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In this episode Tiffany Ann Bottcher sits down with email deliverability expert Matt Ratliff to explore the evolving landscape of email marketing in 2024. Matt, founder of Funnel Techie and a tech industry veteran with over 18 years of experience, shares his wealth of knowledge on how businesses can maintain email effectiveness while protecting domain health. With insights on the latest compliance requirements and technical strategies, this episode is a must-listen for business owners looking to ensure their emails land in the inbox.
Episode Summary
This episode dives into the essential strategies for maximizing email deliverability in 2024. Matt explains the importance of domain reputation, how subdomains can shield main domains, and why understanding engagement metrics is crucial for email success.
Key Insights
- Stay Compliant: Matt shares recent updates from email providers like Google and Yahoo, explaining how compliance impacts email deliverability.
- Utilize Subdomains: Protect your main domain by using subdomains for marketing emails, a critical step to safeguard reputation.
- Monitor Domain Health: Key metrics like open rates and click-through rates are vital to maintaining a strong domain reputation.
- Take a Gradual Approach: When onboarding a new email list, Matt emphasizes the importance of starting slowly to build a positive domain reputation.
- Engage Effectively: Matt suggests ways to boost email engagement, from relevant subject lines to segmenting lists for more targeted communication.
- Avoid Common Pitfalls: Learn why certain links, like Bit.ly, can harm deliverability and how branded links can provide greater control.
Self-Discovery Tips for Business Owners
- Matt recommends identifying high-engagement contacts and re-engaging with them to strengthen domain health from day one.
- For new domains or re-engaging cold lists, Matt advises a step-by-step approach to avoid reputation issues.
About the Host
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher is a skilled business strategist, podcast host, and mother who offers fresh insights into digital business and leadership. She combines strategy with genuine connections, making her approach valuable for entrepreneurs and leaders alike.
Connect with Tiffany-Ann:
- YouTube: Tiffany-Ann Bottcher
- TikTok: @ta_bottcher
- Website: tiffanyannbottcher.com
About the Guest
Matt Ratliff, founder of Funnel Techie, is an 18-year veteran in the tech industry with deep expertise in email deliverability and network engineering. With a comprehensive understanding of email compliance and domain management, Matt has become a trusted expert for business owners seeking to enhance email engagement and safeguard their domain reputation.
Connect with Matt:
- Website: Funnel Techie
- Youtube: Funnel Techie
Final Takeaway
Email marketing in 2024 requires more than great content; it demands a proactive approach to domain health and compliance. Listen in as Matt Ratliff provides essential guidance to help your emails reach their audience and keep your domain reputation strong.
00:13:41 - Introduction to Inbox IQ Tool for Email Stats
00:13:41 - Introduction to Inbox IQ Tool for Email Stats
00:14:08 - Building an Email Engagement System
00:15:11 - Automation for Onboarding SaaS Clients
00:16:23 - Address Concerns About Email Frequency and Domain Health
00:17:41 - Importance of Monitoring Email Metrics
00:18:58 - The Significance of List Segmentation and Engagement
00:19:25 - Understanding Segmentation in Email Marketing
00:20:16 - The Importance of Organized Email Sequences
00:20:25 - Becoming an Automation Engineer for Effective Campaigns
00:20:57 - Visualizing Automation Workflows with a Whiteboard
00:21:42 - Mapping Customer Journeys for Better Engagement
00:22:24 - The Role of Customer Choices in Email Engagement
00:23:18 - Measuring Email Engagement Beyond Purchases
00:24:43 - The Weight of Spam Complaints and Chargebacks
00:25:28 - The Etiquette of Email Engagement as a Business Owner
00:26:30 - Lessons Learned from Cold Email Strategies
00:27:54 - Challenges with Cold Email and SMTP Providers
00:28:20 - Understanding Email Provider Audits
00:28:51 - Importance of IP Health for Email Deliverability
00:29:21 - Challenges of Cold Email Strategies
00:29:51 - Future of Cold Messaging
00:30:27 - Building an Email List: Common Pitfalls
00:31:03 - Starting with an Opt-In Page
00:31:51 - Craft Your First Email: Tips for Success
00:32:34 - The Importance of Starting Email Campaigns
00:33:42 - Aesthetics vs. Functionality in Email Design
00:34:09 - HTML Emails vs. Plain Text Emails: What Works?
00:35:48 - Link Quality in Emails: Best Practices
00:36:53 - Understanding Branded Links vs. Non-Branded Links
00:37:35 - Understanding Email Tracking and Subdomains
00:38:10 - The Importance of Using Subdomains for Email
00:38:31 - Setting Up Transactional Email Domains
00:39:02 - Marketing Subdomains Explained
00:39:20 - Risks of Using Root Domains for Email
00:39:54 - Benefits of Segregating Email Flows
00:40:43 - Key Recommendations for Business Owners
00:41:05 - Importance of DNS Records and Email Authentication
00:42:20 - Gradual Email Sending Strategy for New Domains
00:44:06 - Engaging Past Contacts for Better Deliverability
00:44:47 - How to Connect with Matt for Email Services
00:45:55 - Conclusion and Final Thoughts on Email Compliance
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Hello, and welcome to the Service Based Business Society podcast. I am your host, Tiffany Ann Botcher. On our weekly episodes, we will dig into everything you need to know about scaling your service based business without losing sleep. With my experience in creating over 7 figures per month and a passion for marketing, finance, and automation, this show will provide tangible tips and techniques for scaling your business. Let's get started.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:Hello and welcome to another episode. Today, we are talking about a really important topic, and we have a special guest to help us navigate that. This special guest is an expert in email deliverability. Now, this year, 2024, there were some big changes to email. And so even if you never struggled with email deliverability in the past, you may be struggling now or struggles may be on the way because some changes have been a slower rollout than were originally intended.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:And so what has happened is even though it was well discussed that these changes were coming, sometimes even when business owners didn't make the updates to be compliant, their emails kept sending. And so everyone kind of forgot about it. Email deliverability and the way to preserve the health of your domain you're sending, all that is super important because ultimately, once it has been hurt, injured, it it's hard to hard to fix. And so today, we have very special guest, Matt Ratliff, and he is here to talk about all sorts of things, email deliverability when it's important, all of these different things. Matt has been in the tech industry for 18 years.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:He's actually a software engineer and has focused on email deliverability. And he's super knowledgeable. He's here to share a value packed episode full of all sorts of information that every business owner who's sending email in any capacity needs to hear. This is not just if you're sending out email newsletters. This is not just if you're sending out, you know, promotional email.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:This is affecting even if you just are on sending out your work email to your customers. So super important, and I am excited to introduce you to Matt. So welcome to the show.
Matt Ratliff:Thanks for having me.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:So super exciting to have you here. I've been longtime follower online, and I see your name come up with with so many different recommendations. Oftentimes, you'll see things online, someone know how to do this, and you'll see similar names all the time. I see your name recommended for all sorts of different things. Why don't we jump in with how did you even get started?
Matt Ratliff:Well, I am a I'm a tech guy. I've always been a tech guy. So my background is in, network engineering. It's a computer network engineering. So everything that would make a computer network, the biggest one is the Internet.
Matt Ratliff:Right? So, I'm the kind of the the hands behind the scenes that kind of stitches everything together to make sure everyone can connect and do their thing. So that's my background. But where all all of this got started, I think Funneltechy was started back in, I guess, 2019. So I guess fairly recently, I was began following Russell Brunson back in, I guess, 2017 and started, you know, reading his books.
Matt Ratliff:And then finally went to a conference in 2018, went to the one in 2019. And, in 2019, someone that was at Funnel Hacking Live gave me the epiphany for funnel techie. I realized at that moment that there were all of these people in this in this room. Russell makes everything from a funnel standpoint sound very easy. Mhmm.
Matt Ratliff:The thing that he never spoke to and never, spoke anything about was kind of the the tech stack behind the scenes, you know, getting your all of your DNS records correct. By getting some, you know, CSS code maybe on a funnel, you know, set correctly. The different things like that. Anything that an entrepreneur would kind of run into. So I thought it'd be kind of cool to be able to, you know, come in and be that person that would solve this problem.
Matt Ratliff:So that's what I did. And it became pretty successful fairly quickly, which, was amazing. Well, I didn't really love that process. There you know, I I would get sort of really stuck in the weeds with, you know, things that I didn't really enjoy doing, but that's okay. You know, we run into that.
Matt Ratliff:But along the way, I guess it was around 2020, I suppose. I had a client that came to me maybe early 2021 that asked me, Matt, do you do you know anything about email deliverability? I'm having some issues. Can you help me? Well, early in my tech career, I used to develop a lot of Linux email servers, Microsoft Exchange email servers.
Matt Ratliff:I would deploy it to companies. I created gateway. So I knew a lot about the MTA that basically sends the email and all of the DNS records involved. So I had a huge background behind it. I was like, cool.
Matt Ratliff:Let yeah. Let me look into it. I did it, solved their problem, fell in love with the process during that time frame, and then I decided at that moment to pivot and just strictly focus on email. But it's kinda confusing. Right?
Matt Ratliff:So funnel techy is doing email stuff. I've gotta figure that one out, but that's kinda where I'm at.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:We did a big rebrand just earlier this year because same thing for us, that kind of evolution through business. And you start with, you know, one product and one offer and and ultimately as, tech evolves, offers evolve, you know, all these different things, then you, you know, at one point end up kind of saying, like, hey, are we still in alignment? I am a firm believer that really the name is irrelevant. And, you know, I'll be honest, until I was doing some research for the show, I didn't know that that was your brand. I you you are the guy.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:You're the name. And I knew you as the email guy. And I I feel like in in, you know, this year especially, email deliverability has become a bigger topic for business owners than ever before. I mean, you know, it's at one point you wrote an email, you clicked send, and you really didn't think much about it after that. It was it sent and you assumed it made it to its destination.
Matt Ratliff:Took it for granted. That was it?
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:That was it? Plain and simple. And this year, that has for almost every business owner that sends email Yeah. Been completely turned upside down.
Matt Ratliff:Yeah. Yeah. The reason yeah. So all of these changes, you know, we I guess we got notification that was gonna happen around October ish of last year, so 2023. So they were gonna start rolling these changes out, meaning Google and Yahoo, rolling these changes out beginning February of 2024.
Matt Ratliff:And what that came down to is that, you know, they're the increase in spam over the years has massively increased. And so for these inbox providers like Google and Yahoo, you know, they wanna protect their user base, their clientele better. So a part of that strategy would be to, you know, meet these certain requirements, meaning that now you've gotta have full domain alignment. You cannot have, you know, ascending domain connected with ActiveCampaign or Mailgun and claim to send from a different domain to be able to get your email messages out. So that was, something a lot of folks were using, and that was acceptable for a long time.
Matt Ratliff:But in order to crack down on spam, now we're going back to domain alignment, which is definitely gonna help with that. And then, of course, having an unsubscribe header in the email. You know, whenever you open up an email, there's a bunch of code in it. Well, in the header section, there needs to be a, list unsubscribe post one click that became a part of the process, which makes it easier for a provider like Google and Yahoo to, allow their user base to unsubscribe for messaging, which, you know, which is a good thing. And then the other one was, having a policy, and then, that became something.
Matt Ratliff:So, yeah, a lot lots of changes and lots of things that we gotta to look at to make sure our domain health, stays, stays up there.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:Yeah. It's interesting because I think that although there was a lot of talk about this firm deadline of February and whatnot, I know for many, business owners that I know, nothing actually happened on that date, whether they had or had not actually become compliant. And it wasn't until later, slowly, all of a sudden, randomly, it would be like, oh, hey. This is this is not working. And it wasn't always not working.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:It was kind of, like, certain emails and certain links and certain things. And so, you know, as much as there was a lot of discussion leading up to, the February kind of cutoff, there there was it was it's soft to start, and I think then, it it's one of those things that later it became a bigger issue for business owners.
Matt Ratliff:Yeah. Definitely. You know, Google and Yahoo, they both realized that across the globe that they couldn't get everyone on board, you know, come February 1st. So that was the hard date that they wanted to say, hey. This is starting to happen.
Matt Ratliff:Let's, you know, let's get your stuff in order. Let's start, you know, putting everything in place. But then, yes, you're correct. They they started doing rolling updates or requirements. Right?
Matt Ratliff:So they slowly introduced from that point on all of these different pieces. But that was definitely to get everyone, you know, massively scared so they can get their ducks in a row. And that, you know, that certainly would have been a big undertaking. But, yeah, slowly but surely, you would have noticed that in the in the beginning come February 1st, nothing's happened just yet. But then eventually, you start seeing those weird issues that came through, a lot of different codes, a lot of problems, and then it made people go ahead and and meet those requirements.
Matt Ratliff:But yeah.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:So with all of your diverse technology, how did you, you know, really decide that you were going to go all in on email deliverability? What what appealed that direction for you?
Matt Ratliff:Well, you know, the reason I decided, to run with Funneltech, yeah, I wanted some extra side income. You know, we always want that. Right? And so even though Funneltechy with, you know, helping with, you know, back in funnel, tech was, was decent, it just it wasn't, you know, doing as as as good as I wanted it to. When I fell into email deliverability, I realized that, you know, money is in your list, and people are willing to pay really good money to get you to help them, you know, with their email deliverability.
Matt Ratliff:That was a a huge turning point for me in realizing that. Not only that, you know, I'm I love to troubleshoot. I I love to troubleshoot computer networks. If I could troubleshoot every single day in my life, I would be totally happy and content. You know, going into the email deliverability world that allowed me to continue that troubleshooting mindset, and that kept me grounded, kept me focused, which I have got to be focused on something, or else I'll be all over the place.
Matt Ratliff:And so that was another piece of it. And, those 2 match, they came together, and I'm able to now grow my following even more. My name is is getting out there more and more, which I never thought I'd get there. You know, we always start very slow, and I'm thinking, god, this is this is taking forever to become an influencer around this, to to get my name out. But now it's it's, it's compounding, and, that's another blessing, which I'm very proud of.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:Yeah. So you you started with Russell and, you know, the ClickFunnels space. And I know you from a very different world. So have you moved away from ClickFunnels or do you still provide support for that client base? Are you as big a name over there as you are in the go high level community?
Matt Ratliff:Well, that's funny. Well, funnel techie.com, which is my site, it's still running on ClickFunnels Interesting. Which is fine. Right? But I I do have my own high level agency.
Matt Ratliff:I don't use it for, any clients. I use it for development purposes, but I do run there are quite a few products of mine that are on HighLevel that anytime that you make a purchase of do come through HighLevel, which is kinda cool, but, probably about 80% on HighLevel and 20% inside of, the other one. ClickFunnels.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:Yeah. Interesting. I feel like Russell is such a huge name, and I say was as in I mean, I think he still is a huge name and and really a lot of what he teaches can be applied in any software. And I think that
Matt Ratliff:Oh, definitely.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:Although Russell is really connected to one particular software, I think when you really, you know, I mean, I've like you said, read his books and and follow him and and learn. I I feel like I've learned so much, but, you know, when we really start to just take knowledge away from specific forms or marketing knowledge is is a 100% relevant in with every software.
Matt Ratliff:Yeah. Well, his tactics still work today. You know, everything that he's taught in the past, you know, it's still relevant and it works quite well. So he he's still teaching, still doing his thing. I'm still listening.
Matt Ratliff:But, yeah, I think, I think that will still be around for for many years to come, I'm sure.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:Mhmm. Mhmm. So you were talking about different products that you have on go high level. Do you wanna do you wanna chat a little bit about this?
Matt Ratliff:Yeah. Well, so we can maybe start at why I chose to go the high level route. I very quickly fell in love with that platform because, you know, me being a tech nerd, high level had such a vast amount of different features. You know, we don't like to talk about features with any platform necessarily, but it allowed me to do so much crazy good stuff that I could not be a part of it. So I had to become a part of it.
Matt Ratliff:And so once I got into that world, and realized all the things that I can do within workflows, all the cool things that I could do from an email standpoint, was amazing. So that's that's now where I am living. That's now where I am staying. I really like the platform, and it's it's it's still growing, and it's still making massive improvements. One of the, one of the things that I really like about it is even though from an email deliverability standpoint, you know, we see it kinda all over the group.
Matt Ratliff:If you're inside of the high level group, they talk about, you know, lots of folks having email deliverability problems, and they blame it on high level. Well, when I I started using it, I realized very quickly that they're giving us a lot more power, and a lot of that power is is is unbeknownst to a lot of folks. So now I I have this massive control on my email, that people are just not privy to. So through that process, I realized, well, I can build a tool called Inbox IQ and make it an add on for high level. So now you can, in one single pane of glass, see your email stats.
Matt Ratliff:You can see all of the different deliverability components, which we could talk about if you wanna dive deep into it. So that was the very first tool that I built really to help me with my client base that I was helping with email deliverability, but it gave it gave me clarity, gave them clarity to see the different things. Then I went in and decided, well, high level is not really giving us the ability to create sunset policies. So you can imagine that if you got a a list of 10,000 contacts, and all of a sudden your your deliverability rate is is tanking because there's low engagement. Well, we've gotta have something that identifies those folks that are not opening your messages.
Matt Ratliff:We've got to identify them. So I built an email engagement system for high level that allows you to basically turn the system on in the background. It collects data and allows you to pinpoint those folks that are both engaging with you and not engaging with you. And the beauty behind that is that for the folks that are not engaging with you, you can put them you can segment them. And so later on down the road, you can take this segment of your contacts, move them in into a reactivation series if you so choose to try to win them back as long as they've not unsubscribed.
Matt Ratliff:And that's been a really good, strategy for a lot of folks. And it's been key for a lot of folks too. So I'm I'm trying to teach that method. I'm gonna start doing a a a lot more YouTube videos around it. I'm gonna basically open my book and show everybody how I do stuff, so that I can teach the masses.
Matt Ratliff:So that's kind of the plan. But inbox IQ and my email engagement system have been 2 really good best sellers for me, and I've done a ton of things around automation around setting up, custom domains through Mailgun. Basically, it's a system that allows you to, if you're onboarding SaaS clients, as long as they are coming through your, high level ecosystem, you can go through this automation and their back end, Melgon domain is created. All of the other pieces that are relevant to it are created all the DNS records, and it's added to your, to their high level location all in under 2 minutes. So I built that too early on.
Matt Ratliff:So lots of cool things.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:It's very interesting because I I remember, starting with high level and email, and and that was really my first lesson in email and all of these different components. I had no going into that, I had no idea what Mailgun was. I had all of these different things that you've learned. Now it's kinda, like, oh, now we're moving along and whatnot. But for those people who have a big client list that's maybe super old and based, there's so much chatter now about, oh, well, you're not allowed to email and this and that.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:So you you said something that I thought was super important. You said, if they haven't unsubscribed, then you can go ahead and email them. And so there's there's, I think, a fear of if I send too many emails and something goes wrong, is it going to get my domain shut down? And and Yeah. This is a stress of business owners with the new rules.
Matt Ratliff:Well, to that exactly. And so, it's a good point. And so, basically, what everyone needs to be mindful of is that we're watching we need to understand our audience. And so my audience would be different from your audience. So maybe I can send maybe 3 emails a week to my audience and be okay or more.
Matt Ratliff:Or maybe I should send less. It kinda depends. So all of us gonna are gonna have, different reactions so to the time frame. And, plus, you know, it's a mixed bag of of different people. But what I have found is that it's gonna be very advantageous for us to watch those metrics over time.
Matt Ratliff:There's different systems that you can tap into to see. Well, there's free feedback loop systems, or a fee free feedback loop system with Google that you can tap into called GPT, not chat GPT, but it's Google Postmaster Tools. And so Google will actually show you what your domain health is. It'll show you the sending IP reputation that you've got, your spam complaint rate. So all of those things would be a telltale sign.
Matt Ratliff:And then, of course, one thing that I would stress is that don't be afraid to send email. You know, we need data so that we know how to adjust to it, but just be mindful of all of your email sets. So if you're in a high level or any platform, even ActiveCampaign, we're wanting to watch for holistic stats across the board. And as long as things are trending in the right direction, meaning, let's say that, you've got a 60% open rate holistically across your email foundation, and this is over a 30 day period, That speaks, you know, volumes to to your overall health. Now can we drill down to per inbox to see, you know, how your reputation is per Google, Outlook, Yahoo, things like that?
Matt Ratliff:Some systems can while other systems can't. It just depends on kind of the the system that you're using and the data that they're providing you. But definitely keep an eye on those, Open Stats because people are gonna see your email that comes into their inbox. Hope hopefully, it's the inbox. And, they're gonna open that message based upon, well, they either from I know this person.
Matt Ratliff:They've sent good stuff in the past. I'm gonna open it. Or maybe they've seen the subject line that you've used in the email. Maybe that caught their eye. They're gonna open it, and we wanna continue with that engagement.
Matt Ratliff:Certainly, the thing that we don't want is folks to mark us as spam, because maybe the messaging to them isn't quite relevant. You know, that's another, really good segue into, you know, talking about list segmentation, you know, making sure that your messaging aligns with the audience. But the other thing is that, you know, the inbox providers, they wanna make sure that the behavior with the the emails that you're sending to their contact base, we wanna make sure that those folks are opening it. So as long as the engagement stays up, that's, you know, that's really ultimately what we want. But having that sunset policy baked in and, not being afraid to send emails, you're you're gonna only know after you've sent a few and and continue that to know exactly what your audience wants.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:So when I have talked to different business owners about segmentation, this is kind of a big word. And if you're not super familiar with it then you think what does that really mean? And one of the examples that I have given and I'm interested in if you have something that might even be better, but there's nothing worse than you someone sends you an email with something exciting and it says would you like to buy? Now it says the offer. And you buy the offer and you're excited and in what you get one email that says, welcome to the program or here's your download or whatever it is.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:And then you also get another email that says, last chance, you better buy it now. And then you get another email that says, there's only 2 left. And then you're getting one email that's talking about welcome. You're they know you've purchased, but somewhere in their sequencing, they have not added the appropriate path to divert you from a possible purchaser to a purchaser. So now you're getting hammered on 2 fronts.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:And I feel like that could really right away, you just feel like, hey, you're not super organized. This is not relevant to me. You're telling me that I've already purchased from you.
Matt Ratliff:So it can't so you're to your point, it kinda does paint a bad picture. And so that really comes down to the automations that are behind the platform. Every lots of platforms have a high level is very good at it. I love ActiveCampaign's automation sequence. I'm not a big fan of, what is it?
Matt Ratliff:Keep, confusion soft as they used to say. But all of those automations so it's almost like the people that are creating your automations behind the scene, whether it be yourself or that person. You've gotta almost become an automations engineer, and you've gotta think a few steps ahead to understand exactly how this should flow. And so the best thing to to do there is to I I go I've got a whiteboard next to me. I've got 3 windows in front of me.
Matt Ratliff:My windows are covered in writing. I use a marker, and I just go to the windows. And I my wife doesn't like it, but I do that. And so I can visualize it. And so that's that's typically what I do.
Matt Ratliff:I do the same thing with any time that I'm creating a new offer, anytime that I'm building some API sequences for high level or whatever system I'm I'm building, I wanna seek a flow. So understanding that piece is gonna be critical. And that does, to your point too, it does go back to segmentation. So now if they got maybe the purchase tag, maybe not put that into this next sequence that's gonna remind them, oh, there's only 2 left or, you know, something like that. We gotta make sure that we we own that and think through that.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:That really comes back to really understanding the journey. And, I'm I'm a whiteboard fanatic. Actually, when I left with my office before I left the corporate space, at one point, we had, because I was in the construction industry technical trades. And at one point, we had basically redone this this what used to be an education space. And I claimed one of the giant school whiteboards.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:This was like I I was tickled pink because I'm so it took up the whole wall of my office.
Matt Ratliff:And when
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:I left the corporate space, I was sad to lose the team and all of those kinds of things. But let me tell you, the whiteboard. I was like, oh, I just wanna take the whiteboard with me. I have a way you know, I have the whiteboard now, in my office, not nearly as big or as amazing, but
Matt Ratliff:just Same here. Not used to those big ones. Yeah.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:Taking the time to really map out and the you know, what if a customer does this? What if a customer and oftentimes, we really see it from a customer perspective, you know, with the missed cart sequences that you get if you go shopping and add to the cart or those kinds of things. And I I think that it's often kind of a missed step as people are building out their business, workflows and processes. What is that next step that you want the customer to take, or what what are their possible choices? So you talk about email engagement.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:And so a lot of times, business owners are sending emails. Maybe they're announcing a promotion or maybe it's that, you know, typical monthly newsletter, you know, those types of things. What are different, you know, ways that a customer can engage with an email that would be a great thing for, you know, that engagement rate that's gonna keep that domain health up? Because, you know, not always not every customer on your list is gonna buy your offer. So what are other ways that we can say what is engagement that that can be positive?
Matt Ratliff:Well, so, you know, certainly, the the open, is gonna be critical. Right? So we we want to see an open event. Now opens can be considered kind of a vanity metric. There are some mail programs that you might have, Google connected to that might be blocking the open pixel, things of that sort.
Matt Ratliff:But, you know, we're also looking for, click the click through rate. You know, click through rates are different for different industries. But, you know, if we're around 1.2% or higher, that's kinda key. That's kinda ideal. But I've say I've worked with, like, a for example, I've got a client that I've worked with since last July.
Matt Ratliff:You know, overall click rates are not where I'd like to see them, but yet they're doing well financially too with, you know, bringing in new customers, the their purchase is happening. So, you know, we're looking at the return on investment. We're watching our, or just overall, our our staffs are domain domain health across all of the major inbox providers we can, especially Google. But that's that's kind of the thing that we'd, you know, definitely keep an eye on. Opens, click through rates, making sure that unsubscribes are are minimal.
Matt Ratliff:We wanna make sure that, spam complaint rates are not above 0.1% ideally. But, that's one one spam complaint out of a 1,000, for we're getting deep into it.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:So I feel like most people, you know, will put something to junk. But, you know, as a business owner, I always you know, I feel like there's a couple things that you have to take seriously because you you feel you feel that from the other side. And number 1 is, like, reporting an email as spam is, like, one of those where you you have to really feel passionate about that being spam in my opinion to be, like Same. To click that button.
Matt Ratliff:And then the
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:other one is, you know, the the credit card chargeback. I mean, most business owners at one point or another have received the credit card chargeback. If you if you haven't, then you've been pretty lucky. You know, it's so it's one of those those are the couple things that I always think as a business owner, you know, it's like you understand the weight of a Google review. You don't click the spam button.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:You don't do the credit card charge back. You try to and, you know, those are it's like the business owner etiquette in my opinion.
Matt Ratliff:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm where I'm in the email space, you know, I get tons of emails, and I'm I'm very privy to all of that, kind of what you just mentioned. And I'll do people a favor just, you know, I'll go in and open the message, and I might immediately click a link just so it sees some good metrics.
Matt Ratliff:And I'll not delete it until maybe a day or 2 after. Like, I do weird things like that even though I may not be interested, but the the times that I do click the spam button is that if I get a cold email out of the blue, which I don't I don't appreciate cold email necessarily. I don't like that world. Sometimes it's useful. Sometimes there's a place for it for sure.
Matt Ratliff:But if I get an email, you know, people are touting with their service, you know, telling me all about it, how they could help me, And especially if I don't see an unsubscribe, that just you know, it it triggers a little section in my brain that I don't like, so I immediately hit spam and and go to block. So that's what I don't like to see because, you know, I teach those tactics. So there's certain things in an email that I need to see. And if I get a cold email like that, I that's that's the route that I tend to go.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:You know, I I, early on. So, I mean, I was corporate finance and tech. No sales experience. Leave the corporate space, and I'm like, I'll figure it out. It's fine.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:We got we'll figure it out. And so I jumped into a lot of sales masterminds and online marketing, all of these types of things that I didn't I didn't have experience in. And so this one mastermind, there was, this this gentleman who spoke once a week and and he was really leaned into cold email. And he made it sound like it was, if you were not doing cold email, I mean, who were you even really? And you were never gonna be and you did a great job.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:And so in the end, I was like, great. Like, I I mean, maybe I need to get on this, but, like, I need to do this. And so Yeah. You know, over a number of weeks, we got it all set up. It was quite the investment.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:And then just as it was done and ready to start, there was all these changes in email, and he said, oh, if that method is not working anymore, we're gonna rebuild. And so this is if I look back at at some, you know, some of the things I've invested in in my own business over the time, that was one where I put in a sizable investment. And, ultimately, in the end, I we ran cold email on the new method for about 6 weeks, got nothing that was super positive. A lot of people and and and I thought, you know, this really doesn't align with what we're doing and it was almost kind of that reality check of, hey, Like, this doesn't feel right, and so we just abandoned the whole thing and called it a sunk cost. You know?
Matt Ratliff:It's Yeah. I it's Yeah. Well, one one thing yeah. It's it's tough. Right?
Matt Ratliff:Yeah. And in some it's for some folks, they they have some success with it, which, you know, is awesome. But one thing that a lot of people are, quite often not privy to is let's say that let's say that you go to SendGrid or Postmark or Mailgun or some other SMTP provider to send your cold messages. What's gonna happen very soon just because of the behavior behind that, these providers are gonna be doing audits on your copy without you even realizing it. And then they're gonna be, they're gonna be watching for these stats.
Matt Ratliff:So they can tell if you're sending cold email based upon kind of the stats are coming back. And what will happen in a very short short order is that now you're gonna be throttled to maybe a 100 emails per day or maybe they're gonna disable your account temporarily until you can provide business justification. But they're doing all of this to protect, IP infrastructure. So every every email that you send to press the send button, every email that goes out to the world, there's an IP that gets attached to it. And that IP is owned by your mail your ESP, your email service provider, whether that be ActiveCampaign, Mailgun, Postmarks, SendGrid.
Matt Ratliff:So these providers want to make sure that their IP health is healthy. And so just know that they're also cracking down on spam because they need to do their due diligence to keep their IPs healthy. So that's another reason why, you know, cold email is very difficult, especially now and will continue to be so well into the future. And, you know, a lot of folks, they're, going the instantly route. I don't know if you've ever heard of instantly.
Matt Ratliff:And there's other providers like that where, they teach the game of connecting multiple domains with Google Workspace or maybe even Office 365. Google Workspace is the easiest, and then using that platform to send cold email. So that's, that's something that they teach, which, you know, can be pretty decent to some degree. But, but, yeah, it's becoming harder and harder, and Google is cracking down on it too. So, eventually, it's gonna be very difficult to get any cold messaging out at some point in the future.
Matt Ratliff:Yeah.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:Yeah. It's, you know, you look at you look back at your journey, and you always there's a couple things along the way that you think, hey. I probably wouldn't have done that again. But Oh, yeah. You know, it's it's, you gotta Yeah.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:You gotta try things out. And I think that it really did teach me a lot about different things in terms of email and whatnot. And and their second method I said the first method didn't, you know, got abandoned. Their second method was, instantly, like you mentioned there. So, you know, you are providing all of the support for different business owners and and whatnot.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:You know, the typical business owner who maybe has, you know, almost everyone has on their website some kind of download. I often, you know, as we're going through with with people and they're, you know, oh, it's to build the email list, and you know oftentimes there's 0, you know, no one's in a year or something. But then other times, you know, people are doing a really great job, and they've got an email list, and now they don't really know what to do with it. And so, you know, if you were looking at, you know, what has worked for clients in the past and whatnot, where's a good place to start? If you if you're new and you're like, hey.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:I know that this is an opportunity for me, but what do I do next?
Matt Ratliff:Yeah. Well, that's the the way that you painted that's good because where I would start is, you know, having an opt in. And I that's kind of the way I started. I created an opt in to show folks kind of the the method and kind of what to do, to kinda start keeping their email deliverability in check. I created an opt in page, and that's kinda where I really started to blow up with my, email list, and that that's how I've grown it.
Matt Ratliff:And so that's what I would encourage folks to do is, you know, create something of value, something that people can use almost immediate, something that, you know, gives them an answer to a problem they're facing, and, you know, talk about it. You know, make it known on various different channels. You know, I I do it on Facebook because that's, you know, my greatest source of of getting eyes on my products. I don't do so well with TikTok or Instagram or anything else, but, that's where a lot of it comes from. And so they know how to go to the opt in page.
Matt Ratliff:And then from the once you start gaining a following or, you know, getting people to opt in, don't be afraid. Certainly don't be afraid to, you know, craft an email and sort of just test the water. I wouldn't immediately pitch them on something necessarily. Maybe give them some more value or, you know, do a a a story based type series or, you know, I would start certainly with value and speak to them directly and kinda see where it goes and just keep that going. Now I don't do a very good job of sending email on a regular cadence even though I teach email deliverability, and I I provide that as a service.
Matt Ratliff:I'm very I'm very bad about keeping an email cadence up on my side, which hopefully that'll eventually get better. But I had to make myself, you know, craft my very first email, and I sent it. I was very, very nervous, but it went quite well, and I continue to do that not on the cadence that I should. But, yeah, you just gotta you you have to start. And then once you do that more and more, you'll get some feedback from either the contact base or just from the data, from the platform that you're using to send the email, and, just learn it.
Matt Ratliff:You just gotta start. Once you get that data back, you'll know kinda what direction to go next.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:Yeah. It's it's, you know, in the entrepreneur entrepreneur journey, there's so many times where, you know, just start. Just just do it. You know? It's like your first your first reel or your first TikTok is is not gonna be great, but you're gonna do it anyway, and it will get better.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:And, you know, your first email, maybe not. I have a couple of, you know, it's it's I have a couple of different, I mean, I have hundreds of emails that come in, but, you know, some that you really look forward to. And not always businesses that you would necessarily deal with on a regular basis, but it keeps them top of mind, and it's great content. And so, ultimately, you know, whatever that is, you know, that works for you, but you won't know what works for you until you get started.
Matt Ratliff:So That's the point.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:Yeah. A lot of the email programs have a lot of beautiful email templates. And I know there's a lot of discussion online about, you know, you know, aesthetics versus, function, form over function, that type of thing. And so, you know, do you find that there's a really big difference in the pretty email templates versus, you know, an email, that maybe has one image, couple links? You know, where is that, What what are your thoughts on on that that kind of debate?
Matt Ratliff:Yeah. Well, I I don't have a problem with HTML based emails at all. What what it really comes down to, we see a lot of folks kinda teaching online that, you know, you should not send or add links in an email. You should do plain text to email, things like that in order to have the best chance to land in the inbox. And that's not necessarily true at all.
Matt Ratliff:In fact, kind of if we broke it down, why did that come to be? Why are people focused on, you know, doing sending plain text emails? Where did that come from? Well, you could imagine that anytime that you're building an HTML, email that, you know, you wanted to make it look pretty, platform that does it quite well is a platform like Klaviyo. Right?
Matt Ratliff:So it's all built around ecommerce. So all of their emails are built around, you know, HTML HTML based emails. So where all of this came from is that each of those components within the email to make it look pretty, that source is coming from some place and it's being extracted. And so that's, bogging down the system. Maybe some of those links are going back to a third party that maybe Google or or Yahoo doesn't like necessarily.
Matt Ratliff:So now that source that's pulling in that image for your email has a bad reputation perhaps. That's kinda where all of that came from. I don't see that necessarily in the real world as being a problem. I've, I've done a lot of, different tests with it, and I see it kind of a mixed bag. I don't really have a problem with HTML at all, and I don't necessarily have a problem with plain text.
Matt Ratliff:I think it's gonna be another one of those things to really, test against your audience. Certainly, don't be afraid to use an HTML builder to build the email. Don't worry about that at all. I'm not worried about it. You shouldn't be either.
Matt Ratliff:Don't be worried about the number of links even in an email. What really matters most, is the link quality. So you certainly want wouldn't wanna add a link to a third party resource online that doesn't have a good reputation. We certainly wouldn't wanna do that. We don't wanna be, we certainly don't also don't wanna use, Bitly links, you know, that tends to have a bad reputation, things of that sort.
Matt Ratliff:If we're talking about high level specifically, you know, early on, there was a time before they've, made changes to where you could have branded links. There was a time where all of their links would be hard coded back to the MSGSNDR domain, which routinely had a bad reputation only because a lot of people on the platform was abusing it for cold. So that's what that's why all of that started. So that's why HighLevel moved to to the branded links, and now that's baked into your subaccount level, and you can even change it at the API level within the agency. That's all to say that, you know, just make sure that you're linking back to a reputable domain with you within your emails.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:So and and when you're kinda talking about branded links versus not branded links, so you're meaning, you know, that that and I think there's kind of a a lack of understanding on subdomains versus, you know, root domains and that kind of thing. But Yep. If it if it kind of has the software name really in the domain that you're using, then that's going to be shared across many different peep you know, different users. Is that kind of a a a way to kind of easily explain it?
Matt Ratliff:That that is. And that's exactly right. If you're using a platform like ActiveCampaign, they've done a really good job though about trying to to brand those links. But underneath the hood, they're, sort of linking it back for link tracking back to, maybe an active hosted link. You know, we'd have to go in and look at those, but that's a good example as to why that could happen.
Matt Ratliff:So for, you know, for email tracking purposes or email link tracking purposes, we certainly want that to be branded back to a domain that we own. So we so we got more control over it, and so that's where that comes from. You did mention subdomains, and I'd like to briefly talk about that, because I think it's very valuable and very important for people to understand. And this could be relevant for any platform that you guys are using even and even inside of active active campaign. One thing that I want to preface is that, it's not advantageous for you to send your emails from your root domain.
Matt Ratliff:So let's say, for example, you go into ActiveCampaign and stand up a domain to send from. They, are really bad about making it super easy for you to add just your root domain and you send from that. Of course, we could use Mailgun even to to do the exact same thing. Well, the reason that that's bad, and we can use funneltechie.com as my example. I've got funneltechie.com living in, Google G Suite.
Matt Ratliff:So that's my business inbox. Anytime that I get a purchase from any of my services or any of my products, I need that to come from a specific subdomain that's identified for that flow. And so that would be a transactional based domain. And so all of my emails would come from t.funneltechie.com. So if you were to receive an email from from that situation, it's literally gonna say matt@t.funneltechie.com and I'm coding all my emails that way.
Matt Ratliff:Same thing in the marketing world. If I'm sending a marketing blast, all of my emails is gonna be displayed this way. It's gonna come from matt@.funneltechie.com. So it is my marketing subdomain. It's just identified as m because it stands for marketing, and it's identified for that particular flow.
Matt Ratliff:So let's say, for example, I decided to to, use the funnel techie.com, encode my from display email has matt at funnel techie. So now I've got 2 email or 2 addresses inside the same email envelope. If at some point in the future, I get a lot of spam complaints on my marketing subdomain. What's gonna happen? Whatever negativity is happening on my marketing subdomain is gonna bleed over to my root.
Matt Ratliff:And now if I ever wanted to pivot and bring up maybe another subdomain for marketing, my root is tarnished. So its reputation is gonna bleed over to the new subdomain that I've created, and now I'm in the same boat. So what I'm saying is that it's gonna be very beneficial for everyone to start focusing on different flows of email and using the subdomain to send from and use it in your from display line. If you're from email display line, that's a very, critical step for everyone to be, to be mindful of. Okay.
Matt Ratliff:That makes sense?
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:Yeah. That subdomain sounds like is a is a great kind of health precaution, really keeping things separated so that if you have a problem in one you know, it's like you if you have a if you have something, it's it's, the same reason, you know, if you have a bad accident and they decide they're gonna you know, sometimes they decide they need to remove a body part instead of letting that spread through the body. It's kind of the same thing. It's keeping keeping it segregated.
Matt Ratliff:Yeah. Exactly.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:Great. Super valuable tips. And I think so it's even more important than ever before as, you know, we're seeing these changes and and whatnot. So
Matt Ratliff:Definitely.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:If you had if you had one tangible tip for a business owner who, you know, maybe is not super knowledgeable on the email and they're deciding to take those next steps? What is that what is that recommendation they can go and implement?
Matt Ratliff:Well, the one thing that I would say share is that, you know, we've covered a lot, but, with any system that you go with, you know, it doesn't really matter to the system. They're gonna tell you exactly what to do from a DNS, DNS record standpoint. So you're immediately gonna meet all of those requirements that Google and Yahoo are wanting you to have. So you're gonna meet the list unsubscribe post header. One click, you're gonna meet the SPF and DKIM fields, which is part of a part of the authentication.
Matt Ratliff:And now that DMARC is a part of this, they're also gonna, make sure that you put in a DMARC policy. So out of the gate, you should be able to meet all of these requirements. The one thing that I have got to stress, especially for those that are either migrating from a platform to a new one or maybe you've got, an existing list and you've maybe it's been a while since you've sent, an email or or you're newly standing up a new domain with a with an active list. The the one thing that I have got to stress is that we do not want to immediately blast the entire list on day 1 because what's gonna happen is that the likelihood of that domain being tarnished is gonna be very high, and it's gonna take you a long time to sort of get out of that bad, status with the inbox providers. The reason that happens is that, you know, the inbox providers have never seen an email from you before.
Matt Ratliff:They don't know how your user base is gonna react to those emails. So now that watching all of this, you know, you've sent a huge bulk email. The inbox provider is sort of scrambling. You know, they wanna protect their user base, and they see all of this negativity happening. People aren't you know, they're unsure of who this is.
Matt Ratliff:It's it's on a new new domain. There's no reputation built on it. So, you know, the inbox providers are going, you know, all over the they're all over the place trying to figure out exactly what to do. So too often, they're gonna start deferring your email or they're gonna lower your reputation score down to a a a place where it shouldn't be. And now if that happens, in order to get that center score back up, it's gonna take weeks, if not months, to either purge that data or self correct it.
Matt Ratliff:So the best thing to do from day 1 would be to slowly, you know, take chunks of your audience and slowly send emails out to them. In my world with the people that I work with, I'm very cautious, and I send out maybe I start with maybe 200 per day. In other situations, if you're a client that has millions of contacts, I might start as high as a 1,000 per day, maybe 5,000 per day. Kinda depends on the volume and kind of the history, the size of your audience, things of that sort. There's different reason as to why it would start here or there.
Matt Ratliff:But, typically, you know, 200 to 500 per day is where I would start, and that would be it for, you know, for everyone. But start very slow so that you get an introduction to all of these inbox providers so that they know how to place your domain reputation. You're slowly building up this trust. And, the key component here too is if you can identify people that have engaged with you in the past. If you've got that data, take advantage of it, and use that as a strategy to slowly introduce your your domain to the world, especially on a new domain.
Matt Ratliff:That's a, a piece of advice that I want to share. Right.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:So if you've had people in the past who have engaged with your emails
Matt Ratliff:and Exactly.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:That's what you're saying, then then resend to those because you're gonna get off on the right you know, get off on the right foot. And you don't wanna start off on the wrong foot. That's that's very, very helpful advice. So, Matt, you know, I think that email is, you know, the technical aspects of this are are, you know, a huge topic. And, you know, we've covered so much today, but really just a corner of it.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:So where can people connect with you if if they're thinking, hey. I know this is a problem for me and my business, or, oh my goodness. I didn't know that email deliverability was a thing, and I've struggled with this forever, and I didn't know that there was a person who could help me fix it. You know, where's where's the best place for them to connect with you?
Matt Ratliff:Yeah. I think, the best place is just to go to funneltechie.com. That's my hub. You'll notice that there is a nav bar at the top. So if you need some email service, I've got an email services link.
Matt Ratliff:There's a bunch of, base packages that there. There's an even a 1 hour consult call if you wanna grab that. Got a bunch of other services. Also have a premium service that's ideal for people that have a large list, and they wanna make sure that they get their deliverability started correctly. It's a way that I help with, help manage this for a 3 month period.
Matt Ratliff:If you wanna retain me or continue that service, after the 3 month commitment, then, you could just stay on the subscription. If not, we can just end it there. That's very useful, for especially people that are sending well over a 100,000 emails per month and beyond. Bunch of other tools are listed there, but that's gonna be the best way to connect with me. There's also a discovery call link that you'll see.
Matt Ratliff:Just go to funneltechie.com.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:Awesome. I will be sure to share that in the show notes as well. You know, thank you so much, Matt. You've shared all sorts of very valuable information that is so relevant to anyone who is sending emails, in, you know, the the today's era, which is a different space. And, needs to be taken seriously.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:Otherwise, you just never know when all of a sudden, even if it was working, it may fall out of because you're no longer the client. Super important.
Matt Ratliff:Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:We're all out of time for today, but the fun doesn't stop here. Make sure to subscribe to the Service Based Business Society podcast on your preferred podcast app. If you're hanging out over on YouTube, search for Tiffany Ann Botcher. Your likes, shares, and reviews really do help the show. Until next time.
Tiffany-Ann Bottcher:Have a great week.