As schools weigh the pros and cons of taking Search in-house, the topics of email deliverability and sender reputation are bound to come up in conversation. And for valid reasons! Both email deliverability and sender reputation directly impact the success of your campaigns, and they’re incredibly intertwined with each other. The good news is you’re in good hands with tools that Slate by Technolutions puts in place to protect both of these, and we have some tricks to help you avoid a low sender reputation and increase email deliverability!
What is Sender Reputation?
Your institution’s sender reputation, a score ranging 0-100, is given by an Inbox Service Provider and assigned to both IP Addresses and web domains. Both your IP address and web domain scores are based on email engagement, spam and complaints, unsubscribes, and bounces.
The email engagement isn’t limited to just Slate emails, but to any email sent from your school’s domain address. Technolutions’ IP addresses have a very reputable score, usually in the upper 90th percentile, and higher than other email service providers throughout the industry. If you’re curious about what your score is, you can work with your IT team to utilize an online tool like Sender Score and Google Postmaster Tools to see what your current score is!
Email Deliverability Practices
Now that we know a bit more about what a sender reputation is, it’s important to realize it’s directly impacted by email deliverability: whether or not an email makes it into the recipient’s inbox. Every institution is battling to be noticed in an inbox and it’s crucial to your student search that your emails stand out. By implementing good deliverability practices, you will be able to protect your sender reputation and increase your deliverability! Whether you are revamping your communications for another cycle, or starting conversations of taking Search in-house, here are some key areas to focus on to ensure good deliverability practices:
Segment your messages or audiences
Ask yourself, does everyone you have an email address for need to receive this message, or should specific audiences be prioritized? Email is a wonderful, free, communication tool, but resist the urge to make everything and anything an email. You can also utilize Content Blocks and Liquid Markup within Slate to display specific content to different audiences! This type of personalization will display more relevant content to the recipient and boost engagement and conversions.
Develop a consistent send cadence
If you send too many emails or text messages too close together, your engagement may drop, and if this continues over time, your sender reputation score may be negatively impacted. On the flip side, if you don’t send emails frequently, you may lose engagement because students aren’t used to hearing from you. Find a middle ground of every 10-14 days for Senior campaigns, and closer to 21-28 days between sends for underclassmen campaigns. Don’t forget to include SMS and physical mail in your communication plans!
Ensure your DKIM is set up
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is a capability that you have to validate within your CRM. Within Slate, it removes the “Sent Via Technolutions” label and, in general, allows your institution to take responsibility for all the email messages. It does this by adding a digital signature to emails, which in turn prevents the emails from being labeled phishing or spam! Remember, if the emails don’t consistently end up in the inbox or are marked as spam, there could be negative implications for your sender reputation score.
Utilize message groups
Custom message groups and unsubscribe forms allow you to have students opt out from specific types of messages, but not out of all of your email communications. If this is something your institution is interested in, we recommend starting with 3-5 message groups before determining that you need more. Examples may be athletics, marketing, and admissions as core groups. Again, if a student opts out of the athletics message group, they would still be able to receive messages from the marketing and admissions message groups.
Ensure your data is clean
We realize that unclean data is a part of purchasing search names. Take time to keep up with consolidating records, utilize audit queries to diagnose common errors from any bounced or skipped emails, and utilize a subquery filter of ‘email exists’ within your population rule.
Monitor your email performance
While we love a “set-it-and-forget-it” campaign, that doesn’t mean you don’t need to monitor it. Create a report and monitor your email performance. You can track your click rates, opt-outs, and bounces to notice trends in your campaigns. This way, if the campaign shows signs of low engagement or poor performance, you can quickly assess the situation and course correct if necessary.
Write good emails
At the end of the day, the most effective way to increase and maintain your sender reputation is through strong and consistent email engagement in the form of clicks, opens, and conversions. Write and design personalized, engaging emails that follow best practices in regards to non-promotional language and ISP compatibility. Translation: don’t use spammy words such as “Act now!”, “Do it today!”, “Take action now”, “Free ___”. Email inboxes can flag these words and your hard work could end up in a spam folder.
Don’t forget to have a mix of plain text emails and HTML templated emails! Sometimes if an email is too photo heavy, it may end up in spam, so make sure you have text to balance out your photos. Having plain, non-templated emails, can increase your chances of ending up in the inbox. While definitely not as pretty, or fun, they serve as an important presence in the inbox.
If you’re in need of support to establish these email deliverability best practices or optimize Slate’s tools, don’t hesitate to reach out to start a conversation!