Top 5 Email Myths

02/01/22 • 24 min

2 Listeners

Are there tips and tricks to avoiding the promotions tab? Can simple keywords send you straight to the spam folder? Is email on the way out? Misinformation about best practices can send your email strategy spiraling. While it sounds cliche, avoid trusting everything you read on the internet.

Because despite living in the era of information, many email mythologies have survived. If you’re feeling lost and confused about what’s true, what’s old news, and what never served anyone in the first place, this episode is for you. From the value of open rates to email’s future as a medium for successful creators, Alyssa and Melissa tackle the ever-present underlying question: email fact or email fiction?

Key Takeaways

[02:19] - Specific words will automatically send your email to the spam folder. This is a myth! Sender reputation and list health determine your deliverability.
[06:55] - When it comes to list collection, following legislation is enough. Don’t forget, subscribers need to give explicit permission to receive your marketing emails.
[09:43] - Email is dead (or dying). Far from the case, with social algorithms changing daily, email is more powerful than ever before.
[13:06] - Tips and tricks will push your email out of the promotions tab and into the primary tab in Gmail. These tricks don’t exist and landing in the promotions tab is usually beneficial.
[19:09] - Open rates should be the main metric you use to measure email success. Open rates are less reliable than ever. Focus on engagement instead.

Quotes

[09:09] - “If you want to reach the inbox and you want to be a good responsible sender, you need to make sure that every single person on your list opted in for your messages and you are delivering what they were expecting to receive.” ~ @alyssa_dulin

[10:14] - “Any of these social media platforms could go away tomorrow. We’ve seen it happen. And being able to communicate with people on your list in a more targeted way is really cool and I don’t think it’s going to go away anytime soon.” ~ @mel_lambert_

[17:12] - “Trust the process, encourage engagement, but trying to trick an algorithm isn’t going to work for very long, even if you find a loophole. And it’s not going to make people more likely to purchase something from you.” ~ @mel_lambert_

Links

Connect with our hosts

Stay in touch

Try ConvertKit's deliverability in action

It's now free to use ConvertKit with an audience of 1,000 subscribers or less! Start building your audience and reaching their inboxes: convertkit.com/pricing.

Key Takeaways

[02:19] - Specific words will automatically send your email to the spam folder. This is a myth! Sender reputation and list health determine your deliverability.
[06:55] - When it comes to list collection, following legislation is enough. Don’t forget, subscribers need to give explicit permission to receive your marketing emails.
[09:43] - Email is dead (or dying). Far from the case, with social algorithms changing daily, email is more powerful than ever before.
[13:06] - Tips and tricks will push your email out of the promotions tab and into the primary tab in Gmail. These tricks don’t exist and landing in the promotions tab is usually beneficial.
[19:09] - Open rates should be the main metric you use to measure email success. Open rates are less reliable than ever. Focus on engagement instead.

Quotes

Links

Connect with our hosts

Stay in touch

Try ConvertKit's deliverability in action

It's now free to use ConvertKit with an audience of 1,000 subscribers or less! Start building your audience and reaching their inboxes: convertkit.com/pricing.

Previous Episode

The Audience-Building Flywheel

The most common question deliverability experts hear is, “how do I get more subscribers?” As a brand new creator, finding followers is probably your top concern. And although there are many answers depending on who you ask, the best explanation may be something called the flywheel effect. In short, you have to put out content consistently and strategically, blending social media with email to reach the most subscribers possible.

While it’s hardly rocket science, sending out content when you’ve only got one or two subscribers to your email list or five followers on Instagram can be nerve-wracking. However, in order to set the flywheel in motion, consistently creating in public is the name of the game. Or at least part of the name of the game.

In this episode, Alyssa and Melissa describe each step of the flywheel concept, explaining how to maximize your results and stay motivated along the way, even with just one follower to your name. It may be a slow process, but if done correctly, the flywheel concept guarantees growth and may be the simplest answer to that number one creator question.

Key Takeaways

[02:03] - The flywheel concept explains audience building as a process with a painfully slow start. Consistency speeds up the flywheel until the wheel spins faster and faster and audience-building becomes easier and easier.
[12:29] - The first step of the flywheel process is posting to social media and creating in public.
[14:57] - The second step is telling followers to sign up for your email list and telling them exactly what they’ll get out of it. In other words, incentivize subscribers to join your list.
[19:09] - The third step is to send an email and then send consistent, high-quality content to your list.
[22:23] - The final step is to tell social media about the email you’ve just sent. Let them know what they’re missing out on if they aren’t subscribed.

Quotes

[14:21] - “When we say high value, that kind of depends on what your subscribers or followers find value in. It doesn’t necessarily mean something that took you hours.” ~ @alyssa_dulin

[19:23] - “The key here, and this is what we’ve talked about through all of our episodes, is to send consistently high-quality content to your list that meets the need that you just told them you were going to meet.” ~ @alyssa_dulin

[19:35] - “People tend to lose interest in things that they forget about. And that is what I notice on social media and also related to email. People like consistency. Even if you have to repurpose your content in some way or ask questions for more content, it’s better to send something.” ~ @mel_lambert_

Links

Connect with our hosts

Stay in touch

Try ConvertKit's deliverability in action

It's now free to use ConvertKit with an audience of 1,000 subscribers or less! Start building your audience and reaching their inboxes: convertkit.com/pricing.

Next Episode

iOS 15’s Impact on Open Rates So Far

When change happens, many of us panic. The rules of yesterday no longer apply and our future feels uncertain. But not all changes are catastrophic. In fact, a few recent email updates may seem more dramatic than they actually are. Case and point: Apple’s new privacy changes.

Earlier in 2021, Apple announced an update that sent many senders stressing. Within Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection feature, pixels load automatically and recipients are unable to determine who’s actually opening their emails. For years, open rates have been a hallmark metric in the world of deliverability, but now that technology has turned the tables, what’s next for measuring email success?

In this episode, Alyssa and Melissa explain what the iOS 15 update really means for senders and subscribers, who’s impacted, where open rates are surprisingly still useful, and why Apple’s update is an email blessing in disguise.

Key Takeaways

[01:50] - Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection is a feature that automatically loads pixels in an email to prevent senders from collecting information about the receiver. As a result, it will always appear that subscribers are opening emails.
[05:56] - Who’s impacted? Any subscriber using an Apple device with iOS 15 installed who uses the Apple Mail app to manage their emails. Unfortunately, there’s no way to tell which subscribers fall into this category.
[07:48] - Since Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection was released, ConvertKit has seen open rates increase from 30% to 37%.
[11:14] - Even before the release of iOS 15, open rates were becoming less and less reliable. With this update, open rates are officially an email metric of the past.
[14:48] - It’s time for creators to move away from relying on open rates to determine email success and start focusing on increasing engagement.

Quotes

[05:43] - “An interesting effect of the Mail Privacy Protection is that a lot of senders aren’t going to be able to clean their list and make sure people are receiving what they want to receive the way that they could with accurate open rate data.” ~ @alyssa_dulin[14:51] - “It takes the pressure off. You don’t have to make [open rates] such a large part of your goal. Because if your goal is to make a sale, then maybe we shouldn’t be focused on just the open rate, maybe we should be focusing on that actual purchase.” ~ @mel_lambert_[15:46] - “Having that pulse on your open rate can tell you how your deliverability is doing and that’s really what open rates are good for these days, just that basic, ‘ok, I’m getting through the front door.’ But when you’re really focusing on what metrics are going to tell you, ‘Are you being successful? Is this message resonating? Did people read it?’, there are other things you need to be focusing on, like clicks, conversions, and replies.” ~ @alyssa_dulin

Links

Connect with our hosts

Stay in touch

Try ConvertKit's deliverability in action

It's now free to use ConvertKit with an audience of 1,000 subscribers or less! Start building your audience and reaching their inboxes: convertkit.com/pricing.