How can I recover a healthy domain reputation after a drop in opens and engagement due to sending to an unengaged group?
Summary
What email marketers say12Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Reddit explains to focus on re-engaging active subscribers with personalized content and offers. They suggest running a re-engagement campaign with incentives for subscribers to confirm their interest. For inactive subscribers, they recommend a sunset policy with a final email and then removal from the list to protect sender reputation.
Email marketer from SendGrid explains improving email engagement by segmenting your audience based on engagement levels, sending targeted content, and regularly cleaning your email list to remove inactive subscribers. This helps improve sender reputation by focusing on recipients who actively want your emails.
Email marketer from Hubspot responds that improving email deliverability involves setting up email authentication protocols (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), segmenting email lists for targeted sending, cleaning inactive subscribers from the email list, warming up IP addresses, and monitoring sending reputation metrics.
Email marketer from Customer.io shares suppressing unengaged segments by creating a segment of users who haven't opened or clicked emails in a while and exclude them from regular sends. Before fully suppressing, send a re-engagement campaign to give them a chance to opt-in.
Email marketer from Email Marketing Forum says you can segment the list into highly engaged, moderately engaged, and unengaged segments. Then, create specific campaigns tailored to each. Send exclusive content or offers to the highly engaged, and try to re-engage the moderately engaged with personalized emails and surveys.
Email marketer from GMass shares the importance of setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records to authenticate your emails. These measures help ISPs verify that your emails are legitimate and not spam, which can significantly improve deliverability and sender reputation.
Email marketer from EmailOnAcid answers shares to regularly cleaning email list. This includes removing bounced emails, unsubscribed users, and inactive subscribers. Maintaining a clean list improves engagement rates and reduces the risk of being marked as spam.
Email marketer from Email Geeks explains that spam trigger words are still relevant if the majority of the list is covered by spamassassin, barracuda, and proofpoint. Also mentioning that Yahoo and gmail, still use a form of word filtering, but it isn’t a static list, it’s a fingerprint of current spam.
Email marketer from Campaign Monitor explains that using double opt-in to ensure subscribers actively confirm their interest in receiving emails. This helps build a list of engaged recipients and reduces the likelihood of spam complaints.
Email marketer from Mailjet shares that warming up an IP address or domain involves gradually increasing sending volume to build a positive reputation with ISPs. They recommend starting with small, engaged segments and gradually increasing volume over time.
Marketer from Email Geeks advises that a single error with okay list hygiene is often a momentary blip and senders can recover organically.
Email marketer from Litmus responds with testing emails before sending them to the entire list to ensure they render correctly across different email clients and devices. This helps improve the user experience and reduce the risk of recipients marking emails as spam due to rendering issues.
What the experts say4Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise shares that consistency is key to building and maintaining a good sender reputation. In particular, send from the same IP addresses and domains, and keep sending at a steady rate.
Expert from Email Geeks shares the best advice is to revert to sending quality content. Recovery should occur within a few days after fixing the issue, though a temporary penalty period might be experienced.
Expert from Spamresource explains that the best way to determine if a user is truly unengaged is by looking at data across channels. If someone is not opening your emails, but is buying items from your website, filling out forms, or engaging with customer service, then it's not necessarily safe to assume that they are unengaged. But if you do end up culling inactive users from your email program, continue to market to them across other channels. Just don't email them unless they opt-in.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains you should configure your bounce processing correctly and handle all the different types of bounces. Then to review hard bounces (where the email address is invalid) as they should be removed from your list immediately, soft bounces (a temporary delivery problem) are emails you should retry, but only for a short time as some could be an indication of a spam trap.
What the documentation says4Technical articles
Documentation from AWS explains you should monitor metrics such as bounces, complaints, and open rates using Amazon SES. AWS advises using these metrics to identify issues with your sending practices and take corrective actions.
Documentation from SparkPost explains that sender reputation is a measure of the trustworthiness of your email sending practices. To maintain a healthy reputation, monitor bounce rates, spam complaints, and engagement metrics. They recommend implementing feedback loops with ISPs to address issues promptly.
Documentation from Microsoft responds by emphasising the need to adhere to their sending policies and technical guidelines, including proper authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and list management practices. Microsoft recommends using their Smart Network Data Services (SNDS) to monitor your IP reputation and identify issues affecting deliverability.
Documentation from Google explains that to improve sender reputation, send wanted mail, don't send unwanted mail, and provide easy unsubscribe options. Also, maintain consistent sending volumes, authenticate your email, and monitor your sending reputation using Postmaster Tools.