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As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the 2x Webby Award Honoree Be A Marketer podcast! New episodes coming in July!
On today's episode, you'll hear from someone who helps ensure your emails actually make it to the inbox and why just having a list isn't enough. This is the Be A Marketer podcast.
Dave Charest:My name is Dave, director of small business success at Constant Contact, and I help small business owners like you make sense of online marketing. And on this podcast, we'll explore what it really takes to market your business, even if marketing's not your thing. No jargon, no hype, just real stories to inspire you and practical advice you can act on. So remember, friend, you can be a marketer. And at Constant Contact, we're here to help.
Dave Charest:Well, hello, friend, and thanks for joining us for another episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. Always a pleasure to have you with us, and it's time again to say hello to my podcast better half, Kelsi Carter. Hi, Kelsi.
Kelsi Carter:Hi, Dave.
Dave Charest:How you doing today?
Kelsi Carter:I'm doing well. Happy that it's Friday when we're recording this.
Dave Charest:I know. So it's a good Friday. Hopefully, we've well, it looks like we got another rainy weekend here in the Boston area.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:So I
Kelsi Carter:know. Probably not be
Dave Charest:a great weekend. But hopefully, it'll still be a good weekend, some time off, and to enjoy some family and friends and all that stuff.
Kelsi Carter:And rest is never bad.
Dave Charest:Rest is never bad. I like that as well. I'm like that too at the time of this recording. We're both sounding a little better, getting a little bit more on the healthy side, which is good.
Kelsi Carter:I feel like a person.
Dave Charest:People feeling is good. Wait a minute. Strike that. So here's my question for you for today. Have you ever gotten, like, emails, particularly marketing emails from somebody and you're like, how did this person even get my email address?
Dave Charest:You ever been in one of those situations?
Kelsi Carter:Yeah. Several times.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:I feel like that
Kelsi Carter:still happens, like, occasionally more so when I was in college, I think, but definitely still now. I'm like, I don't remember signing up to this list. I'm trying to think of, like, a specific one, but I know that that I remember it was something for like a perfume or something like that. And I was just like, I don't I don't remember that. I mean, I like to smell nice, but
Dave Charest:Do you wear perfume?
Kelsi Carter:I do. I kinda lean sometimes a little bit to for cologne, but I Okay. Normally get gifted perfume. I don't think I've ever actually gone out myself to buy some, but normally, like, around Christmas, I'll get one.
Dave Charest:Yeah. It's really interesting when you start to get all of these emails. I think it comes on both sides. You get a lot from the on the business side email. I get a lot on the personal side email.
Dave Charest:And, you know, we're gonna have a conversation with someone today where I think when you start thinking about this stuff, I mean, as a business owner, you're always gonna be kind of approached to potentially purchase a list, and we've had conversations about this before where this is not an ideal situation. But even ultimately, at the end of the day, when you think about not only building that list and doing those things organically, it's really all about protection. Right? How you're growing that list, really protecting your sender reputation as well in terms of what you're doing and making sure you're sending to people that want to hear from you, and then just protecting those customer relationships. And all of that really boils down to doing those things in the right way to start things off.
Dave Charest:That way, you're collecting email addresses in the right way. You're setting up how people are gonna come into you. You're letting them know what to expect and doing all of those things at the end of the day and in the long run, end up being better for your business than if you just tried to take those shortcuts where you're just kind of adding people to your list or you're buying a list and doing all of those things that we typically frown upon. Right? So Kelsi, I'm gonna go to you.
Dave Charest:Why don't you tell us a little bit about our guest today?
Kelsi Carter:Today's guest is Jennifer Nespola Lantz. She's the vice president of deliverability and industry relations at Kickbox, an email verification and deliverability service based in Texas. So Jennifer leads Kickbox's consulting team, helping businesses improve the quality of their email lists and ensure their messages get delivered. She's been in the email world for over fifteen years and is super passionate about education, strategy, and helping marketers solve tricky deliverability problems.
Dave Charest:Yeah. Deliverability, tricky just in the world of getting the emails to the inbox, but also tricky just to say sometimes. Right?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:I I was gonna say.
Dave Charest:Well, Kickbox is one of Constant Contact's technology provider partners and can actually integrate Kickbox directly with your Constant Contact account. That way, you can easily verify your email list. So if you're wondering, you know, why would I even wanna do something like that? Well, it comes into play really when you're, you know, maybe you've been experiencing like high bounce rate, for example, or poor campaign performance. Maybe you're even thinking of maybe reengaging an old list that you might have or maybe even just you know, some of the things we talked about in the beginning here is that maybe you've had some past data collection issues.
Dave Charest:Right? You haven't necessarily done those in the in the right way. And so verification actually can really help you start to identify issues that can impact your sender reputation in the future. And so essentially, because as we mentioned, the better the quality of your list, the better the engagement is gonna be, and you can start to root out any of those problems before you actually do anything or send any emails to them, which of course will end up boosting your bottom line in the future. So we had a really great conversation with Jennifer.
Dave Charest:We talked about, you know, why growing your email list the right way matters more than growing it fast. We talked about how to protect your list from bots, bad data, and other silent reputation killers. Then we also got into a little bit more about what email verification actually does and what it doesn't do. Right? So I think that's just as important.
Dave Charest:I also wanna mention before we cut over here to Jennifer that at times, the conversation here can get a little technical. So I'm gonna remind you that Constant Contact has you covered in making sure that you're up to date and all the tech side of things that happen around some of the things that we talk about here today so that your emails will get delivered. So don't worry about things there. We'll also make sure to include a link to Constant Contacts, Tara Natenson and John Marburger. We had an episode with them and on what to do to avoid the junk folder.
Dave Charest:So that'd be another kinda sibling conversation here to have. And so that'll be a good conversation to listen to as well. But for now, let's go to Jennifer on the importance of an email list.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:It's so important because most businesses need people to thrive. And whether that's a sales business or newsletter business or, you know, just even a small service business, they need people. And the email is very important because it's your way to communicate with them. Even if you're not selling, you need to be able to communicate to quickly give out receipts or confirmation for appointments. And so especially in this world where we're all very much disconnected physically, but connected digitally.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:It's really important to have that way to communicate with someone. And I think that without it, it becomes much harder to grow your business and to stay in contact, keep people update, and keep all of your information at the tip of their fingers so they can reach out when they need to.
Dave Charest:Yeah. So, I mean, obviously, constant contact, we're obviously big on that idea of, like, one, maintaining and and building a list and being able to do that and keep in touch with those people that are important to your business, of course. The main thing, of course, is the email list is only as good as the email that gets delivered. Right? And so from your perspective and your years of doing this, like, what are some of the best practices really for thinking about just, I would say, building the list and really maintaining a healthy list?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Yes. I think your first step for anyone large or small is to make sure you have consent. So when you're building your list, consent is number one, and this consent needs to be clear and conspicuous. So that when somebody gives you their address, they know exactly what who they're giving it to, what they're getting in return, and how often. And I think that's a very important part and that, you know, a lot of times consent can almost be hidden in terms of service.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Click here for your terms of service and then you submit your email. And later on, you're like, I'm getting a lot of emails and I don't know why. Because initially, you just put it in this maybe create an appointment with someone. And now you're getting a ton of marketing emails. It should never be hidden because it ultimately, if you take, like, the legality pieces outside of it, it just creates a very negative experience.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:And part of what you want to do with your customers is create relationship and experiences lasting. And so consent and setting those expectations up front is probably the first thing I'd say for building your list. I'd be careful with those that promise list building activities because I would say, you know, we use the term a lot of people use this term, but like a snake oil. Right?
Dave Charest:Mhmm. Yeah.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:We'll partner and we'll grow your list this way or, you know, buy these ads and do these one click subscriptions, all this stuff. And, yes, they could give you a ton of emails, but they're not quality emails, meaning they probably haven't truly consented. And when you think about not just growing your list, but maintaining it, that consent carries through everything. If you can't maintain that consent, your list might grow quickly, but it'll drop quickly. And it will cause problems.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:As you mentioned, a good email list is one that gets to the inbox. If you don't have that consent, it ultimately leads to spam complaints. It leads to spam folder placement, and then you're really not performing the way you should. And it's not just for those who don't want your mail. It's generally can impact your overall reputation, which can impact your entire list and those who really do want your mail.
Dave Charest:Well, so I wanna reiterate that, obviously, we talk about this all the time. The reason why email marketing does work so well and why it's one of the most powerful marketing channels is because of that fact. Right? Like, if people raising their hand to say, yes, I wanna hear from you, that's always gonna be more impactful than somebody who again, to your point, you're just adding people to your list. Like, this is one of those things that you'll see all the time that happens.
Dave Charest:Like, somebody goes to, like, an event, and then they start getting business cards, and they just start adding people to the list. Right? And we're okay. Don't do that. Right?
Dave Charest:What you wanna do is yeah. Sure. Follow-up with a personal email, ask them if they wanna join, and let them opt in. Right? Because those people that take that step are gonna be actually interested in hearing from you, and they're not gonna be you're not gonna be sending negative signals for your business by doing something like that.
Dave Charest:And so can you walk us through how this does have an impact if you are doing kind of, I guess well, let me phrase it this way. Like, what are the pitfalls to kinda watch out for? And then how do those pitfalls have a negative impact on a small business owner, for example?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:For collecting email IDs?
Dave Charest:For, like, yeah,
Dave Charest:as you're building your list.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:So there's a lot of things that I think about when you're building out and maintaining. First is the consent. Also, you wanna protect your forms, and that can be protected with you know, you could do some email verification there to help kind of just weed out maybe people will fat finger their email address and typed it in wrong. Right? Yeah.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Or if someone's really interested at that point, why lose them if you can go back and say, hey. I think you meant to type in Gmail and not g m a l dot com. You wanna be give them a chance to say, oh, yes. They typed it in wrong. This is really my address.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:You wanna pull out those who if bots come in and they're just flooding your forms with bad addresses, you wanna be able to pull that out as well because you don't wanna poison your database. Because as a sender, if you're sending to bad quality email, the receivers will see that those who monitor activity, who are monitoring parked domain, stuff like that, will see that, and that kinda adds into your reputation as a sender that you're not being mindful of who you're sending, especially if you don't kinda clean that out. As a new sender too, that's very important that you're sending clean data and consented data. So as you go through, then you wanna protect your forms potentially with captcha, double opt in, all these things that just help to weed out, are you one human or a bot? And if I can weed out some of the bots, were you really intending to sign up for this?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:So it could be that it's a real address, but it was put in accidentally. So you wanna make sure the person who's receiving it really does wanna receive it. And the downfalls of not doing these basic best practices upfront is that, again, it all ties into the experience and what the customers are feeding back to the mailbox providers, whether it's complaints. Their data points that the mailbox providers too will look at and say, this sender is sending to a lot of invalid addresses, or this sender is sending to a lot of inboxes that are alive, but they have no activity. So they exist, but they're really not doing anything.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:And so it does create an overall view of the sender and what their intent is. Because really what you're trying to do is make sure you don't look like a spammer. Because spammers don't care who they mail, how much, or how often. Their goal is to get as many people out as possible. Because when you look at some of these, like, abuse vectors and success for spammers when you hear about, like, I just wanna get 17 people out of 2,000,000 clicking.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:That is ridiculously low, but for them, that's a win. So they just blast a ton, and you wanna make sure you don't look like a spammer. Spammers don't care about quality. They just wanna get to something that exists to see, hopefully, there's a human on the end of that. And your goal instead is to say, I wanna get to my customers and give them the best experience and communication as possible.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:So your data quality really factors into that to show that you as a sender to the mailbox providers and spam filtering companies that you are truly intending to send these people and you have a purpose behind it.
Dave Charest:So this is always something that's been curious to me, but like, you mentioned sign up forms. Right? And making sure that the data that you're getting entered there is real and and not a bot. What's the benefit? Like, why would bots be signing up?
Dave Charest:Like, why would that happen?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:That's a good question. I'm sure there are some people out there that like to just do stuff that's not nice because it's fun.
Dave Charest:Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Sledding forms can also can bring them down, which can be beneficial because now your IT is focusing on something else and bringing that back up. It impacts the performance of that company. But a lot of times what they're trying to do depending on how they're doing it, sometimes bots sign up forms because they're testing to see what they can do. I know I can sign up in that form and they're not flagging or kicking me out. They go around and they test a lot.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:One of the things they do is called list bombing. And what that does is they'll take a legitimate address that they have targeted for some reason. Let's say they know your bank account, and they'll say, I'm gonna go to all those forms I just found out about, and I'm going to list bomb them. I'm gonna go with this one address. I'm gonna go to all of them.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:It's the same address on all of them. So now that person's inbox is flooded with mail from a ton of senders who they've never signed up with. And so that one email that says your account password has changed, it's hidden amongst all of them. And that's one technique of why they might do Okay. But sometimes the reason for this has nothing to do with the client's business.
Dave Charest:Got it.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Yeah. There's other things happening, and they're using these senders as a vector to do so.
Dave Charest:Interesting. It's amazing how many things that you don't really think about that you actually have to be aware of in many instances. Right? Because of because of these nefarious actors, right, going out and doing those things. And so can you tell me what then what is email verification then?
Dave Charest:And then why is that so important?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:So email verification and I like to talk about it through API the most because I think that's one of the areas that's most beneficial. And what it is is when someone comes in with their email address, at that point when they submit it, email verification will do an analysis on the email and come back with the here's our confidence level on if you can deliver this address, if it has proper syntax, if it might be risky in some way, shape, or form. And then you as a sender can decide what to do with those results. And it's important because if somebody is attacking your form, for example, I know Kickbox has ways that we might say, you just got especially with list verification, for example, somebody put in like +1 23456 1 2 3 4 5 7 And so all these iterations of just not quality email addresses we can flag to say, you know, something happened in your list is not quality. You don't wanna be mailing all these email addresses.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:So it's really important. Again, it's not a replacement for consent. But before you even reach out for consent, let's say you are doing double opt in, you wanna make sure you kinda weed out all those dead addresses that and they're not necessarily dead, but just addresses that don't have a lot of quality, those who maybe you can't deliver to. Why bother sending if and spending money on them even though it's a little bit? You know, some people have only certain number of emails they can send per month.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Why send or add context to your database if they are not valuable? I know there are some ESPs that say you can have up to, let's say, 2,000 contacts, and then you go up to the next tier. Why add contacts to your database if they're not gonna be valuable to you? And so there's a lot of reasons why being able to make sure that you're putting in the email addresses that have that are most likely to belong to a customer is very important. Signals for your ESP, signals for your for the mailbox providers and protection of your database.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:And then from there, you go and get consent and add that second layer of, I feel very confident about this group of customers that I'm gonna actually start mailing marketing to.
Dave Charest:So there's an interesting thing here. So, like, does verification come in, like, I'm thinking, okay, I'm a small business owner and you hear this. Right? Like, well, how do I get a list? I don't have any people.
Dave Charest:And then, obviously, someone is eventually at the end of the day, ultimately, someone's gonna email them and say, hey, do you wanna buy a list? Right? Which Yeah. Obviously is something that we don't think is a good idea. Right?
Dave Charest:Because to your points earlier, you're not gonna get quality people that actually signed up that wanna be part of this list. But could I also make an argument and say, well, if I can purchase a list and then verify the email so, like, is this a way for somebody to purchase a list and then have a better quality list at the end of it?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:No. Explain. I will say kickbox, in our terms of service, we specifically say if you don't have consent, don't use our service.
Dave Charest:Got it.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:And I know other ASPs do that as well. And I could go on about buying lists.
Dave Charest:Yeah.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:But I'll keep that on the side for now. But verification is not a replacement for consent.
Dave Charest:Got it.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Verification just helps to, again, keep your database cleaner from those obvious mistakes, potentially bot attacks if you use it the right way. If some companies identify bot, sometimes just through the activity, we can identify bot activity, all that kind of stuff. So it's to help give you the best chance of reaching a real person. But if that person isn't consented, there's nothing verification can do about that. Yeah.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:You know, there are some companies that can say, but I have signals that this email is very active with all these other brands. But that's still and maybe it's a prediction or not, but it still does not tell you if you have consent for that.
Dave Charest:Right.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:User. And that ultimately is what's gonna decide what happens, especially whether your brand's known or not, how tolerant that person is of just receiving mail, and if they are even seeing it. Because you could deliver and like, oh, this person's not complaining. They're wonderful. But if it's going to their spam folder, still not valuable to you either.
Dave Charest:Right. Right. Yeah. I just wanted to reiterate it because, like, I think there's gonna be something that's going on in somebody's head. Right?
Dave Charest:Like, I'm with you on that, of course. Right? Like, consent is the main thing. Don't go purchasing list. But I can see how it can be tempting for someone just getting started.
Dave Charest:Right?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Yeah. I I was just gonna say, like, I have someone in the family who had no idea how to grow a list because they were extremely small business. Yeah. And so they relied on buying a list and it ended up performing very poorly. And it's a struggle, and I feel for small businesses because how can you grow?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:You know? So a lot of times what the larger companies do is they hope and they build out their SEO strategy. So people searching for them. And sometimes it it has to start with almost a grassroot movement within your community, and then you get your feedback and you grow from there. I do not envy small businesses and trying to grow, especially in this day and age.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:I find purchase lists to be very dangerous too. I just got an email today asking if we could partner for automotive services. And I'm like, I don't work in automotive. Don't know how you got my email. And I complained right away.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:And I know that will ding them moving forward. So it's very hard, but that is a a real danger to your business to buy list.
Dave Charest:Yeah. I think that's the equation. Right? The temptation may be there, but at the end of the day, it's gonna hurt you more than it's gonna help you. And so you must stay strong and work to organically build that list.
Dave Charest:Right? Because that's gonna be better for you. Although it may be slower, it's gonna build, and it's gonna be better for you at the end of the day.
Dave Charest:Mhmm. Can you
Dave Charest:tell me a little bit about how does Kickbox work with Constant Contact?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Yes. Definitely. So we have an integration in our application with Constant Contact. You sign up for an account. And then when you add the integration in and there's great how to to do this, so it sounds kind of vague over just a podcast.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:But once you're logged in, then you can through the application, you can log in to Constant Contact, and then your lists will be there. And you can choose if you wanna import them or not because you might have some lists in there that maybe it's a list for unsubscribes or something else. You don't have to touch any of those. You select which ones you want to verify and then run it through our system, and we'll feed the results back. And you can choose if you wanna export them so you can look at them and download them, or you can just feed it right back into Constant Contact as a new list that you can then select and mail from there.
Dave Charest:And And I think this is something that seems like it's even more important today when you start thinking about what's going on with, like, Gmail and Yahoo and authentication and DMARC and all of these things. And and we've had some conversations about this before, so we'll be sure to include some links so people can listen to those. But essentially, the Googles and the Yahoos, and I'm sure others will follow suit, but they basically want to make email safer, which means when you're using a service like Constant Contact, for example, typically, you're using, I guess, a shared domain. Whereas now, you're actually authenticating if your business has your business name.com and you're using that as an email address. You're actually authenticating against that domain.
Dave Charest:Right? And so Correct. These things can these negative signals that can come through if you are hitting those wrong things and these factors that you're mentioning can actually really have a bigger impact on your business specifically today. Correct?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Yes. With the move, what they're rolling out is nothing new. It's Yeah. Been best practice for a long time. And it's a way to say, you wanna own your activity.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:So as you start to brand everything as your own, you're owning everything there. It's not being hidden among the fold, amongst the wide volume that's going out. And so if your data quality is not there, whether it's consent or if these are mailable addresses, that's going against your reputation. You know, if you think about 30% of emails churn every year, it is important to keep your list up to date. You don't wanna have to constantly have emails dropping out.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:So if you're not mailing them consistently, you need to be able to check on them. But these things now go against your domain, especially if you're authenticating with your domains. And I know that that is a struggle for some senders as well is just getting their domain up and running and authenticated. But now the idea is that senders need to own their reputation. Individual senders need to own it instead of an ESP owning it or some other domain shared service owning it.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:And it helps, like you said, to make the ecosystem safer. Because if the mailbox providers can identify activity on coming from a domain instead of a service, they are better equipped to say, this one truly is a bad sender. And this one has a lot of really great signals that I could trust it more. So then if something weird happens, they can look and say, maybe that sender was compromised or maybe something else came from it because this is not difficult behavior for them.
Dave Charest:So we've done the consent. We have a clean list regardless of how big that may be. Right? But we're getting started, and we've got, you know, a good list of people. We know they wanna hear from us.
Dave Charest:They've been verified. What happens when you get to this point where maybe you have some people on that list that are not engaging? Right? They're not opening. They're not clicking.
Dave Charest:They're not doing anything. Is there anything that we can do to reengage them? When should we maybe do we ever wanna let those people go? Like, how do we approach thinking through something like that?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:That's a great question. And that too is a part of your list maintenance. The whens are hard for me to specify because it's really dependent upon your business. So business where you buy maybe once a quarter or once every few years, that's gonna have a different retention and plan than someone who you're like, my customers are buying baby wipes, and they need to buy them every two weeks or whatever the product is or even service or a newsletter if you have a weekly newsletter. Ideally, someone's gonna be reading it.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:And if a year goes by and they haven't read it once, they likely aren't engaged anymore. So you can reengage, though. You don't necessarily it's really hard to say goodbye to new knowledge. I think people struggle with that quite a bit because they know there's value there. And so you have to determine what that value is and when that value starts to degrade.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:So a lot of this the hardest part is the data aspect of it, but you can test a little bit. You can try reengagement, and that reengagement can be done in many ways. So some platforms automatically filter out people who don't engage after a certain period of time. And so when they start to hit that threshold, especially if you can change it, depending on your business, you could say, alright. If it's six months they haven't engaged, I'm gonna reach out with a we miss you or something like that.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Something really enticing to see if they click on that. And if they're not clicking on that, then maybe I reach out and ask them if they wanna say subscribe. Now that's a little bit later with the re permission. And you really have to understand what your business is. And it's very hard because, like, I have a newsletter that I follow, but I rarely read it because I have too much going on.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:But I purposely have it saved somewhere else. Now if I go in there and I find they stop mailing me, I will get back on the list. So if you do remove people, I would say don't fear. If they really aren't interested, they will get back on your list. So part of what I would make sure you do as marketers, make sure there is a path to get back on the list once somebody either is removed or unsubscribed, That they don't have to be gone forever.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:They're just gone until they reconsent. But there are definitely flows and strategies that you can do to make sure you're touching base with them before they completely disappear.
Dave Charest:You mentioned, like, if somebody unsubscribes. Think one of the things we're often helping people understand too is when you think of sometimes when people unsubscribe, it's not necessarily because they are unsubscribing from you. I think there's a tendency for small business owners to take it really personal, particularly since growing that list can feel like a lot of work sometimes, particularly when you're first getting started. But to your point, you know, you said something like 30% of addresses kind of fall off after a certain point in time. What do you say to people who may be concerned about people unsubscribing?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:I think almost every marker I've talked to has some of that fear. An unsubscribe though is a much more desirable action than a spam complaint. So we tend to forget that there are people on the other end of that email, and we tend to just look at the numbers. And Skyler has on our Kitbox blog, she wrote an amazing article about viewing people instead of numbers because it's harder to empathize with numbers than it is with people. Right?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:So if you remember there's someone there and you wouldn't wanna be forced to stay in a conversation with someone if you need a break, if it's too much, you have too much else going on. Again, it might not have anything to do with that brand as something that you should take personally, but it could just be that something else is going on that's taking up their time. And they just they need the space in their inbox, and they wanna just say, for now, I need to pause. It's better for them to unsubscribe than to get so fed up they're gonna hit the spam button because that will ruin your reputation. And it's better to part that way.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:And when they depart, just again on your website or whatever, make it easy to come back in. It is hard to say goodbye. So if you can, it doesn't work for everyone, but sometimes getting feedback at the point of unsubscribe, why are you leaving Yeah. Can help you as well because sometimes you'll get very clear answers that get too much email or it's not relevant. So as you start to get that feedback, then you could say, if I'm not relevant, what do I need to change?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:And I would say use those data points as learning to make your program even better to help keep that retention longer.
Dave Charest:Yeah. What are some things that when you think about from, like, a deliverability standpoint, are there any particular types of content that people should be aware of in terms of, like, including or not including in emails?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:I think it depends on your audience.
Dave Charest:Yeah.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:There are not safe for work content that does just fine because the audience wants it. So I think what you should think about that has actually hindered senders are what you're linking to. So for example, shorteners, link shorteners like Bit.ly. Any type of shared service, which those shorteners can be, unless you brand them with your own domain, can be dangerous because anybody can use them. And so and it's hard for everybody to stay up to date on what's going on in the abuse world.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:But if anything is shared, it could be dangerous. So, you know, bad actors, there's a couple I just got one on my phone the other day through SMS. It's a shortener, a link shortener, and it came through a phishing text message. You get Bitlys and all that kind of stuff, any type of link shortener through email. So if you're like, oh, you know what?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:I'm gonna use this redirect service because it's gonna help me track engagement on a different level and weed out bots or whatever the case may be, make sure you brand it yourself. Don't just use a shared default given domain because if that's used in abusive content anywhere else, it can impact your performance as well. So I'd be very careful about the domains that you use. Make sure you're clear with your call to actions. Make sure your unsubscribe is clear.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Don't have people searching for it. But in terms of the content and what to say and what not to say, it's really, you know, being able to know your audience and what they wanna read. You could have the most boring content and it would get flagged not because you said the word sale, but because nobody likes it. You know what I mean?
Dave Charest:It can
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:be super safe, but boring and not relevant. And that could go to the spam just as easily than someone saying something maybe more inappropriate than what we can talk about on podcast.
Dave Charest:So I'm curious. What's your point of view on so Gmail has been doing, I guess, the tabbed inbox for a long time.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Yeah.
Dave Charest:Apple is about to roll that out as well. Mhmm. What's your point of view on a tabbed inbox?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:I love them personally. Again, I get too many emails. And if it was all in one, I would be inundated. So I'm talking as a user standpoint. As a marketer, I still think they're beneficial.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:One, if you now Apple's just gonna be a game changer in that way. Maybe not a game changer, but they're gonna change things for a little bit. But prior to Apple announcing this, if you were a Gmail email address and you fed that into the Apple mail, it didn't matter if there were tabs. So everyone was getting all upset about tabs, but Apple doesn't display them. Now Apple have their own tabs.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:So maybe what's tabbing and updates in Gmail is tabbing as promotional in Apple. It's all gonna be different all up in the air. But the point is trying to control the flood of email that everyone's getting and putting it in places so when someone's ready to read it and they're open, they can go to that place and find it. And that is when they are gonna be most active and most interested in what you have to say versus flooding the inbox so much where I have heard other people say, well, my mom is not an email person, but she just went in unsubscribed from everything because it was too much. Yeah.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:This allows them I view tabs as a way to almost increase the subscription time on your list because you're not getting in the way. You're on the side. You'll get to it when you want to. For me, I feel like it's an option that allows them to retain that sender even longer before they tire of the mail. So even if you do send more often, it's kind of out of sight.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:And then when you're ready, you go find it. So I personally like the tabs and filtering approach. It's hands off. People want something that's easy. If it's hard to get through your email, they're gonna maybe abandon the email, and then you don't have that email anymore.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:So it's a great thing when mailbox providers can give tools to the users to make their life easier and to make the management easier because they want those users to keep those addresses as long as possible. They don't want them going to another service or something like that.
Dave Charest:Right. Was it just the fact that, like, you said Apple would be a kind of game changer in this, what it's doing? Was it just because of the tabbed inbox on the phone now? Or was it something different? Or was there more to that?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:In my head, was also thinking about the AI piece that they're also potentially rolling out. I think Yahoo's doing it too. And, you know, I've read different opinions. Chad Sarbuck had a a great read if you're curious about what he had to say about the AI.
Dave Charest:I'm not sure doing with the AI piece?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:So they're summarizing the emails with their own little previews. Yep. And right now, previews are often generated by the marketers. They can put in some text that's hidden when the email's loaded, but in that preview pane, you'll see like a little quick, the most important line that you want them to see. With AI, the algorithm's gonna decide what to call out in that email.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:And the marketer may not want that to be the key point. So I don't know yet how that's going to help or hurt marketers. So I don't wanna speculate on that yet because I tend to be a negative Nancy when it comes to AI stuff. But it could be really helpful or Apple might even say, look, this actually is more dangerous. I was just reading something that, you know, what if someone's doing a phishing email and they're pulling out stuff in ways that doesn't allow a user to look at the email and see that it's dangerous.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Right? So I don't know yet if it's going to be lasting or beneficial or if the providers are gonna say, hey, look, we wanna better provide a user experience. I know Yahoo uses schema. Maybe everybody else will start using schema so that we will display what you want us to instead of us assuming what you want us to display or to summarize or something like that.
Dave Charest:Yeah.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:So I'm not sure, but I do think that'll be a game changer. You know, Chad Starbuck was mentioning like, people may not open anymore if they have the summary right there. And then how do you tell who's engaged? And if you can't tell who's engaged, how do you select the group of people that will tell the mailbox providers that they want your mail? So the same thing that happened with NPP muddied the waters to make it harder for senders to figure out who's best to mail to make sure your reputation stays intact.
Dave Charest:Any other roles or impact you think AI is gonna have on just even just deliverability and compliance for that matter?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Well, AI is already used on the provider side for filtering, and it's been used for a long time. I think that'll just continue to happen. There'll be more data points, and sometimes they get it wrong. I think there'll be more AI for list selection with CRMs and different mailbox or ESPs that may help people who have a small team make different selections and do testing in ways that maybe they didn't have time for previously. So I think there's some really cool things that are gonna come out of it.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Again, I tend to be negative Nancy because I also think about what AI is gonna do for the bad actors out there and how they will create more alluring content more easily and how that can impact end users, how they might be able to more quickly mimic a brand and spoof them and create just a lot of different gaps that will be hard. Even if, let's say, I was a brand, I don't wanna make one up because I don't wanna have anyone say, oh, Jen said this one out of compromise. But if I'm brand a and I've been nourishing this brand and doing a really great job and then some bad actor comes in impersonating me even if they're not using my domain.
Dave Charest:Yeah.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Whoever got impersonated can have a negative potentially reaction to my brand moving forward or especially if it hits the news. Whether you intend to or not, you can still get negative connotations from these negative actions that are happening out around you. So I kinda look at AI as just again, I almost feel like it's one of things that it has to prove itself to me before I'm gonna jump on board.
Dave Charest:Yeah. Interesting times for sure. I didn't even it's unfortunate people ruin ruin everything for everyone, don't they? Yes. The bad actors.
Dave Charest:Right? It's like, oh,
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:thank you. Yeah. I say that many times. I'm like, you know what? So much could be improved and flourished, but then you got these bad actors that just ruin it.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Ruin it.
Dave Charest:Well, if you could only give one piece of advice or email advice to a small business marketer, what would it be?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Just one? Just one for now. Oh, that's hard.
Dave Charest:Well, you have how's this? Do have top three?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Uh-huh. I'm trying to come up with something different than I've already said. So that's why I think it makes it difficult because consent is always number one. Making sure you're technically set up correctly is two, so your authentication. And then, again, relevant content, I think would be the next one.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:I think small senders struggle on a volume size too. Because if you don't have a ton of volume and one person complains, it's a lot louder signal than if you're so, you know, one out of a thousand is considered borderline spam complaint rate where you're like, oh, you're starting to be a little shady now.
Dave Charest:Yeah.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:And so if you're only sending the 10,000 people and each mailbox provider has a small volume of that, you easily can look like you've got screamers on your list and that it can be negative. So small volumes can be harder to manage. So I'd say that's why consent is so important in that relevant content so that you don't have anyone that wants to complain. They want your content.
Dave Charest:Jen, anything else you'd like to add?
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Email is not easy. For as much as we're like, well, you just put emails together and hit send. It's really complex. And I don't think anyone should go into it and feel bad if they're struggling because there is so much nuance to it. And sometimes you just need that person to say, hey.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Have you tried this? Or why don't you tweak this a little bit to really make the change? So if you are struggling, don't wait three to four months to find an answer. The sooner the better because the longer you land in that spam folder, for example, the more signals you're giving to the filters that say you belong there. So if you're starting to struggle, address it as soon as you can and monitor and protect your email ecosystem, protect your domain.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:See, now I've got like a list of 20. Now I'm going on a roll. Protect your domains, protect your accounts that you log in on so nobody compromises your account and starts mailing spam out of it. I spoke to someone who they're I don't wanna say too much because I'm not allowed, but we'll say someone they were communicating with account got compromised, and then they started emailing. And then eventually, his account got compromised, and they started spamming out of his account.
Jennifer Nespola Lantzz:Mhmm. So always just be very careful about what you send, who has access to your systems, what you're sharing. Protect everything that you can and protect your customers.
Dave Charest:Well, friend, let's recap some items from that discussion. Number one, get clear on consent. You wanna make sure that people know what they're signing up for, how often they'll hear from you, and what they can expect from you in general. The more you do on the front end, the more valuable your list becomes. So make sure you're getting that consent from your subscribers.
Dave Charest:Number two, use verification tools. Now services like Kickbox can help you spot mistyped or risky email addresses before they end up hurting your deliverability. Now don't forget that Kickbox integrates directly with your Constant Contact account. More on that in a moment. Number three, let go of disengaged contacts.
Dave Charest:Now if someone isn't opening or clicking after a while, it may be okay to remove them. It's better than getting a spam complaint in the future if they're disengaged. Now remember, Constant Contact has a segments feature that'll automatically show you your least engaged contacts. So here's your action item for today. Verify your contact list before your next big send.
Dave Charest:Now if you use Constant Contact, try the Kickbox integration to clean your list and improve your chances of hitting the inbox. It's an easy way to boost your deliverability and protect your reputation. As always, you'll find more details in the show notes. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. Please take a moment to leave us a review.
Dave Charest:Just go to ratethispodcast.com/bam. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show. That's ratethispodcast.com/bam. Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.