Deliverability is hands down the most un-sexy part of email marketing.

It's also the most important part.

Because if your emails go straight to spam, nothing else matters.

Not your amazing copy. Not your award winning designs. Nothing.

I wasn't even planning to write about deliverability this week.

But in the last 10 days I ran into no less than FOUR 7 and 8 figure eCom brands silently murdering their own email revenue.

Every one of them had emails landing in spam for at least 6 to 12 months.

And nobody noticed.

Oh, but it gets worse…

Every single one of these brands paid a living, breathing human being to run their email marketing.

Are you pissed off yet? Because I'm livid.

I'm sitting here at 6:47am about to snap my laptop over my knee like Bo Jackson.

My hand has been forced.

We will not go quietly into the spam folder. We will not vanish without a fight.

So today, I’m going to show you EXACTLY how I diagnose and fix six figure email deliverability 

The good news is you don't need to be an email marketing expert to spot a deliverability problem. You can diagnose it in less than 3 minutes.

Here's how:

If your open rates sit in the 30% to 50% range and there's no crazy gap between inbox providers...

Congrats. You're in good shape. Skip down to the maintenance section.

If your open rates look more like this...

...you've got a real problem.

90% of the time the issue is with Gmail, so that's all we're going to focus on.

Go check Google Postmaster Tools. Or better yet, ask whoever runs your email to check it for you.

Slack them right now. I'll wait.

What's that? They just told you it's not even set up?

Yikes.

Have them set it up right now. It takes 10 minutes, maximum.

Once it's live, check the main screen.

You want to see this.

Beautiful green check marks and “users Signal they want to get your email messages.”

If you see any red , check the Visibility Analysis section. It'll tell you what's wrong.

For example...

Based on what Google told you we now know exactly what we need to do to fix this.

Deliverability problems almost always come down to two things.

And 90% of the time it's poor list hygiene.

This one's a quick fix.

Every platform you use to send email from your domain has to be authenticated. If Google flagged an authentication issue, one of them isn't.

Go check every single one:

Anything that sends from your domain. Check that it's authenticated and get it set up. Done.

Poor list hygiene just means you're emailing too many unengaged people.

Unengaged people are subscribers who don't open, click, or reply to your emails.

This happens for one of two reasons. Either you're blasting your entire list (you can't do this, ever), or your "engaged" segment is too wide and stuffed with a bunch of dead subscribers.

Here's the fix. You're going to scale everything way back to your most engaged people, then slowly widen from there.

Step 1. Build a hyper-engaged segment. Anyone who opened OR clicked an email in the last 30 days. That's it. We want the most engaged people you've got.

Step 2. Send a campaign to just them. Only that segment. Nobody else.

Step 3. Check the numbers. Your open rate should come back high, somewhere in the 35% to 50% range. Click rate should be around 1%. If it looks good, you're clear to widen.

Step 4. Widen the window. Bump your segment to anyone who opened or clicked in the last 45 days. Send again.

Step 5. Rinse and repeat. Keep widening the window a little at a time. Send, check, widen. Send, check, widen.

Step 6. Find your drop-off. At some point your open rates are going to dip below that 35% open rate. Once they do. Back it up to the last window that worked and camp right there.

Heads up: this can take a few weeks. That's normal. Be patient with it.

Like I said at the top.

I really hate talking about delivery because it is so boring.

I’d rather talk about strategy, copywriting, automations… just about anything else

But in business the boring shit makes money.

If you think you’ve got a deliverability problem, and are stuck click below to book a call with me. We can solve it for you.

I’ll catch you next week,

Ben

💸 If you’re running a 7–8 figure eCom brand but it still feels like nothing’s working book a free strategy call​ with me Here.

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