Forget about subject lines if you haven't done these 5 things FIRST!

All too often I see things like, "5 Proven Strategies to Boost Your Open Rates" or some other buzzword-filled clickbait title that provides no real value regarding email open rates. To be honest, often, it's bad advice. I won't go off on a tangent as to why it's bad advice right now. If you want to know why, check out my first article.

Anyway, if you are dipping your toes into the world of email marketing, the number one thing you should do is make sure you have a solid foundation before you send a single email. Forget about testing or optimizing open rates...for now.

I mean come on, you don't start building a house with the second level, do you? No! Of course not, you start with a solid foundation. So, here we go...

1: Set up your SPF record

Listen, I believe in honesty at all times. I don't know how to set up a SPF record but your IT department should. I'm here to lead you to water, not make your drink 😁. I do know that Google requires your domain to have an SPF record before they will deliver your email. It will be pretty hard to optimize your open rates with subject line testing, time of day testing, etc. if your emails aren't even getting delivered! You have to put yourself in the game if you want to score.

2: Set up your DKIM record

Again, no clue how to set this up BUT your IT team should 🤓. Why does this matter? Google is giving priority to companies that sign their email with a DKIM key. You are giving Google or any other provider (Yahoo, Outlook, etc.) one more reason to trust you as an email sender. Cross your T's and dot your I's people.

3: Set up your DMARC record

Yup, I don't know how to set this up either but again, I know why it matters. This is another way to tell Google that you are who you say you are and thus, they will let your email go through to your subscriber's inbox. If they can't verify who you are, they assume you are phishing and block your email.

4: Check for any blacklisting

I can't stress how important this step is. There are 1,000 different ways to land on a blacklist. Not following any of the steps above can certainly do it but I think the most common issue I see is that people do not warm up their domain properly. You cannot start sending large amounts of marketing emails just after you set up a brand-new domain. Learn from my mistakes, please, and warm up your domain!

SendGrid put together a nice guide on warming up domains/IPs and included a table towards the bottom. Each domain and provider is different so this isn't the be all end all but it's a great place to start. Getting good baseline metrics after your first 100 sends? Sweet, move up to 2 or 300 the following week, and so on.

Found your way onto a blacklist? Not ideal but not the end of the world. Use a company like Debouncer to see which lists you are. Once you know that, often you can reach out and ask to be removed.

Another great way to recover from being on a blacklist is to use a tool like InboxAlly. You purchase a list of emails from InboxAlly and send to them every single day. They will engage with your marketing emails at a very high rate. This makes your domain look very trustworthy...a bit of a dark art I guess but I'm not here to judge🤷🏼♂️. Over time, your domain will be removed from most blacklists due to the high engagement.

InboxAlly is also a great tool to help with warming up your IP/Domain! I've been a customer for a long time.

Summary

Listen, it all comes down to taking steps that signal to providers that you are a trustworthy sender. As marketers, we don't need to be so technical that we can set up SPF records and such; however, we DO need to know to ask for these things to be done.

Not sure where to start? Use a tool like Red Sift or MxToolBox to check your domain. They will tell where you pass or fail. From there, you can start bugging your IT team😅.