Increasingly strict spam filters have made email marketing harder than ever before. As a result, confusing and contradictory deliverability advice is being published in droves.

It's overwhelming—and it can even damage your email deliverability.

In a recent webinar with MarketingProfs, I sorted fact from fiction for B2B marketers who just want to land in the inbox—and stay there. If you haven’t watched the recording yet, make sure to get it on demand over on our events page here. 

Throughout the webinar, we received some great questions from marketers who want to understand how deliverability works, even if it means getting technical. 

Below, we’ve captured the best of the bunch along with my answers and advice. 

Q: How do you make sure your SPF/DMARC is properly set up?

Travis: For non-technical folks, I suggest you go to https://aboutmy.email/ and send a test message for such authentication results. For the more technically savvy, you can also send yourself a test and check the email headers where it will show the authentication results.

Q: I'm seeing a lot of advice from ESPs to install Google Postmaster - what is this and does it really help monitor deliverability?

Travis: Google’s postmaster tool can be very helpful if Gmail represents a large portion of your subscriber base (as it does for most senders to consumer mailboxes). It is a tool developed by Gmail to elevate aggregate reputation signals related to your email traffic to your Gmail subscribers. This can help you identify and resolve issues faster if you are able to monitor this directly.

Q: What is a "blanket" opt-in?

Travis: A “blanket opt-in” is a type of opt-in that occurs on a form that doesn’t outline the limitations of what is being opted in to. A good example is when you provide an email for a receipt for an online purchase and then begin to receive marketing mail from that company even though there was no warning or opt-in option related specifically to marketing mail. This is a bad practice and can harm your sending reputation.

Q: Does A/B testing affect deliverability?

Travis: This question is a bit vague so I’ll try to answer the three main interpretations of it:

• Is A/B testing likely to see deliverability issues for the test: No

• Does A/B testing harm future deliverability experiences: No

• Does A/B testing have the potential to positively affect deliverability: Yes. Once the test is complete, the most engaging email will be sent to the majority of subscribers. Sending more engaging content is a way of earning more engagements which earns better deliverability in the future (if other details align with best practices as well)

Q: Are emojis in a subject line a yay or nay?

Travis: Emojis go in the “use organically and it will be fine” basket!

Q: We are a B2B and still apprehensive about including emojis — what’s your advice?

Travis: Most organizational mailboxes are still able to handle emojis. The important thing is to know whether it organically honors the communication context for your audience, and, if you want to use them but are still scared, utilize A/B testing to see the results.

Q: Do we need to be concerned about batch sending in relation to monthly newsletters?

Travis: Batch sending is not needed, as mailbox providers are now able to identify a sender’s traffic and filter it even when they are sending slower. It is important to focus on providing relevant content to an engaged audience. Then you won’t need to think about this kind of thing.

Q: How do you recommend running a re-subscribe campaign? Specifically, we do paid annual memberships and we'd love to offer paid members who opted out years ago a chance to opt back in.

Travis: Assuming that the paid subscribers who opted out also opted out of receiving your emails, I would recommend looking at other channels to re-target and re-engage them. When you send promotional content after a subscriber has opted out of your emails, you are dishonoring their preferences and risking being marked as spam.

Q: If your company has been sending more emails due to low engagement rate - is there a point at which backing off and focusing on a more engaged audience won't fix it?

Travis: I have found that as long as there is a portion of recent signups that have been allowed to intentionally opt-in to marketing content (rather than being forced), then there is always a path for healing your reputation…it may just take a lot longer if you wait too long to start sending better.

Q: Is BIMI setup worth the hassle?

Travis: BIMI is growing in popularity and activation for brands. I believe branded logos in the mailbox are going to be a huge part of the future of email. I would learn more about it, look at your audience breakdown to see if it is relevant for your audience, and see if the costs/hurdles are likely relevant now.

Q: How would you identify emails that are spam traps and how do you segment these out from usual sends?

Travis: Spam traps are nearly impossible to identify but fairly easy to protect against. It just requires following best practices. If you only send to opted-in subscribers, have CAPTCHA on all signup forms, make sure consent is expressed and not forced, and regularly remove subscribers who haven’t engaged in more than 12 months, you should not have to worry about spam traps.

Q: My boss is actively buying lists and making us send emails to these contacts.  I've told him this is a bad idea for many of the reasons you mentioned, what suggestions do you have to get him to stop

Travis: It sounds like you've already taken step one, which is to communicate best practices and the inevitable results (spam filtering or outright email blocking of the majority of traffic). If you haven't already, it may be worth including the potential revenue loss during the repair time - it can take a couple of weeks or even a couple of months to fix, during which time you will be unlikely to see conversions from your emails. If that doesn’t work, then only real-world results will. Gather reporting of stats from before this started and be ready to showcase the issues/results once poor results come in. 

Q: Is there any way to avoid fluctuations in sender reputation for a sender with infrequent send amounts and long-tail engagement?

Travis: Ideally, infrequent senders should attempt to find a way to provide relevant content once or twice a month. There are some industries/businesses that can’t do that though. For those, I would advise ramping up your large sends every time there has been a 30+ day gap from the last large send. You are essentially rebuilding your reputation each time (and will need to be extra intentional about list maintenance) but it can work and earn you the results you’re looking for

Q: How can you ensure all email clients render your email most accurately? I've run into issues where I custom-code an autoresponder, and Outlook and Gmail are battling to the death! 

Travis: Email clients have built out their bespoke rendering processes. There is no way to guarantee the same rendering every time. Things are growing more and more in line with best practices between them, but I would advise focusing on what works best for the majority of your audience and letting things fall where they may with the rest

Q: What is a warming service?

Travis: A warming service is a platform that fakes positive reputation signals to help cold emailers offset the negative signals they receive for spamming. This service does not help such senders in the long run and can’t stop their problematic sending practices from causing them to end up in the spam folder eventually. Thankfully, marketers sending to opted-in lists do not need such services because they are organically keeping their reputation warm with their strong sending practices

Q: Is there ever a strong business case for purchasing a list?

Travis: This may be beneficial for a short time, but such practices will cause problems for your business in the long run, specifically in causing all traffic, including opted-in traffic, to end up in the spam folder. There is no way to send to purchased lists and maintain strong inboxing rates.