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David_Negron
David_Negron
Level 2
July 17, 2018
Question

Email Deliverability and Sender Domain

  • July 17, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 8999 views

I am looking for advice on how to better understand why our email open rates are so low (sitting at roughly 10%) as well as learn if I can use the same sender domain if our company just got acquired and net new employees wouldn't have the same email scheme as the previous domain. Do you think this could be causing the issue for deliverability as well?

3 replies

Josh_Hill13
Josh_Hill13
Level 10
July 17, 2018

how are you setting up your emails now?


Are all the technical pieces in place? (DKIM, SPF, etc...)

Using shared IP?

is your list Opt In or US Opt Out?

David_Negron
David_NegronAuthor
Level 2
July 18, 2018

Hi @Josh Hill thanks for responding. It says the SPF and DKIM are verified in Marketo. We are using a shared IP address but our lists are predominantly opt-in and even emails to our current customer base are low in open rates. I have tried testing text emails and html with graphics but It still is suspiciously low in engagement.

I have suspected something was going on but became apparent when inviting customers to our user conference and receiving feedback that they did not receive an invitation or they didn't see it because it was in their spam/junk folders.

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
July 18, 2018
  • tell us your real domain
  • show us the headers of a received email (Show Original Message in Gmail, Show Headers in Outlook, etc.)
Annette_Giorda4
Annette_Giorda4
Level 2
July 26, 2018

Email Open Rates can be tied to a myriad of things...

- Subject lines

- Preheader text

- Syntax for both (both should be in sentence case, and no more than 3 punctuation marks)

- Inboxing rate (are your emails going to spam? Or are they ending up in inboxes?)

- Device neutrality (are your emails responsive for all devices and email clients?)

- Message envelope - the friendly-from and reply-to addresses

If all of the technical pieces are in place, and you know that your emails are getting in front of eyeballs, then the issue is that people just aren't wanting to open your emails :-/  The challenge becomes getting more people to want to open your emails, and that is a huge ball of wax on its own.

Now if it's Deliverability you're having an issue with (because you're seeing high Bounce rates) then I'd look more into the source of the bounces.  Are they coming from a particular domain?  Are your messages for larger audiences getting higher bounce rates than your smaller audiences?

For the domain, you'll need to switch over to the new domain for the new parent company as soon as your website is switched.  CAN-SPAM rules apply there.  But in the meantime, I highly recommend that you make the "from" name for your emails "Company Y, now a part of Company X" so that people get used to the new name.

Dan_Stevens_
Dan_Stevens_
Level 10
July 26, 2018

It should also be pointed out that even if Marketo is receiving a "delivered" ping back from the recipient's email server, that doesn't mean the email was sent to the user's inbox.  It very likely could be sent to some sort of quarantine area and the recipient will not receive it.  This is common if companies block all emails from mass email platforms like Marketo.

Jo_Pitts1
Community Advisor
Jo_Pitts1Community Advisor
Community Advisor
July 26, 2018

David,

I recently did some work for a client that showed that while they were getting circa 20% open rates it was pretty much always the same people opening the emails (we did this by analysing across about 3 months of email sends).  Of their 50k emailable base, the reality is that only about 10k were even vaguely engaged.  This has now lead to a pretty significant piece of work around cross channel re-engagement (combination of in store, web, social, SMS etc.)

So, there are a few things to consider:

  1. Work out who makes up the 10%.. is it the same 10% week on week.  If so, then look at why the other 90% aren't opening (maybe pick up the phone and ask a few).
  2. Make sure you aren't hitting the major email providers spam traps (this can happen even with SPF and DKIM set correctly). It may be worth checking out www.senderscore.org
  3. What are your click through rates?  Revenue?  Event Attendance?  Is open rate really the measure of success you are looking for?
  4. Have you tried to find out what open rates are for similar types of eDM comms in the industry sector you are in?  10% may be normal .

Best of luck getting the rates up.

Regards

Jo

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