Welcome to the May edition of Not a Newsletter, a monthly, semi-comprehensive, Google Doc-based guide to sending better emails! I’m Dan, the founder of Inbox Collective, an email consultancy, and the former Director of Newsletters at The New Yorker and BuzzFeed. Every month, I update this doc with email news, tips, and ideas. Sign up here to be notified when the next edition goes live!
This month, Yanna-Torry Aspraki is back to answer the question: What do I need to do to stay out of the spam folder? Plus: Two deep-dive reports into the creator space, ideas for interactive emails, a quick plug for a few upcoming speaking events in Chicago, San Francisco, and Copenhagen (hope to see you there!), and more!
Want to read a previous edition of Not a Newsletter? Find the full archive at this link.
-Dan
This Month in Email Headlines
- Vercom acquires marketing automation startup MailerLite for $90M (TechCrunch)
- ActiveCampaign acquires Postmark to expand its email services (Silicon Republic)
- Movable Ink raises $55M for AI that personalizes marketing (TechCrunch)
- GetResponse Adds Ecommerce Suite To Platform (MediaPost)
- Google lets personal users stay on ‘no-cost Legacy G Suite’ with custom Gmail domain (9to5 Google)
Ask a Deliverability Expert
I get a lot of questions about deliverability, and I don’t always have the right answers. But I know someone who does: Yanna-Torry Aspraki, a true deliverability expert. She’s been working in the email space since 2014 in all sorts of roles — at ESPs, with brands, and as a consultant. She really knows her stuff!
So let’s get to this month’s question:
What are things I need to do to make sure I stay out of the spam folder?
💌 💌 💌
Mailbox providers build and maintain complex spam filters in order to protect their customers and your subscribers from spam. So let’s start with a simple question: What is spam?
Most people think of spam emails as the types of emails sent from botnets, infected computers, or spoofers trying to send you towards malicious web pages to steal your sensitive data. But the inboxes don’t limit their definition of spam to just those types of emails. An email is considered spam if the recipient believes it is either unsolicited or simply considers it unwanted junk. Even if your business is legitimate and sells legitimate products, if your email is unwanted or unsolicited, it is considered spam.
It’s as simple as that.
What else do I need to know about spam filters?
Mailbox providers have the responsibility to not only allow their customers to store, send and receive emails but to protect them from unsolicited emails. Their main focus is servicing their customers, and improving on their spam filters is a crucial component of their business. The more tactics marketers and spammers use, the more intelligent spam filters become. True email spammers — those people sending malicious emails — have always tried to find ways around the filters. They’ll purchase email lists, rotate IPs/domains, or regularly change email marketing providers.
But spam filters are getting smarter every single year. A few years ago, a spammer might have been able to get away with “hacks” like these. Not anymore.
If we understand what the true definition of a spam email is, it will allow us to look at our campaigns with the right mindset and help us change our list acquisition or campaign strategies. We sometimes don’t realize the power we have when we send newsletters. When an individual shares their email with you, they expect you to respect their inbox, time, wants, and needs.
Emails are extremely important for businesses, as email allows them to communicate in bulk with customers all over the world in a rather simple and straightforward way. But it’s easy to forget that behind an email address, there’s an actual human being. The first spam filters started reducing spam by analyzing and blocking emails coming from specific IPs. Today, spam filters are looking at an enormous pool of data to make better decisions. So what do we need to keep in mind to ensure inboxes allow our emails directly into the inbox — or any of the other tabs an inbox may offer?
For Your Reading / To-Do List
- Alright, onto the links! Let’s start with the creator space, because there’s a lot to share here.
- ConvertKit’s out with their 2022 State of the Creator report, and two big things caught my eye:
- They surveyed more than 2,700 people in this space. Nearly two thirds of creators identified as female — but men were twice as likely as women to earn more than $150,000 annually. 35% of men made $100,000 last year, but only 19% of women reached that milestone.
- 63% of full-time creators said they experienced burnout in 2022.
- Both points speak to some of the biggest issues facing this space today. The barriers to entry in this space are low — but the obstacles in the way of long-term success are still very much there for many who want to build, grow, and monetize a brand.
- Patreon also put together a big report: Their 2022 Patreon Creator Census, this made up of responses from 13,000 creators.
- One of the most-common questions I’ve been getting from creators on the Not a Newsletter list is: What benefits should I provide as part of a paid offering? The top three benefits, by a wide margin, according to Patreon’s report:
- 1) The ability to support you and your work
- 2) Exclusive content
- 3) Early access to content
- One of the most-common questions I’ve been getting from creators on the Not a Newsletter list is: What benefits should I provide as part of a paid offering? The top three benefits, by a wide margin, according to Patreon’s report:
- This is big news: The Dispatch, which boasts more than 30,000 paying subscribers (at a rate of $100/year), is making an ESP switch. Their CEO, Stephen Hayes, talked to Brian Morrissey about why they’re making the move.
- Stacked Marketer, a four-year-old newsletter, released their annual report about the state of their business. Something I want to note: A lot of the writers I talk to feel that they can’t build a business unless they have a massive list. Stacked Marketer reports a list of 30,000 readers — but brought in $366,000 in revenue in 2021.
- Really interesting story here from Simon Owens about The Daily Upside, an investment newsletter that used a partnership with The Motley Fool — as well as a smart strategy around advertising on TikTok — to scale their audience to over 300,000 subscribers.
- ConvertKit’s out with their 2022 State of the Creator report, and two big things caught my eye:
- Aquibur Rahman, who runs Mailmodo, wrote a post walking through some great uses for AMP for Email, which allows you to build interactive emails. Yes, some of these AMP cases require a lot of coding, but a few in here — like NPS surveys or forms to collect sign-ups for a webinar — might be something to look at more closely for many orgs.
- And this was a big AMP announcement: Yahoo is now supporting AMP across all of their apps, plus their web experience, and they’re rolling out a way for ESPs to register for AMP without requiring each sender to do some additional behind-the-scenes work. (Aweber is the first tool registered with Yahoo to do this.)
- You might remember me writing about BIMI, the tool that allows a brand to put their logo next to their name in the inbox. Ray Schultz of Mediapost talked with Seth Blank, chair of the AuthIndicators Working Group, to understand what they’re doing to make it easier for more brands to turn on BIMI. (Right now, you have to have a trademarked logo, and that’s been an obstacle for many brands.)
- Anecdotal proof that BIMI adoption has been slow: Spam Resource’s Al Iverson looked at the thousands of emails in his inbox. Of the 818 with a BIMI record, only a fifth of them had applied for the digital certificate, or VMC, that allows you to actually deploy the logo in the inbox.
- There’s a lot you could A/B test with your newsletters. But here’s one testing idea to consider more closely: The name you send emails from. Ghost has a nice guide to best practices around sent-from names.
- So if you’re interested in testing this, you could try a few things. Here are three I might try with the newsletters for my Google Doc:
- Dan Oshinsky
- Dan Oshinsky | Not a Newsletter
- Dan at Not a Newsletter
- Do test these out — if you’re sending from the wrong name, you’re missing a chance to get your emails opened by additional readers!
- So if you’re interested in testing this, you could try a few things. Here are three I might try with the newsletters for my Google Doc:
- A few stories from the news world that I wanted to share:
- Holger Kansky, who works with the German Association of Digital Publishers and Newspaper Publishers, talked with NWE’s Ioana Straeter about why German newsrooms are starting to invest more in newsletters.
- The Guardian’s Toby Moses talked with Andrew Kersley of the Press Gazette about why they’ve invested in newsletters — and why clicks to the website aren’t as much of a priority anymore.
- The Philadelphia Inquirer’s made significant investments recently in their marketing team. Darya Ushakova, their VP of Consumer Marketing, talked with The Lenfest Institute’s Hayley Slusser about the changes they’ve made and why email is so central to their conversion strategy.
- I don’t write much about desktop notifications, but I did like this conversation between What’s New In Publishing and Kyle Whitfield, VP of Consumer Revenue for NOLA.com and The Advocate, about how they’ve utilized those notifications to drive engagement.
- I talk a lot with clients about two concepts: Jobs to be Done and Audience Needs. (I use the two interchangeably, though the backstory about why is for another day.) Dmitry Shishkin, formerly of the BBC, talked about the origins of the idea and what he’s seen in the industry since others started using it.
- I’ve been getting more questions lately about SMS. If you’re new to that channel, start with these seven best practices from Campaign Monitor.
Stuff I Loved This Month
- If you’re reading this, you know that I’m obsessed with both email and Google Docs. But until I read this post from Zapier’s Justin Pot, I didn’t know you could write and send an email *from* Google Docs. Honestly, I had no idea that just by opening a Google Doc and hitting the @ symbol, you could do so much! (Seriously, go open up a Doc and hit the @ symbol. You’ll be shocked by what you can do from just that shortcut.)
- I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately from clients about how to create a QR code for any webpage. Two ways to do it:
- 1) If you’re in Chrome, click on the share icon in the top right corner, then download your QR code, like this:
- 2) Use this free QR code generator from Mention, which allows you to add your logo to the QR code.
- Here’s a story from Jason Feifer about Jenny Wood, who accidentally emailed 27,000 colleagues at once. The story about what she did next is pretty great.
- There’s a lot happening in the world, and things can feel a little overwhelming. So if you’re looking for a way to do something, check out this list from the team at Today Do This. I’m betting one of these 48 ideas might inspire you today.
This Month in… Mel Brooks Quotes That Are Also Good Rules to Follow for Email Marketing
Mel Brooks is a comic genius, and also a surprisingly good source of inspiration for those of us in the email space. So in 2022, I’m closing the Google Doc with a brand new feature: Mel Brooks Quotes That Are Also Good Rules to Follow for Email Marketing! This month, let’s turn to a story Mel once told about writing for the movie “Blazing Saddles.”
There’s a scene where one of the movie’s villains, Mongo, rides into town, and chaos ensues. (Mongo famously punches a horse, which somehow makes sense in the context of the movie.) As Mel explained during a Q&A:
Brooks recalled asking John Calley, then head of production at Warner Bros., “‘Can we beat the s— out of a little old lady? Can we punch a horse?’ He said to me, ‘If you’re going to go up to the bell, ring it. He told me that early in my career, and I never forgot it. I had cavemen masturbating [in History of the World, Part 1]. I rang it.”
There are going to be times when you’re not sure what to do. Maybe you’re thinking about testing out a new strategy you’ve never tried before, or making a big bet on a new type of email, or a new acquisition strategy. Maybe you’re not sure if it’s the right thing to do, but you’re excited about it, and you want to give it a try.
In those moments, remember those words from Mel: If you’re going to go up to the bell, ring it.
That’s all for this edition! Want to be notified when next month’s edition of Not a Newsletter is live? Sign up here:
