How to send a privacy policy update to a large, unengaged email list without harming deliverability?
Summary
What email marketers say8Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Litmus Blog advocates for creating a sunset policy, automatically removing or suppressing subscribers who haven't engaged in a defined period. This practice minimizes deliverability risks associated with mailing to inactive addresses.
Email marketer from HubSpot Blog explains the necessity of regular list cleaning. Removing hard bounces, unsubscribes, and unengaged subscribers improves sender reputation and deliverability. They recommend using email validation tools to identify invalid addresses.
Email marketer from Return Path explains the importance of monitoring your Sender Reputation. They say this includes volume, complaint rates, and more which can affect your ability to land in inboxes.
Email marketer from Mailjet Blog recommends segmenting your email list based on engagement. Sending to engaged subscribers first helps maintain a good sender reputation. They also suggest suppressing unengaged contacts to avoid deliverability issues.
Email marketer from Neil Patel Blog explains the importance of warming up IP addresses. He advises gradually increasing sending volume to build a positive reputation with ISPs, suggesting starting with your most engaged subscribers and gradually adding less engaged ones.
Email marketer from Sendinblue Blog suggests running a re-engagement campaign before sending a mass email to an unengaged list. This involves sending targeted emails to inactive subscribers, encouraging them to opt-in again or update their preferences. This helps clean the list and identify truly unengaged contacts.
Email marketer from Reddit r/EmailMarketing suggests implementing frequency capping to avoid overwhelming unengaged subscribers. Limiting the number of emails sent to these contacts can reduce the risk of spam complaints and improve overall deliverability.
Email marketer from Email Geeks advises to contact your ESP support. Also suggests that you are not obligated to use the email channel for all contacts, and inactive contacts could be targeted via SMS, web push notifications, social media, or a website banner.
What the experts say5Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that it's essential to consider audience engagement when sending policy updates. She explains that legal requirements don't override deliverability best practices. Segmenting your audience and using alternative channels for less engaged users can help prevent deliverability issues.
Expert from Email Geeks suggests that legal is misunderstanding the medium, stating that sending an email doesn't guarantee it's opened or received. They recommend sending to the engaged audience and using a banner or popup on the authentication page for others.
Expert from Email Geeks shares a plan to mitigate deliverability risks by breaking the list into chunks based on engagement and recency, and splitting the mailing over a month, starting with the highest engagement/recency segments.
Expert from Spam Resource explains that hard bounces are one of the most detrimental events to deliverability. It is therefore extremely important to remove them. Also to follow any bounce codes.
Expert from Email Geeks reinforces Mickey's point about the importance of removing old email addresses. If the email addresses aren’t there, you can’t mail them and they cannot be stolen.
What the documentation says5Technical articles
Documentation from Microsoft Sender Support explains the significance of sender reputation. They advise monitoring your sending reputation using tools like Sender Reputation Data (SRD) and adhering to their sending policies. Poor sender reputation can lead to emails being filtered as spam.
Documentation from RFC 4408 explains the technical specifications for Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records. SPF records help verify the authenticity of emails by specifying which mail servers are authorized to send emails on behalf of a domain. Implementing SPF can improve email deliverability.
Documentation from RFC 4871, explains the technical specifications for DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) records. DKIM helps reduce email spoofing by providing a digital signature that verifies the email's origin and content. Implementing DKIM can improve email deliverability and trustworthiness.
Documentation from Google Postmaster Tools explains the best practices for bulk email senders. They emphasize the importance of authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), maintaining low spam complaint rates, and providing easy unsubscribe options. These measures help improve deliverability to Gmail users.
Documentation from RFC 7489 details Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC). The aim of DMARC is to use the DNS system in order to reduce the threat from fraudulent email. This documentation explains the need to put SPF and DKIM in place first.