[00:00:00] Intro --- [00:00:00] Ruari: one of the advantages we really have against just. Legacy email validation is most vendors in this space don't connect to email accounts. They're siloed to the server site, which is running SMTP checks only. Whereas what we do is we connect to every user's real B2B inbox, and we're able to see their prospecting, see email traffic do they have a history of spam blocking email outreach [00:00:25] And that basically means Allegrow is able to establish not just if a contact valid, but if they're highly risky to send an outbound email to or, or not. [00:01:01] In This Episode --- [00:01:01] Phil: What's up folks? Welcome to episode 1 64 of the Humans of MarTech podcast. Today we're joined by Rory Baker, co-founder and CEO of Allegro. In this episode, we cover why open rates died in 2021, and marketers need to get over it. Why your email platform is under reporting the actual number of spam complaints. [00:01:23] How to resurrect an email domain after a deliverability disaster. Why email validation isn't enough anymore, you need to risk score every recipient and how to create a sunset policy for your email contacts, all that, and a bunch more stuff after A super quick word from two of our awesome partners. [00:03:45] Phil: Ruari, thanks so much for your time today. Really pumped a chat. [00:03:47] Ruari: Thanks for having me, Phil. Great to chat with you guys too. [00:03:50] Phil: think that you'll agree meal deliverability is, uh, very misunderstood and usually an overlooked area of growth and sales teams. [00:04:00] We decide to have a deep conversation with you about deliverability today. I know, uh, Darrell has a, a background in deliverability as well. Lots of folks spend like so much time and money on fancy things like AI automation and ML propensity models, personalization for emails. [00:04:16] But if messages don't actually reach the inbox, like. People are wasting a ton of effort and time. So let's, uh, let's take a dive in email deliverability. [00:04:26] Ruari: Cool. [00:04:26] Darrell: Totally. I've, I've like geeked out about email deliverability for years, like using different platforms and you get little codes back. Like zero one or zero, I forget what the codes were, but there's, there's always like a, a it always try to, tries to guess what's happening and, and, um, I love to nerd out about it, but [00:04:46] Plain Text Emails Will Always Outperform HTML Emails When it Comes to Inbox Placement --- [00:04:46] Darrell: I think the first topic we want to talk about, um, Ruari is HTML versus text. [00:04:50] And uh, my theory has always been. And I, I, I'd love to hear your thoughts. That text is always gonna perform better just because of the [00:05:00] mechanics of it and also just because of the simplicity of it. I mean, it's already mobile friendly and everything like that, so, you know. Is that what you think too? Or like, what's your whole take on HML versus text emails. [00:05:12] Ruari: Sure. So I think the first logical aspect to consider is, are you trying to give the impression that the email was actually written individually by the sender and then sent to the recipient? Right. Because if you're using HTML. Obviously that illusion is very quickly destroyed, right? We don't render HTML emails in our drafts and then send them off to people. [00:05:37] So as a general rule, and it depends on the context a little as well, right? Are we talking about an outbound sender and a sales person, or are we talking about purely a marketer? So, as a general rule for outbound, on the sales side of things, you should almost always be using plain text. Whereas emails to subscribers can use the HTML option or Rich HTML as an [00:06:00] option because sometimes inbound marketers are looking for clickthroughs. [00:06:04] So specifically, it's gonna depend right on those, those different approaches. But on the point of how rich HTML impacts deliverability. are still more associated with marketing emails exactly because of what you said, the complexity, the images, the aspects in them that have more links all indicate more risks, but just look like all the other promotion emails that get sent. [00:06:28] So I think that's important to consider. But the main argument for marketers using HTML, 'cause they will still use Rich HTML sometimes is when they have a really large list of subscribers and they're looking to surface. People that have intent via clickthroughs, it can still be useful in that use case. [00:06:48] Or of course, in an e-commerce use case, which is one of the biggest segments of email centers in the world, if you're in e-commerce, you're going to get more engagement. When people can literally see the [00:07:00] product in Rich HTML, that surfaces the demand from the consumer. So it does depend on the use case. [00:07:06] You can't just simply say, I mean, I'm very much focused on the deliverability, so it's easy for me to say. Always plain text, that's better. But the reality is there are still good business reasons for using Rich HTML, and that's why it is such a popular way to send emails from a marketing perspective. So my advice is more nuanced, I would say. [00:07:28] I. If you are going to use Rich H, rich HTML, because one of those points I mentioned really does apply to you as a marketer and it's an opt-in list. Then there's a few things to consider to just make sure you keep deliverability in check and keep hitting the primary inbox. The first is you want to make sure you're running your entire list every 30 days. [00:07:49] To remove invalid contacts to keep bounce rate low and to remove potential, um, spam, spam trap subscriptions to the list. Then I would [00:08:00] actually occasionally still use plain text emails. So let's say most of your emails are predominantly rich, HTML, I think you should still use plain text at certain points in the subscriber journey to. [00:08:12] Cut through the promotions folder and hopefully get you inside the primary inbox regularly, which helps your future messages land there as well. And then as a final point with these big lists and um, you know, large. Use cases, there are more marketing automation than sales sending. You want to have a Sunset policy, uh, which basically keeps subscriber engagement high. [00:08:34] So if you see no engagement from a subscriber over X period of time, you're going to proactively put them into a workflow. Where do they get one final email? And then if they don't have any engagement to that final email, that's usually templatized. And based on the the use case that they're. Probably not a subscriber for much longer, but if you don't get engagement there, then you'll actually proactively take them off the list, and that keeps your engagement high, which is one of the [00:09:00] main things either your marketing automation provider or the email providers are both going to be looking at to decide if you're a high quality center or not. [00:09:09] Darrell: So I, yeah, that's such great advice and I haven't heard that one, that that strategy. Specifically where you actually use a combination of HTML and text to try to improve your placement in the primary. I think that's really smart. That's really good. And then that, that's the other question that I was just gonna ask you of, of, of like, um, you know, [00:09:29] Create a Sunset Policy Based on Your Specific Industry Engagement Patterns --- [00:09:29] Darrell: what's that timeframe that you've seen for the inactive contacts? [00:09:33] Is it like six months? [00:09:36] Ruari: Yeah, so honestly it's, it's hard to say 'cause it depends on the industry and your baseline engagement level. You're basically looking to figure out the bottom quartile or decal of subscribers and proactively remove them. So if you're in like a super high engagement industry, which. These days is actually fewer and further between over email, right? [00:09:57] Because everyone's pretty overloaded. But if [00:10:00] you just have a super high quality list, that bar's going to be different to someone who, let's say you're in something that people don't find particularly sexy, like compliance. You know, they may see generally very, very low subscriber engagement and. What they really do care about though is that once or twice per year where someone has a lot of engagement 'cause they have their SOC two audit coming up, you know, that's gonna be a very different bar. [00:10:23] Um, so it depends and I think marketers have to make that call internally, but at least having some sunset policy in place would already put you leaps and bounce ahead of the majority of your peers. 'cause there's just so few people that are looking to take people off the list rather than actually keep them on it. [00:10:42] Phil: Yeah, so true. Everyone's impressed by the, the total number in the database, but broing and, and looking at people that haven't opened an email in the last like six newsletters that you sent. Like this person either has already put you in a folder somewhere or they haven't engaged enough with them and they're landing [00:11:00] in one of their folders, hopefully. [00:11:01] Not spam, but you called out the promo tab there a few times. I think that's a really interesting component of this debate between text and HTML, because in my experience, like a lot of it's B2B short stint in B2C also, but. [00:11:17] How to Escape Google Promotions Tab Prison Without Sacrificing Design --- [00:11:17] Phil: The second that you have like three or four images in your email, you are destined for the promos tab, like your chances of reaching the primary inbox when you have a couple of images in there, or multiple links like you're telling Google. [00:11:31] I. That you're sending a newsletter and you don't belong in the primary tab. And so that's like the debate we have with, uh, like a lot of times when I was in house and like text versus HTML, I think like nine outta 10 times that we would test it, like splitting the list in two and then comparing click through rates between HTML and text, even though. The click through rate, the, the total raw number of people was always bigger when it was text [00:12:00] like people were just more interested in the HTML emails that had images, like you said, like when I was at WordPress, like we were showcasing different types of websites and it was such a visual way to get people re-engaged. [00:12:12] So it's, it's often the debate on just like, like, does it really matter if your email is beautiful? If no one's going to see it, if it's gonna land in the promo tab, who gives a shit how beautiful the images are in your email? People aren't gonna be like able to click on it 'cause it's not gonna get the eyeballs you need on it. [00:12:29] So that's like an interesting layer on the debate there. Right. [00:12:32] Ruari: It's so true, and I think the, the pragmatic conclusion we've come to most times is you, you can have your cake and eat it. You know, I don't believe that sending, sending HTML emails for the wrong use case will kill your deliverability, by the way. So let's just say that as a preface, right? If you're an outbound sales team. [00:12:51] You think you're gonna not get spam reports when you send prospecting emails as H Rich HTML, you know, you're crazy. So, [00:13:00] assuming this is an opt-in use case, right? As a, as a first prerequisite, um, where people do expect newsletter style emails. Um, so there shouldn't be a huge, depending on the content, there shouldn't be a huge spike in spam reports on HTML versus plain text for a subscriber based use case. [00:13:16] Um, but. So what we've said to people as a pragmatic solution is you can probably do both, right? I think trying to incorporate some plain text elements, maybe once per quarter you have a send that is plain text rather than just always rich. HTML should help you cut through some of those filters and get to the harder to reach inboxes. [00:13:35] Um, but you're right, it's usually, when we think about it, the primary inbox is the gold standard, right? That's the very best you can ever get is landing there then. step below that are promotions, folders, social updates, folders. These folders that are still technically in the Google interface, in the inbox, they're just not displayed in a preferential manner compared to the primary inbox. [00:13:57] Then the really below the line. [00:14:00] Worst place to be is actually landing in the spam folder. And that's usually when there's been repeated bad behavior, repeated errors, repeated spam traps, getting hits, uh, getting hit, lots of unsubscribes and uh, lots of spam reports. You know, it's, it's, it's when you end up starting to land there. [00:14:20] Email Open Rates Died in 2021 and Marketers Need to Get Over It --- [00:14:20] Phil: There's a lot of confusion and misinformation about email metrics and being able to see what email performs better than others and knowing which ones to trust nowadays is, is pretty tricky. Like apple's uh, mail privacy protection in 2021. Artificially inflated opens by automatically loading email content and pixels. [00:14:42] Um, the same year iOS update introduced like proxy servers that preloaded emails. Gmail has an image caching system that's affecting pixel track and accuracy. What are your thoughts on like email tracking email metrics nowadays? Like, should email marketers totally ignore open rates? Should we just be [00:15:00] focused on click rates? [00:15:00] What are your thoughts there? Ruari? [00:15:02] Ruari: Yeah, it's a really good question and there's still a lot of confusion about it. I think the real challenge is we need to accept that the open rate stat. Isn't giving us an indication of how many people actually open our emails anymore at all. So we need to just remove the logical thing of, of thinking, Hey, this is how many people are opening and accept that that is not the case. [00:15:24] Right. Like you said, there was iOS 15, which preloads all images and gives you false positives through the roof. On Apple subscribers. Then there's things like Microsoft Defender and Outlook that strip out tracking pixels. Um, and there's also a lot of other instances, like you will have seen and mentioned where security providers or different email clients are trying to systematically block open tracking. [00:15:46] So [00:15:47] Darrell: Hmm. [00:15:48] Ruari: it really means that open tracking as a statistic is unreliable at best. Now I personally view it as still. Being an indicator of [00:16:00] deliverability, um, and how it's changing. So we don't have it enabled for our outbound campaigns at Allegrow and we don't advise. People should have it enabled for that, but we do always have it enabled, um, for deals that are in the pipeline and there's some good reasons why. [00:16:16] So to zero in on a few of those when we talk about using it as an indicator. Well, we know it's not a real indication of how many people are opening our emails, but if we do see that we have a 50% quote unquote open rate, right, but then in a certain campaign or over a certain period of time, that drops to 25%. [00:16:38] You'd still expect there's been a change in deliverability or engagement. So it still holds some value, assuming that there isn't a quantum shift in how it's being calculated over that period. Right. So basically what you're saying is, I accept it's not correct. It's always wrong, but it's probably wrong week over week. [00:16:57] It's probably wrong by the same [00:17:00] degree. So if I see big changes, it tells me. It gives me a little bit more leading data about the emails. 'cause you talked about should we just look at clicks? Well, unfortunately we don't get lots of clicks as marketers some of the time. Right, because maybe you've never had a 10% click rate ever. [00:17:19] Right. On an email campaign. I've heard that from teams all the time. So. Are they meant to debate the differences between 0.1 and 0.3% click rate? I mean, it's just not gonna be enough data on some campaigns to always have leading indicators of change. So it can still be useful now to talk about the use case we mentioned of when someone is subscribed or when they're in the deal process. [00:17:46] Where does Open right have value? Well, we always have it turned on for our campaigns when someone's a subscriber or when they've come to us and they said, Hey, we're interested in the solution and we're going back and forward over our emails with questions. The reason for [00:18:00] that is it gives us really valuable intent data. [00:18:03] Like we said, it's not gonna give us valuable intent data all the time, 'cause there's gonna be some blocking and there's gonna be some false positives. But if I was speaking with a company three months ago and like. What happens on at least half of the deals in the pipeline? It didn't close. But then six months down the line, I see a bunch of open activity on those old messages that tells our team, Hey, let's prioritize calling this person. [00:18:27] Let's prioritize reaching out to 'em and seeing if we can help them and bring them back into the deal process. That's just one example that's super specific to our B2B SaaS use case, but there's a bunch of examples of how you could do that as an inbound marketer in other areas of the business, I'm sure. [00:18:43] So. We should be more focused on click rates. We should always track our spam rate as well as a, you know, a good center for truth on deliverability. And there are still some good use cases for open rate, even though it isn't correct. And I think just being comfortable with the fact that [00:19:00] it's not correct and you can still get some value out of it. [00:19:02] It's pretty important because people want it to be either it's. Complete rubbish, right? Like we ignore it and we are against it and we have some emotion around the fact that it's not correct or it's perfect. And yes, 50% of people are opening it up. They don't seem to be very happy with, with an in-between sometimes. [00:19:20] And I, I do think that medium of just knowing where you can extract the value from it is very important for marketers. [00:19:26] Phil: Yeah, totally agree that that's been my stance as well with uh. With clients, like look at less the detail of the actual rate that you had for opens, but consider the trend line because if it's inaccurate, it's consistently inaccurate, like you said. Right? So if you're sending to the same list, a newsletter, similar content every week or every month. [00:19:49] And you're averaging like at 20% or 15%, and then one day you're dropping like below 10, something happened there. Like the content had too many [00:20:00] links, or you might need to have a deeper look at deliverability. Maybe you landed in spam because of a previous one. And, um, but you mentioned spam reporting there too. [00:20:09] Um, like I sometimes, like I, I've told clients that. Unsubscribe rates isn't a metric that you should really care about that much. [00:20:17] Why Email Spam Reports Matter More Than Unsubscribes --- [00:20:17] Phil: To me, an unsubscribe isn't a bad thing. That person is telling you like, I'm not interested in your content anymore. I don't wanna receive it. But they didn't mark you a spam, so it didn't hurt your reputation. [00:20:28] You like aren't sending them content that they don't want to receive anyways. But a lot of times people are obsessed about the unsubscribe rate and they just like, don't really pay too much attention at this spam report rate and. Some of the folks in the audience are, are email marketers. Um, if we're talking about deliverability and live in like the email automation world and like a marketing automation platform, the spam reporting number that you see in there, it's not a full picture, right? [00:20:55] Like the, the number of actual spam complaints that [00:21:00] the. Marketing automation platform receives is like a fraction of the actual number. Like Google doesn't send that number, right? Like you need to have a postmaster account to monitor that. So like how, what advice do you have for email marketers, marketing teams to track the true number of spam complaints? [00:21:17] Ruari: Yeah, and the challenge is you're not going to get a conclusive number because email providers have a vested interest in. Protecting people's privacy and not saying, Hey, Phil reported you yesterday, they don't want that data to get out. Um, they do want you to know, and we do want you to know, have you gone from. [00:21:36] Getting a very low number of spam reports to all of a sudden getting a very high number. So, um, but the thing we have to get past first that's really important, and you mentioned it there, Phil, is in your marketing automation system, the spam report number that you're seeing is the number of people who use the unsubscribed functionality that you newsletter, that your marketing system has, and said they thought it was spam.[00:22:00] [00:22:00] Most often, it isn't the number of people that actually manually reported the email as spam. So there's a few different data points. What we do at Allegrow is we monitor and measure on average, from the traffic that we're sending as tests, how often is it automatically landing in spam? And what you'll find is when you get high spam reports in the real world, that automatic spam placement also jumps up. [00:22:24] So that's one way you can get a really good telltale sign of understanding is, is this content or is my changes that I've made to my campaigns recently producing spam reports. You can also use a free tool like Google Postmaster Tools, right, where they'll show you on a percentage basis. Are you getting a significant degree of spam reports? [00:22:46] How is that changing over time? The real challenge with Postmaster tools is people sometimes connect and they see a low spam report rating and think that's great, but what they don't realize is, well, if your messages are [00:23:00] already landing in spam, you can't get reported. So the best way by that logic to have a 0% spam rate is to already send there, right? [00:23:09] So you need to look at multiple data sources now, and what you'll often see in Postmaster tools is you'll see a spike at some point in time. That'll come right down and the team will think, great. We had one bad send, right? We got past the issue. In reality, they had that bad send. They were penalized for it. [00:23:26] They're landing in spam and they're not gonna get reports anymore. 'cause now they're just landing there right away. And Google even writes this in their guidance. We flagged it, we highlight it for people, we send it to them so they're aware of the difference. They say, Hey, just so you're aware. If you're landing in spam, we're not gonna show you that number and you're not going to get a high degree of spam reports. [00:23:46] So using that free tool is gonna be helpful and every marketer should, but also making sure you're getting data on spam rate from multiple places I think is is important to keep on top of the issue. [00:23:57] Darrell: Hmm. Gotcha, [00:24:00] gotcha. And are, are most of like the customers that you serve, are most of them running this outbound motion? Like, not, not too many will be, let's say, newsletter businesses or, you know, people doing, because I, because I assume like, like for example, like I run like a newsletter and. You know, it's really spams not a problem, or, or like, you know, the declining open rates isn't a problem, but it definitely becomes a problem when you have a, you know, team of people doing cold outreach or maybe even warm outreach on a consistent, regular basis is when we really need to watch for spam. [00:24:41] Ruari: It's a good point. So we work with businesses that have a team that does that. So a team that does outbound messaging, whether it's semi-warm, but basically what they're doing is they're reaching out to people to start sales discussions and conversations. And we work with teams that have a, have a department that's responsible for that, [00:25:00] to do two things to make sure that department can still be successful with some guardrails in place so they don't get into trouble, but also to make sure that what that team's doing. [00:25:10] Doesn't hurt the other parts of the business, so it doesn't har hurt a marketing team that's sending the opt-in list. It doesn't hurt the accounts receivable team who are trying to send invoices to people to collect payment. It doesn't hurt the support team that are starting their onboarding. So we make sure there's not trickle on effects from it. [00:25:27] But we also set those guardrails up and I think. The reason we've started there, we will move into sub more, and we have a few now and we're getting more over our time. We will move into subscriber based marketing. We will move into other sending use cases, but the real reason we started there is that's the highest risk form of sending you can ever find is the outbound sending. [00:25:49] It's a list of people that didn't do double opt-in basically, if they haven't specifically said they want to hear from you, it's a high risk list. So we start there just because that seems. The [00:26:00] most obvious place where there's the most issues that we can come in and fix right away. [00:26:04] ​[00:27:00] [00:28:00] [00:28:18] Phil: I think for, for marketers, there's still that like use case of working with a sales team, sales team having like a quota and like numbers are down and they go to the marketer and they're just like, we need to reheat our list of cold leads. And I want to find a list of people that like. [00:28:38] They haven't like come back to our site in the last six months, haven't opened an email in the last three months. Like your initial advice is like take those people off your list. But salespeople love to work with email marketers and ask them to reheat cold leads as like a campaign or whatever. So that's like the use case from a marketing perspective. [00:28:57] But even though like you, you don't. [00:29:00] Do outbound and you have a newsletter list and people double opted in, like maybe you've been running it for five years. People forget, like sometimes you'll land in the promo tab. They don't open. They don't open, and then one day it's actually landing in their primary inbox. [00:29:14] They open it and they're just like, who the hell is Phil from Humans of Mar? I don't remember signing up for this shit. Like, how did he get in my inbox? Boom. Spam report. People are just like trigger happy. It's so easy to report from spam now, and if you only have like a. Like a thousand people in your distribution list that are at Gmail, personal addresses, and you have one person marking you as spam, like with Google's new guidelines, like you're getting into trouble now. [00:29:40] And if that happens a couple of times, you see a reputation dropping. And so like even though we're not doing outbound all the time for some use cases, marketing, you can get into like issues where. You know, uh, most email marketers listening right now maybe have been in, in those shoes there. So I'm curious to get your advice on like domain [00:30:00] reputation from, from a marketing standpoint, for, for that use case, right? [00:30:03] Like there, [00:30:04] Domain Resurrection After Email Deliverability Death --- [00:30:04] Phil: there can be tons of spam complaints. Even when you're not doing outbound, you're trying to reheat old people that downloaded like an ebook, right? Postmaster says your reputation is like. Gone to medium or gone to bad, what do you do in those cases, Ruari? Like what's your advice? Like, do you go all hands on deck? [00:30:20] Um, you try to like reheat your most engaged subscribers with your best content, try to repair that specific domain. Do you set up a new subdomain or a new domain? Like what do you do when your rep goes bad? Add [00:30:32] Ruari: Yeah. And so it's a good question. And yeah, we do pick up with people when they feel like they have an issue. We're not in the persuasion business of trying to say, Hey, we think you have a problem. You might not be. It's really when people are saying, right, we've messed up here, [00:30:44] Phil: Yeah, please, please [00:30:45] Ruari: we or we, or, we're so worried that something's gonna go wrong with this risky process, that we need something in place to fix it. [00:30:51] So what we would do in that situation. The domain's been burnt. For the example you outline of, they hit an old list, it was a bad list. They've seen something's [00:31:00] gone wrong. In postmaster tools is we, the first step is you always have to bring the automated volume right down, and it's not the answer. People want to hear. [00:31:08] They want to hear, there's a hack, there's a workaround. The reality is you have to bring the volume right down to repair the domain. So we should at least see top level volume from the company at half its previous level. The majority of that volume that's still there needs to be inbound emails, it needs to be general business emails, not sales or marketing outreach as a starting point. [00:31:31] Now, we would advise, it depends on what you already had in place and we can jump into that in a little bit. But we would advise creating a new subdomain. So not the domain or not a domain that you expect to burn through is really what's an important thing to remember here. A lot of people think they can kind of wipe the slate clean, move on, and just change around. [00:31:54] It's going to be a subdomain with our strategy that you use for. All your promotional efforts [00:32:00] moving forward, and this is of course, assuming that the domain you just burnt was the core domain, so right. If you were already on a subdomain, then we're not gonna say, change it out and start again. We're gonna say, let's fix the one that's already in place and make that better. [00:32:15] Then you begin a process of essentially, if it is a new subdomain, warming that subdomain and getting it ready to send promotional emails where. Over the course of 30 to 60 days, you're gradually increasing volume and you're hitting your most engaged subscribers first and highest quality leads, and then steadily introducing the, the rest of the list. [00:32:35] But the one thing you need to do very, very differently with this campaign, which we're gonna help with, is you need to make sure. All the contacts that enter it, go through a system that risk analyzes each email contact to make sure you're not adding those bad contacts again, you're not adding more invalids, you're not adding spam tracks, spam traps accidentally, and you're gonna catch them before you send the email and see the bounce back [00:33:00] come through. [00:33:01] Then with that in place, if the content is good and you have those guardrails up and you keep using them, you shouldn't have problems moving forward and the domain. That you used previously should organically recover to the level of reputation that it was at before. Assuming that the risky traffic on it doesn't continue, right. [00:33:21] Darrell: And how do you do, how, [00:33:22] Cold Email Risk Scores Will Save Your Sender Reputation --- [00:33:22] Darrell: how do you do that? Like how do you do the risk analysis? Is it based on. If those specific contacts, like what characteristics have, have they reported spam before? Do you like look at like an external data, like your own data or like how do you generate that risk? Like identify the risky contacts. [00:33:43] Ruari: Yeah, so basically we conduct every technical check to assess the risk of the contact, and then provide you with guidance on how to market to them based on all those factors. So that's multiple things that we use for the risk analysis to get a rating, and then based on that [00:34:00] rating, advise you what to do. [00:34:01] So as a basic example, one of the more simple parts of the process would be an SMTP check, where we're going to see. For every email you give us, do we get a valid result from that server or has the person left the job and they're gonna produce events? Then a step on from that as kind of a, a core principle is the more complex parts of the process, right? [00:34:25] Where we're gonna evaluate. is an email valid, even on a server that blocks legacy validation strategies. So some servers now will not let you do that SMTP check. We're still able to create a highly accurate rating on whether that contact is still there or not. Or do they have a history of spam blocking email outreach because we connect to B2B emails, we can get that data. [00:34:49] We can get that data set too. So one of the advantages we really have against just. Legacy email validation is most vendors in this space don't [00:35:00] connect to email accounts. They're siloed to the server site, which is running SMTP checks only. Whereas what we do is we connect to every user's real B2B inbox, and we're able to see their prospecting, see email traffic every day across millions of data points. [00:35:16] And that basically means Allegrow is able to establish not just if a contact valid, but if they're highly risky to send an outbound email to or, or not. [00:35:25] Darrell: Hmm. [00:35:27] Phil: Very cool. Definitely important stuff that, you know, I think a lot of marketers on the email side are familiar with, like email validation tools, like those have been around forever, but I feel like you're taking that a step further with the safety net. Um, even trying to like predict like how potentially risky someone might be for, for your deliverability. [00:35:48] Um, [00:35:48] Why Seed List Testing is Virtually Meaningless to Measure Inbox Placement --- [00:35:48] Phil: I wanted to ask you about seed testing though, because I feel like this is an important part of the conversation. Most email marketers at some point will get a question from not a non-technical person, but someone that doesn't know anything [00:36:00] about email deliverability, and they're just gonna be like, Hey, dear email marketer, what's our inboxing rate right now? [00:36:05] What's our spam percentage rate? And a lot of folks default to seed testing as a way to measure inbox placements, but. The seed list isn't your recipient list, right? The data you're getting about inbox placement is not super meaningful because you're taking that data and then you're sending it out to your own list. [00:36:27] And oftentimes the seed lists are an active emails that are verified and people aren't really using them. Allegrow does this differently though, right? Like you guys don't use seed lists. You use real verified email accounts. You have this like network. Walk us through how Allegrow is doing this. I. [00:36:44] Ruari: Yeah, exactly. So what you said there is, is the typical process people run. So they go online, they find a free tester of some sort, and they send emails to these seed accounts. The problem is. To be really explicit about it, those inboxes that the message gets [00:37:00] sent to for seed testing are fake, or they aren't actively managed, or they're not even on the same email provider as your recipient list. [00:37:08] Right. They're server managed emails by the the vendor that's doing the free testing, which means they don't have active spam filters on them anyway, right. They're just gonna receive emails. But what we do at Allegrow that's very different is every user that joins Allegrow, Becomes a member of the network. [00:37:28] That means there's real B2B inboxes that are getting used every day for work, some of which are publicly traded companies, and we automatically send the test emails from your inbox to those other members. And the software checks for your email initially landed automatically. And because these are real emails with the real, you know, enterprise Microsoft accounts, the real G Suite accounts, the real workplace accounts, we get a much more realistic measure of email health. [00:37:57] The really important part people forget is [00:38:00] it's not a static test, so you can't run it once, get a result back that says, okay, I'm 90% sender reputation. Good, and move on. It's really similar to what we talked about with the open rate. You're interested in the change and the erection. I. Not just the top level number. [00:38:15] So we'll rerun that test automatically for you every day with more contacts and tell you, this is how it's changing over time, which is much more valuable than just a top level number for someone that wants to track their sender reputation or their email health in general. All. [00:38:33] Phil: Yeah. Such a different way to, to think about inbox placement. Um, and like I think [00:38:40] Pinpoint Rep-Level Email Problems Before Your Domain Gets Blacklisted --- [00:38:40] Phil: something that you guys help a lot with also is like improving that reputation. Like you're giving users data on that inboxing rate, but you also have. Mechanisms or algorithms, walk us through it. Like how are you actually also able to improve the signals that you're sending [00:39:00] to the mailbox providers that like this is a legit sender. [00:39:04] You're taking it out of the spam box, like engaging with it, replying to it, like you're doing more than just providing an inbox placement percentage. Right. [00:39:14] Ruari: Yeah, for sure. I mean, the main thing we do nowadays is we essentially look at the data that the customer has and we tell 'em these are the safest contacts to reach out to. And we show them when they're having issues with their score. So that means looking at their list and saying, Hey, these are risky contacts, like spam traps, or these are invalid emails. [00:39:33] Or, you know, people that have a high risk of being a spam reporter. But the central functionality you talked about where it provides a lot of value for bigger teams. We don't just say, this is your spam rate and this is the top level number. We actually tell you this is where the problem's happening. [00:39:49] 'cause we know outbound teams, you're going to have an issue. At some point, we can actually isolate it down to the rep that's causing the problem. So let's say I'm a sales manager and I have a team of [00:40:00] 50 reps. Usually once per quarter, there's anywhere from two to three reps that really push the envelope. [00:40:06] Uh, with email activity, we can see their spam rates separately from everyone else, so we'll isolate that issue, notify the admin and help them fix the problem together. Essentially. That's our approach. [00:40:17] Phil: Yeah, we all know the sales rep that goes rogue and, and tries to go above and beyond and maybe gets a list from a, a shady place somewhere and affects the reputation for the domain for all the rest of the sales team there. Yeah. I like how you're, you're kind of avoiding that. Um, I want to ask you like a bit of a. [00:40:36] Polarizing question here because like for sales teams and outbound like deliverability, it's key. Like we just gotta do it. Like, yeah, maybe some people consider outbound's spam, but like cool. Most people that consider that aren't people that have had to do it in their day to day, right? Like, I empathize a lot. [00:40:55] With the sales team. I worked in that world. I, I also worked in the world [00:41:00] where you didn't need outbound and like it wasn't a thing and you could say like, oh, outbound is spam, like, cool, whatever. There's like a happy medium somewhere in there. But I think [00:41:08] Email Warmup Tools Fight Uphill Battle Against Industry Skepticism --- [00:41:08] Phil: a lot of email marketers will land in the side of the debate where. [00:41:13] They think warmup vendors like Allegrow are like not really like a bit polarized, right? Like lots of people in that email deliverability space have a negative perception of, uh, inbox placement tool and often see them as something that spammers are using, right? Like, if spammers are using these tools, why would I use these tools? [00:41:33] Also, I've personally used Allegrow, uh, at previous companies and also recommended it for, um. People that I consult with, like I know the value that Allegrow brings, but part of me still feels like it's, it's a bit too good to be true. Like, is it like a bit like gaming the system sometimes? I'm just curious to get your take on like what is your, your, your, how do you like react to those objections from people that are just like not [00:42:00] using to using those type of tools? [00:42:02] Ruari: Yeah, so I think Allegrow is really more focused on making sure the contacts aren't risky these days. And telling people when their spam rates are getting worse rather than warm up at the moment. So the reason we do that is because we know based on our track record of working in this industry, if fundamentally bad contacts are entering the sequence. [00:42:23] There's no way you can breeze past that issue with any amount of warmup. But for people who are just starting a new domain or a new subdomain and they need help to introduce it to the world of email with a good warmup strategy and some friendly traffic, we can help with that too. The main reason we don't come up against those issues is we have approved integrations to email providers. [00:42:47] We only work with verified B2B customers. Our product is also more. On the premium side of the space and we're SOC two compliant and audited. Now, all of that makes us really the [00:43:00] safest vendor in a fairly new space. That I agree, can feel like you're getting a little bit of a leg up on the competition sometimes. [00:43:07] So that's how I would, I would respond to it. [00:43:12] Darrell: Nice. Nice. I, uh, you know, I was curious, um, and I, we haven't really talked about this question, but I was thinking like, [00:43:20] How to Secure Buy-in For Proper Email Hygiene Infrastructure --- [00:43:20] Darrell: is there any early signs of like the business. You know, impact and like, improvement that teams have seen is, or is it too early? Like, like I guess I'm, I'm wondering like, is, is does your solution like really help the people that are in trouble or, you know, for the average company, can they help them? [00:43:40] What kind of level up and if so, like what kind of, you know, any tangible things that we can kind of expect in terms of improvement, um, you know, conversion rates, engagement or how, how do you think about that? [00:43:54] Ruari: Yeah, that's a really good question. It manifests differently in each company, but the first thing we see [00:44:00] is really the number of risky emails we're stopping for the business because we connect to their sales engagement platform, or we take their lists and the very first thing they can see, and by the way, we do this on day one with companies now, so they come in. [00:44:13] Day one, we show them how to upload their list and then immediately they can see this is the number of risky contacts that I'm avoiding now by using Allegrow as a system. So that's the first thing we see, and the way that plays out across the course of a year for a publicly traded company we work with that I. [00:44:29] This case study should be dropping by the time we film, so hopefully there's a, there's a nice logo to the name, uh, a nice logo to the stat by the time it's coming out. But for one of those businesses that we work with over the course of a year, that meant there was 70,000 bad emails that didn't get sent. [00:44:48] By the sales team. So it's really common for businesses that are quite developed to think, oh, well we wouldn't have that issues 'cause we use the best data providers in the world, or we wouldn't have that problem because we're very, very targeted. [00:45:00] When the system for checking them isn't automated and consistent, you'd just be surprised what slips through the cracks. [00:45:06] Right? So that's the first thing businesses see. Then the next thing they look for are, are twofold. So they look to basically eliminate. The, the reports they're hearing from their team that, uh, emails are landing in spam and they're getting ghosted by people. Uh, and usually they have an awareness that that's already a problem. [00:45:24] So we look for that to be eliminated. But then finally, we usually see tangible impact on engagement. So, as an example, a business called Work Vivo that got acquired by Zoom, zoom Video communications, um, they saw their, uh. Reply rates on outbound emails triple after implementing Allegrow on specifically their outbound traffic. [00:45:46] So you can see, you know, um, engagement increases as well as a result of using the solution. And then there's other businesses who see, you know, 50% better reply rates as well as a result. It depends on the team, but we usually see, first of [00:46:00] all, it's the contacts that are getting stopped and then that trickles through to better engagement on the ones that are still being marketed to. [00:46:08] Darrell: I think like that's, I think that's where the money is right there. Especially, I mean, I think as, as MarTech and like operations people, we know how valuable data hygiene is and how things like your sender score and you know, to me, my eyes light up when you, when you say stuff like, oh, 70,000 bad emails, you know, that shouldn't been sent, you know. [00:46:26] But I think for executives, it, you know, their eyes light up a little slower when you, when you say things like that, you know, it's kind of like, oh. What, what does that mean? You know, like, did we avoid, did we avoid getting sued? Or like, what are you trying to say? So, but I [00:46:43] Phil: Did we lose business like. [00:46:45] Darrell: yeah, it's, it's harder, it's harder to translate into like how it, how it, uh, uh, feels for them. [00:46:51] Um, and I think I see this solution as number one, Hey, if you're kind of like in this, you know, almost panic state of. The, the, the, the spam [00:47:00] score is up and your deliverability is down. You're getting complaints from across the, the business. This is a great solution. I think on the other hand, if you can do things like improve reply rates like that really would resonate with sales specifically because nobody's replying to them like such a small percentage. [00:47:15] So if you're able to even increase that two times or like 50%, I think it's a, it's a worthwhile investment. [00:47:24] Ruari: Yeah. Yeah, we see that all the time. And usually it's, usually it's when teams have had a kind of a situation that's the final straw, you know, that they will end up coming, you know, and saying we need to make deliverability a priority. Like there was a customer we worked with, they sell an AI solution to banks to help them, uh, manage complaints better. [00:47:44] And as part of their deal process, the person would get to the late, late stages before signing the contract in the deal process. And their head of product would send an email about the roadmap and similar use cases that they've delivered in the past that are kind of mirroring the scope of the [00:48:00] person, uh, that's a prospect for them. [00:48:02] And they realized that that email wasn't getting delivered successfully. A lot of times, and it's costing them revenue, right? It's costing them sign contracts because they don't have the touch points they need to stay a priority for the prospect. So it's usually situations like that where executives light up a little more and realize the impact of the problem. [00:48:22] But most of the time we're selling to people that know email very well and understand the implications of a reduced bounce rate and how that pulls through to revenue. [00:48:32] Phil: Yeah. I think [00:48:33] The 3 Most Important Things You Can Do for Email Deliverability: Postmaster, Multi-Subdomains and Cleaning Lists --- [00:48:33] Phil: a lot of folks that work in email. Know email. Email metrics like the, the, the core principles of deliverability, but deliverability it's is almost like its own unique practice associated to email. There are a lot of email marketers that build emails, they send emails, report on emails, but when it comes to like authentication DMARC and deamDKIMke you'll lose a lot of marketers really quickly. [00:48:58] What's your advice for. [00:49:00] Email marketers to like get a bit of a leg up on the technical side. When it comes to deliverability, is there like a content source that you think of mine? Like is there a specific area they should think about first? Like getting more familiar with postmaster or like diving into authentication? [00:49:16] Like what are, what are your thoughts there? [00:49:17] Ruari: Yeah, I think so. I think the reason a lot of time marketers don't have as much of an awareness of like authentication protocols is sometimes they're delegating that to the. Email provider, right? To the marketing automation provider. And I'll do some of that for them. Um, but what I would start off with is, yeah, familiarization with Postmaster tools has got to be a key one. [00:49:39] It's a great free resource there and it gives you a dashboard that'll just give you a little bit more line on line of sight on some of those spam issues. And of course, you know, I would love to say, you know. Jump in and use Allegrow, but I appreciate some people need to dip their toe in and use some kind of light solutions before they're, they're ready for, you know, to to, to really take the, the subject that seriously. [00:49:59] So [00:50:00] that's a great place to start. Um, and then I think doing a little research on subdomain structure is probably a good starting point as well, because if you have everything running on one domain and there's no. Hedging there. There's no segmentation of traffic. You're just putting a lot more of your eggs in one basket and you don't have. [00:50:23] You don't have the prioritization that you would want for those really, really vital emails. So doing a bit of research, literally just on the, the top resources that are available in Google about this, um, is a great place to start, you know, understanding how should sub domains be used successfully. I. [00:50:39] What's the use case for them, uh, and how do you set one up and get started inside your email provider? It should be very straightforward. And, you know, I would let the support team of the email provider handle the nuance of how you should do that. But, uh, for the most part it's, it's pretty simple. [00:50:54] Phil: Yeah, I think that's great advice. Like just those two things, getting postmasters set up. [00:51:00] If, if, especially if you haven't done that and getting multiple subdomains created and figuring out a strategy there, I think like your, your seasoned deliverability expert is kind of like rolling their eyes. Like, yeah, obviously we do that, but I think the majority of email marketers. [00:51:17] Don't have that set up. Like I've consulted with a lot of folks sometimes that come in and they're just like, our, our open rate dropped to 0%. We're having spam issues, like, what's going on? It's like, all right, well let's, let's open up postmaster. Like, what are we seeing there? We don't have postmaster. [00:51:31] Like where do we buy that? It's like, okay, shit. Like what domain do you have issues on? Like, well, we only have the one domain, like everyone is sending emails from that domain. We have an issue because our CEO isn't able to like, reach the inbox of their investor right now. Like just those two things are so core to, to, to thinking about this differently. [00:51:50] And obviously like some teams are more advanced, like I was working with a client, a big enterprise, and they have a massive database of folks. Uh, I think we have a a hundred plus [00:52:00] subdomains set up for their email strategy. And we even created like a micro segmentation strategy for. Their newsletter list. [00:52:08] It had a like ton of people in there. And like you said, there was people that are way more engaged than others. So we put people in four different quadrants, and those four quadrants have their own subdomain and so. We never affect the subdomain of like our most engaged subscribers. Um, with like that bottom quadrant, like don't even need to like prune them out necessarily if that, like, subin gets really, really bad. [00:52:34] So there's, there's like so many fun things you can do with, with subdomain. But yeah, starting with those two, that gets really important. [00:52:41] Ruari: Yeah, and then data of course, is a great starting point. So usually there's no governance around what contacts end up on the list and what contacts don't. So if it's fully opt-in, you know, an easy first step would be double I. Double verification on the contacts, double opt-in, you know, and [00:53:00] that's, that's usually built into most email providers. [00:53:02] But if you're ever importing contacts from a different data source that isn't your own form fill, which a lot of people, I've chatted with them and they've said, no, no, it's all opt in. Then you dig into the details and say, well, we were told this list was opt-in, or it should be opt-in 'cause it comes from this SER integration. [00:53:22] Right. You know, so usually, I mean, it's very rare that I've ever seen a company that is purely just their form fill. All the data comes in there, it's all double opt-in. So let's assume that's not the case until you're proven wrong, right? Um, having a central place, it doesn't need to be Allegrow, where you check every single email. [00:53:44] Regularly for validity is a really easy first step before you're even getting into the more complicated stuff that we talked about today. Just having that run very regularly, at least every 30 days, is also going to eliminate a lot of those issues, um, because you don't want to [00:54:00] wait for the bounce back to remove someone from the list, right? [00:54:02] That's dropping the ball. You're just waiting to get told that they're not, uh, there anymore. And if you're B2B focused, a lot of email servers won't give you a bounce back. Even if the person is invalid, which people forget most businesses, especially ones on Microsoft that are a bit more enterprise, they'll have catchall set up, which means that message is, you could send it to any abbreviation, right? [00:54:26] Or any first name, last name, combination. That doesn't exist at the company. It's not going to bounce back unless the catchall server is incorrectly set up right, which is few and far between. So don't think just 'cause you're not getting bounces that people aren't, uh, invalid. [00:54:44] Darrell: it. [00:54:44] Phil: Darryl, do you wanna take a happiness? [00:54:47] Darrell: Uh, yeah. Let's see. Favorite question, [00:54:50] Structure Your Workday to Batch Context-switching Tasks --- [00:54:50] Darrell: so Ruari, you are an entrepreneur, A CEO, but you're also an avid traveler, chess master in training and pickleball [00:55:00] fanatic. One question we ask everybody on the show is, how do you remain happy and successful in your career? How do you find balance between all the things you're working on while still staying happy? [00:55:10] Ruari: Sure. So on the personal side, like you said, I'm, I'm a big traveler, so being able to see like a new culture, a new part of the world fairly regularly, I think, you know, helps me, uh, keep my spirits pretty high. And it's, you know, it's, it's a great luxury to be able to do that. Um. 'cause I like experiencing, you know, new flavors, uh, you know, cuisine, seeing different parts of the world. [00:55:31] That's always something I've loved doing a lot. So that keeps me pretty, pretty happy. But on the, on the work side of things, there is a lot to juggle in this job and I actually find I get most happiness from. Focusing in on one thing and not actually doing too much balance in terms of like day to day of like, what am I spending my time on? [00:55:52] So I structure my days now where everything that it requires, a lot of context switching. I'll do in the morning, I. Then the [00:56:00] afternoon is pretty much reserved for just focusing on one key aspect that I want to deep dive in on. And that really means that I feel like I'm not just being redirected into focusing on whatever the flow of email traffic is about that day, right? [00:56:15] And I'm truly taking the time to, to consider the biggest problems we have and, and how to fix them. And the combination, the, the real thing to remember there is. You can only ever do that, I think when you have a really brilliant team and you're getting to work with smart people that are talented every day and can, and can take some of those other things off your plate. [00:56:33] Um, so that's, that's, that's where I'm at right now. Um, in terms of, you know, what keeps me, keeps me motivated and keeps me happy. [00:56:42] Darrell: Yeah, [00:56:42] Phil: full episode on email deliverability, and we end by talking about the fact that sometimes email drives our day to day and the shift of our focus there. Slack and email definitely, uh, [00:56:54] Ruari: Slack's definitely worse. It's definitely worse, uh, because it's so [00:57:00] like, uh, so it is meant to be asynchronous, but I find it so synchronous, meaning [00:57:04] Phil: so synchronous. yeah. [00:57:06] especially since they added like the, the call button on there. Like when I was working in house, it's just like someone would be like, Hey, do you have five minutes? Like, that's their message. That is not an in asynchronous message for Slack or, I don't even get that. It's just like you get the, like the, the, the sound chime coming in. [00:57:23] You got like two calls coming in on Slack. You're like. There it goes. My morning there, Ruari. It has been a super fun conversation, yet we don't get to dive super deep into like one specific thing, so this is a nice, uh, nice change of tune for us. Um, plug Allegrow for, for a little bit. I know you got a chance to talk about the product. [00:57:40] Um, but yeah, anything you wanna mention for the email marketing or or marketing ops audience here? [00:57:46] Ruari: Yeah, sure. So I would say, you know, with the way that deliverability has changed, you've probably seen a lot of the things change with Google sender guidelines, Microsoft blocking more emails, engagement declining, all of that means that the emails you don't [00:58:00] send are gonna be very important, almost as important as the ones that you do send to recipients. [00:58:04] So what we could do for you is basically flag the risky contacts in your list, help you remove them. Help you make sure you can almost find out what are those spam traps and not drop the ball because of some automation. So if that sounds like it might be a problem, or you're worried about what is our exposure to those issues, we're happy to set you up with a free sample at Allegrow where you can bring along your contacts. [00:58:29] We can do a free analysis and say, this is the percentage of your list that carries risk. And if you have really, really great data, no risk in there, then at least you know it's not gonna hurt you tomorrow. But for the most part, people tend to have a little more than they might anticipate. So that would be my main, uh, plug on, you know, how we can help. [00:58:47] Phil: I love it. Yeah, and I love your point too about like sometimes people don't know that they have bad emails on their list. Like I love your example about someone not being at that company anymore. Like when I send my weekly [00:59:00] newsletter for new episodes. I always get a couple bounce backs like, Hey, this person isn't at this company anymore. [00:59:05] And it's like, well, shit. Like I could have uploaded that list to Allegrow first and figured that out before sending it and prevented that bounce. [00:59:14] Ruari: Yeah. Yeah. And when you have that governance in place, the results follow, you know, of, of landing in the primary inbox. It's just one of those core compet competencies that isn't going away. [00:59:25] Phil: Love it. Appreciate your time r. This has been super fun. Thanks so much for joining us. [00:59:29] Ruari: Thanks guys.