Black Friday has unparalleled money-making potential. So if you’ve been putting off getting your email program on point, don’t hesitate. We have five ways you can help your Black Friday emails land in the inbox.
Of course, these tips will help you any time of the year, but there’s just no excuse to go into the holiday season without checking off all these boxes.
Hitting the inbox is the prerequisite to any success with email. So let’s explore the five best ways to get your emails to the most important place: the inbox!
1. Want to reach the inbox this Black Friday? Have a great email list
This isn’t an oversimplification. First, you need a great email list, which is easier said than done. It takes time to build an effective email list, and buying one shouldn’t enter your thoughts. Not only is it illegal in certain countries, it usually gets you spam complaints and prevents your subscribers from even seeing your emails.
So how do you get a great email list? First, you’ve got to earn every subscriber you’ll get. “You get people to sign up because you provide some value,” said ZeroBounce CMO Anne Ghaltchi. She went on to explain: “The more layers and ways you bring value, the stronger your list will be. There’s not any shortcut to building a great email list. It takes time.”
Let’s say you’ve got a list with wonderful promotions people rave about. That’s great, but you don’t want to become complacent. Can you make your emails more entertaining or attractive? Always look to be improving, and you’ll be bringing more people into the fold.
2. Keep your email list healthy and fresh
If you’ve got a great list, you must take care of it. The most beautiful house, car, or tool is nothing if it’s not maintained. Well, email lists are the same way. Therefore, you must select and routinely use a quality email validation service that will root out harmful or inactive emails.
All email lists eventually have their data go bad.
The most common problematic emails are as follows:
Inactive contacts. The owners of these email addresses no longer check them. Instead, they got a new email address and abandoned the old one.
Disposable emails. People set up disposable email addresses because they don’t want to share their actual address. Websites generate these temporary emails, and they deactivate within an hour or a day. Some call them “burners.”
Catch-all emails. Companies use catch-all email accounts to receive all emails sent to their domain. If you try to send an email to [email protected] and leave off the “i” in Bill, it will still get funneled into a catch-all email inbox. Although you could technically say, it’s been “delivered,” people don’t always check those email inboxes. Also, these mailboxes can quickly become full and bounce.
Spam traps. A lot of spam traps are email addresses that used to be active. Since no human being checked those emails, they figured only a spammer would send them anything. Spam traps can look just like real email addresses but are instead used to lure spammers in order to block them.
Role-based emails. These are checked by teams of people, like info@, admin@, or mail@. These email addresses have limited marketing value. All emails you send to them may get deleted in bulk and even marked as spam.
Abuse emails. These addresses belong to people who habitually mark emails as spam, even if they subscribed.
You may fall into the trap of thinking that it doesn’t matter if you’ve got some of these high-risk emails on your list. But this marketing approach is like throwing everything up against the wall to see what sticks.
The problem with tolerating inferior data is that it may work for a while but will cause your email program to unravel. An email program can quickly decline to the point of ruin. Some email service providers will boot you off their service if your data deteriorates to a certain threshold. It happened to one of our customers who got his account reinstated only after he verified his outdated email list.
Look at email validation like taking out the garbage or spoiled food. Have an attitude of only keeping fresh, quality emails. If you email contacts that are so-so in quality, you’ll get so-so results.
How to use email validation to help land in the inbox
So how do you keep your email list in good shape and all this bad data away? First, you must select an accurate email validation service to find all these nasty emails. Then, you upload your entire list to the platform. The email checker will identify harmful and invalid addresses. Remove those addresses without hesitation because they won’t lead to anything.
“Verify your list no less than quarterly, and use an email validation API to keep the list in good shape while you’re at it,” said Josh Brown of Helpjuice. He explains: “It connects to any forms you have and blocks bad data so it doesn’t get added to your list in the first place.”
3. Warm up your IP and domain to reach the inbox
Let’s say you’ve been collecting contacts since late spring and haven’t sent any emails to your subscribers. It’s almost Black Friday, and you start sending emails with a bang. You’ll go hard and make the most of the shopping season.
Many email marketers overlook their domain and IP warming up after a long break. It could be jarring to your subscribers if you suddenly begin sending three emails a week. What’s even more worrisome is that your sudden spike in volume could trigger Internet service providers (ISPs) into thinking you’re a spammer.
So, make sure to warm up your domain and IP gradually. You need to check the daily limits for each email service provider (ESP) and stay within them to avoid the spam folder. You’ll see more excellent inbox deliverability on Black Friday and beyond if you do this.
4. Want your Black Friday emails in the inbox? Ensure you’re not on any blacklists
Internet service providers, antispam organizations, and email providers are all united against spammers. Spam has been a problem almost since the beginning of email, and the fight against spam is ongoing.
Blacklists exist in order to prevent the spammers from winning. Organizations and companies regularly add email addresses suspected of spamming to blacklists.
Here’s the problem for email marketers: even legitimate and ethical email senders end up on these blacklists. It’s bound to happen to many people wrongly lumped in with spammers, but there is a solution.
A blacklist monitor can determine and alert you if something or someone adds you to any email blacklists. If a blacklist monitor identifies you on any blacklists, you can immediately step in to get delisted. You want to restore your reputation as soon as possible to minimize any damage.
5. Use an inbox tester and remove the guesswork
Those who gamble by keeping inactive or low-quality emails on their list or taking shortcuts won’t get good results. So, once you’ve done all the above steps, your emails have a significant advantage over your competitors.
There is an additional aid that will even help more. Next-level technology has led to inbox placement testing. You can see how your emails will fare out in the wild before you hit Send.
Inbox placement testers will check whether your email will go to the inbox or spam with all the primary email providers. If it doesn’t go to the inbox, you’ll know in advance. That way you consult with the postmaster at that email provider to fix the problem.
Landing in the inbox is a big puzzle, but there’s more
You know that it’ll only backfire if you skimp on following email best practices. There aren’t any shortcuts. With email, planned and careful will always work better than haphazard and sloppy.
Also, remember that if your emails hit the inbox on Black Friday, you must make your subscribers want to open them.
It’s no easy task to get your subscribers to read and interact. Now you take it to the next level and get them to take your offer. Is the offer something you would take? Does it seem hard to pass up? If the answers to these questions are yes, you’re on the right track.
