how you behave, your emails won’t be delivered. Setting up DNS settings can be frustrating because it must be exact. Joe wanted to make the process easier, so he automated it. What does it look like?
- Create an SPF/DKIM Record: This authenticates the email and is a safeguard so that no one else can send in your name. If this isn’t set up, your email provider can’t determine if it’s really you sending the messages. This used to be the most prevalent way of sending spam (by highjacking someone’s mail server). These records prevent that.
- Tracking CNAME: This allows you to determine whether or not someone received the email you sent.
- MXB/MXA: Receiving email servers in the DNS that improve deliverability and allow you to receive emails.
- DMARC: This is another authentication method to ensure the email is real.
When you set up HighLevel, it gives you two options. You can set up an SMPP server or you can set up Mailgun. Mailgun is integrated into GHL (as an API connection) and can be a lot smoother. Many people create an SMPP with G-suite, which is also a reliable way to send marketing emails.
When you create a Mailgun domain, it must be verified. To do so, you must create six entries. If you type something wrong, it causes trouble. That’s why automation can be helpful. Joe’s workflow takes care of everything. You send a GHL form and it creates the Mailgun domain and all of the settings in Cloudflare. Joe’s automation does this in 9 seconds and it’s correct every single time. It can eliminate a lot of hassle for you.
- Go to MailGenius and copy the email they provide you to send your test emails.
- Go into HighLevel and set up a MailGenius contact. So when you need to test emails you can go to the contact and replace the email with what they provided.
- Send an email. (HINT: You need at least 50 words in the emails that you send even if it’s just a test email.)
- Go back to MailGenius and click “see your score” after you’ve sent your email. MailGenius will tell you everything that should be corrected with the email.
- You want a score of 95 or higher for the highest probability of email deliverability. Ideally, you want to send text-based emails.
The first email Joe sent out of a newly created email gave him a score of 88. It gave him 6 things to fix: the DMARC, html body, spam, domain suffix, and so forth. This is where people start hiring an expert to fix this. But Joe points out that it’s a behavior issue and has nothing to do with the plumbing.
The first email he sent didn’t have a subject line. Another issue was that the email was coming from the wrong email address. So Joe added the subject line, which bumped his score to 90 and there were only 5 things to fix. Then he fixed the “from” email address to one that matches his Mailgun subdomain. His score hit 96 and only had a few things left to fix. But at that point, that email will get delivered to someone’s inbox. You have to test email deliverability. People who do this professionally test every single email they send.
How do you find your “send from” email in HighLevel? What are the biggest plumbing and behavioral issues? How can your emails get black-listed? Watch to find out!
If you’re sending emails to 10,000+ prospects at one time, how do you make sure they don’t get black-listed? Joe says to look at the emails that end up in your inbox. Frank Kern sends 2–3 emails a day to his entire list and it gets into people’s inboxes. How? The emails are engaging. He builds curiosity and makes you click to read the rest. When you send a large number of emails, build curiosity in the headline and first few sentences. What did Joe send that got a 44% email rate among his subscribers?
Joe shares some tips about your email signature that you wouldn’t expect. Don’t miss it!
Turn off your open-rate tracking for a few weeks. Why? When people install ios 15 it will screw with the open-rate measurement because the new operating system automatically opens emails. If you have an automation that’s triggered by someone opening an email, you’ll get labeled as a spammer. Apple also introduced “hide my email” which allows you to come up with a fake email that will receive emails that you can switch off within seconds. He recommends switching to click-tracking. Open-rate tracking will be dead for a while.
Pick some things that you’ve learned today and consistently do them. Start somewhere and remember—perfection is the enemy of good. If people consume your content and move to the next step, that’s the measuring stick.
