Name: Deliverability Academy: Master the basics
Uploaded: 2025-03-26T17:16:04.649Z
Duration: 1 h 2 min 36 s
Description: Deliverability Academy: Master the basics

Transcript for "Deliverability Academy: Master the basics": Good morning, world. Guess what, y'all? It is the first, very first Deliverability Academy presented by Cinch Mailgun. Dun dun dun. I'm excited y'all. If you've seen the Mailjet, Email Academy, we decided, you know what? We need to make sure we have a Deliverability Academy. So that is what we are doing here today, folks. I am super stoked. I've got some of my favorite people here. We're gonna have so much so much fun today. Yes. Someone's commenting on your on my shirt, Email's Not Dead. That is our podcast, by the way. Make sure you check that out. But first and foremost, let's talk about these amazing folks I've got here with me, two of my favorite people. And, yes, I say that a lot. But, yes, these are two of my favorite people. You wanna know why? Because I've learned so much from them over the almost eight years I've been in this industry. So I'm super happy and thankful that they're here with me today. So first and foremost, ladies and gentlemen, Neli Hayes, the senior product marketing manager from Century Mailgun. Neli, how are you doing today? I'm doing pretty good. I'm hanging in there. It's, you know, it's a Wednesday, my dudes. So let's let's get into it. Let's talk about some email. Exactly. It's Wednesday, my dudes. It's a Wednesday. And you know him, ladies and gentlemen, mister Nick Schafer, the deliverability godfather, actually. I'm deliverability daddy to deliverability godfather because he's taught us everything we know here. Mister Nick Schafer, senior manager of deliverability and compliance from Century Mailgun. Nick, how's it going today, my boy bud? It's going well, man. Now with that intro, gosh, I have a lot to live up to, getting promoted to to Godfather. And and, yes, back to your comment. Two of your your favorite people. I I I get to hear that a lot. I I still trust that, you know, I am one of your favorites. So I'm I'm really excited to, you know, kick off this, Deliverability Academy. Exactly. Exactly. And too, ladies and gentlemen, Nick is also a baseball played baseball. So I'm trying to bring that energy this morning that he's probably used to most of the time. So You know, it's funny. I I have to I have to do that at every practice. I we had practice last night, and at the end, it's kind of like I was like, alright. Who wants to bring some motivation? I need to just, like, enlist your help to come to a business. Let me know. Let me know. Yeah. I was about to say if you bring that energy to my strong woman competition, I'm gonna hit a new PR. So let's go. I've got this. You're gonna be loud as I can be. Oh, man. Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Throw me in the chat. I wanna see where you're coming from before we get going down the line here. But, also, I got some more people I wanna talk about really quick. Obviously, let me throw this up here so everyone can see. Yes. This is Deliverability Academy number one. We are talking about mastering the basics. And here's our beautiful faces and our headshots and our titles and all that fun stuff that you always hear and get to see. Fun fact, Nick actually used to have a photo of him holding the fish. That was my favorite photo, but I didn't use that one this time. But I wanna talk about our back end team really quick. Massive shout out to Em, our, senior, oops. Nope. That is not her title, actually. But, she is with our content team over at Mailgun. And, also, wanna give a big shout out to Amber and Shiloh answering some of our technical questions on the back end. So massive shout out to them because they are super helpful with us. So, yes, let's see where everyone's coming to. South Africa, Romania, Boston. Love to see it. Texas, Mexico, Saint Augustine, Argentina. What is up? Love to see this. Love to see this. Where else? Miami. Okay. Very cool. Very cool. San Antonio. Love it. Love it. Love it. Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Let's get into the good stuff, shall we? So let's move on. Alright. Let's talk about what we're talking about today. So what is deliverability? Why does it matter? Section two. So you wanna send email. Let's start from the beginning. Number three, locking it down. Keep your email strategy secure. And number four, we'll have that good old, my favorite, q and a. I love it. I love it. I love it. So let's keep going down the line, shall we? But first, we wanna read the room. Let's get a feeling, well, how everyone's feeling about deliverability. Now tell us how you really feel. So, ladies and gentlemen, what we're gonna do is we're gonna open up a poll here right now. What are your current deliverability challenges? You should be seeing that poll in the Goldcast platform. Let me see your votes. Let me see. And if you are looking for the, the poll, actually, it should be on the far right hand side of Goldcast next to our chat tab. And I'll throw that up here. Let's take a look. Alright. Let's see what everyone's doing. Okay. Bounce complaint rates. Alright. Yeah. Bounce complaint rates are in the lead right now. Yeah. Reputation issues coming up in second, though. Reputation is the key to everything, y'all. So true. Oh, yeah. How you are being perceived. Yeah. In life and email. In life and an email. We can do how how are you being perceived? What is your current life challenge? Being authentic. Are you having are you having just general reputations? Because I'm there. Been there. So that's yeah. And now we'll open this up for, real therapy. How are you really feeling? Okay. Okay, ladies and gentlemen. I'll leave that poll up a little bit while, if you wanna tell us how you feel in just a moment. But, yeah, we'll come back to that a little bit later just to check on, see what the phone numbers were. So let me go and stop sharing that. Thanks for everyone participating in that really quick. It's always really nice just to check-in, see how everyone's feeling, just to kinda feel out and and see where people are at, and their deliverability knowledge. So alright. Let's get into the nitty gritty, shall we? What is deliverability? Is it art or is it science? Two of my favorite, memes, I would say. But is it art or is it science? I'll let the experts here take a dive at that. Let's see. Alright. So delivery versus deliverability. Right? Something that especially being in this industry as long as I've been in it, which is, like, seven years now, which is crazy. Nothing, gets my goat more than when someone says they're the same thing. So they can't be used interchangeably. They are not the same. But I would like to say that deliverability, right, is kind of this mix of science and art. Right? So you have the science, which is delivery. Right? Was it received by the recipient's provider? Yes or no. Right? It's kind of one of those pass fail things. Whereas, like, with deliverability, it's like, okay. So it made it to the mailbox. Right? But where did it go? Did it land in the inbox? Right? And if so, what are you doing that affects its ability to land in the inbox? Right? So it's you have that little bit of science, but then there's that finesse. Right? That kind of added bit of communication, that added bit of art. Sometimes quite literally when we start talking about things like email design that influence it. So that's, like, to me, that's, like, the the key difference, but also just the overarching answer of what deliverability is. What a good answer. I'm gonna I'm gonna throw some some comedy into this one just because I don't know. I like to think I'm funny from time to time, without the fault of that. But Oh, you're pretty, Nick? Yeah. It brings me back to some of the, the original times I was asked this question, and it may have been even from Thomas, himself. But, the joker in me always responded with, well, one ends with y and the other ends with ability. And that's it. Clearly, that's not the the difference between delivery and deliverability. To to Natalie's point, it's, it's definitely a mixture of art and science. But, like, you know, even reading, like, the the survey results, you know, 50% of them think that delivery rate is the percentage of emails reaching the inbox, and that's just not true. You know, you can get all of your messages delivered. You can have a % delivery rate. But if all of your messages are getting filtered to, you know, the spam folder, no one's gonna see them. So it's really important to understand the differences. And just because you have a healthy delivery rate, doesn't mean you are all golden. Yeah. And I I I do think, Nick, that you probably said the why and ability thing to me back when I was our blog writer. And I believe I started writing it down, and you were like, please please stop writing that down. I was kidding. Good times. Old times. Yeah. Took it too literally. Too literally. You gotta break the ice with these these, email related talks. Always. Always. Oh, love it. I love it. Alright. And one more time, ladies and gentlemen. What was it? Was deliverability an art or a science? I can't let this go. Still my favorite slide. Alright. Moving along, shall we? We love cats here. Yeah. We support cats here and dogs. And dogs. But we are cats here. Animals. Alright. So you wanna send email. Let's start from the beginning. Is it quite our tempo? Sorry. One of my favorite films. But, yes, let's start from the beginning. And first and foremost, from the top, Poreless hygiene Poreless collection and hygiene practices. My experts, what are we thinking? Okay. So it really does start with your email list. Right? And I I can't stress this enough, especially being a marketer myself. Right? And before I got into the email industry, I had preconceived notions of how I should be reaching out to the people who want to hear from me. Right? Or just people who want to hear about my product. That said, we want to hear is so important. Right? So it it it all starts at sign up where, you know, you really do have to make sure that, one, people are very clearly aware for what they're signing up for when they sign up for your newsletter, when they create an account. Any of those things, please just be as plain stated as possible. And that you also want to get them to opt in. Right? So, sure, I might sign up for an account or a newsletter, but double check with me just in case I maybe clicked too many buttons too fast. We've all been there. We've all done it. If you say you haven't, I don't believe you. So it's just kinda one of those things where, you know, you you just wanna be as transparent as possible. And then from there, right, I know a lot of us already have email lists that are as old as our business, as old as our newsletters. That could be a year. That could be ten years. Right? You need to make sure that you're keeping on top of them because a lot of things can happen in a person's life. They could change jobs, and then the email that they're using doesn't work anymore and it bounces. But you keep it in your email list, and that's only gonna hurt you. That's going to make those bounce rate bounce rates go up. It's going to just cause you overall heartache. So generally and usually, a a good rule of thumb is to just, like, check-in, on your email list every now and again. Right? So and what I mean by that is, when was the last time you cleaned it? Right? Like, ask yourself that. If you know, great. If you don't, go go ahead and think about running through a validation service. Right? Whether it's it's Mailgun or another, it's important to keep on top of that. And secondly, if you if you do know and you don't have, like, a regular cadence for when you're going to go through and clean up that email list, something that's a really good idea to do is to just whether it's a quarterly or a half year basis, go ahead and just run it through something that either gives you a preview of just what is going on with your email list or just go ahead and run a validation check anyway. I know at Mailgun, we have a, email list preview. So, essentially, what that does is you're not paying for anything. You run it through a preview, and it tells you here's, like, the broad strokes of what we're seeing in terms of deliverability. This is available for all accounts. Right? So it's something that you can do just to kinda get a pulse read. Right? And that's something that is is really, really good to just do on a regular basis. It's almost like like going to the doctor. Right? Like, you gotta go to the doctor. I know it's not fun and people don't necessarily wanna do it, but you gotta do it. You gotta stay healthy. You gotta stay on top of it. The other thing too is, you know, be sure to stay on top of, like, are your users engaged? Are they actively opening your emails, or are they just continuing to just kinda let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go? The more you target your, engaged audience, the better all of your metrics are going to be. So that's kind of that that added layer to it. Right? There's the baseline cleaning, and then there's going a level deeper of looking at, okay, who's actually looking at my emails? Who cares? Because you wanna talk to those people the most. And, of course, you can always do a seedless testing to get an idea of just, you know, how you are doing, with various mailbox providers on top of that. But big takeaways there in case you didn't get the TLDR, clean your list, have a schedule, you can preview it for free, with email list preview. So all good things. Nick, anything to add? Yeah. I like to to go back to how you kinda started talking about this, how, like, you know, being at this company for for seven years, you've probably learned a lot. But before, you were just, like, you know, maybe creating emails and just sending it to everyone. I I have the same story actually in my my previous life. So long ago, I've been I've been here for a while. I actually was a graphic designer, and one of my responsibilities was creating, designs for for email that we would send out. But that was all I did, and I had no idea about the list that that we were sending them to. And I will tell y'all, data is king. Like, your list is king to, you know, the success you have. You need to make sure that you are, you know, keeping up with that list, making sure everyone's engaged, because if you're sending to, you know, addresses that, you know, people aren't monitoring anymore, then you're just gonna be hurting yourself. So really take a close look at, your list. Make sure you're you're building the list properly too. There are a lot of bots out there that will look around for sign up forms and and fill them in. So there's a lot of bad sign ups that could be, you know, ending up on your list that that you don't really wanna be sending to. That's a really important thing. I'm glad it it's number one here because in my my opinion, it's it's the most important thing. Yeah. Definitely. And I think that that's something that sometimes, people can forget about. Right? You get a really big, like, newsletter subscriber list. Right? It's a big number. Everyone love big number. But when you actually remove, like, the bots, right, or, you know, any of those things, like, I would rather have something that's a more curated list of actual real people who care about what I'm talking about rather than just a bot that's only gonna hurt me. That's that's that's what I think is more important is the is the, the quality and not the quantity. Definitely. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's like, every season you do that closet clean out in your house. Right? It's like, alright. If it's springtime, oh, maybe I should check my list. Oh, it's summer. Oh, can maybe check it right now. Oh, it's fall winter? One last thought. Just texted my husband this morning that we need to clean out our closet today. So Exactly. Yeah. Don't be confused, Natalie. I'm I'm on it. I'm on it. There you go. Alright. Moving down the line here. Authentication policies. Nick, what are you thinking about this one? I'm thinking authentication is extremely important. You need to separate yourself from from other senders. And, one way you can do that now So if if you're a mail gun sender, SPF and DKIM are are taken care of. Right? Like, you cannot send on our platform without SPF and DKIM. It's a requirement. Everyone should be doing it. So if you're I don't know. There's probably still some people maybe maybe attending this webinar that are running their own email servers. Make sure SPF and DCAM are are being taken care of. But that last one has gained a lot of popularity over the last, year plus, DMARC, which obviously leverages both SPF and DKIM. It's, you know, checking for the alignment of of the domains that you're using in traffic. And and looking at those those survey results there at the right of the screen, it's good to see that a lot of our senders are are using DMARC now. I I still remember back, at a conference a long time ago when DMARC was was an idea. It took a while to get people to adopt it. Once Yahoo and Google came out with, you know, the the new rules, for this, that's obviously kind of got people to pay attention to DMARC, get those records set up. One thing I I will say about DMARC is, I know that first, requirement from Google and Yahoo was just to get a a policy in place, whether that is, you know, a policy of none. You know, that that is sufficient. But, really, all senders, I think, should be, in in my opinion, focusing on on moving that policy to something that's more strict, whether it's quarantine or reject. We definitely have, you know, helpful, blog posts related to this and and documentation if you wanna if you wanna read more about it. But, you know, authentication is crucial. With that without authentication, your your messages are gonna look extremely spammy. And you you gotta put your yourself in the shoes of of receiving servers like the Yahoos of the world, the Gmails of the world, Hotmail, AOL, all of them. They're trying to to deliver messages or accept messages to their users' inboxes, that they want to receive. So it it's kinda like a checklist. Right? Make sure you're you're you're doing SPF, decom, do demark now because everyone's pushing it. You wanna set yourself up for success. And there's there's even been some new stuff, popping up recently with Google that's checking alignment. And and they show it if if you look at the original, message within the Gmail client. You'll see if, alignment is not, passing. So there's a strong push towards it. Again, you know, get that DMARC record set up, whether it's a a non policy or not right now. First, get it set up, but, always be kind of thinking towards the future. There's going to come a day, when, you know, those those policies are are gonna be required to be quarantined or or reject. It's probably a probably a a long ways off. Yeah. But self up for, success. Yeah. And with SPF and DMARC being required on mail gun, right, and with, like, DMARC becoming more and more just important and talked about and something people are focusing on, I I know I can say, like, a lot of email service providers are really starting to think about this, us included. Right? So, providing new avenues with which that just make it easier for for customers to maintain alignment and make sure that they have DMARC implemented properly for their domains. I know that I've I I can speak for mail gun, right, that, we just implemented a DMARC reporting feature for our paid customers. So this allows you to just keep track of all of your domains, making sure that they're in alignment. It's a really good tool that is making DMARC just a little bit easier to manage because I know sometimes it can be a little overwhelming, a little stressful, to feel like you're coloring in between the lines, but this really helps a lot. So, just wanted to call that out in case, you know, you hadn't seen it. And, also, if you aren't with Mailgun, check with your current email service provider and see if they offer something like that. It's really important, to make sure that you are getting exposed to all the tools available, at your exposure. So something to think about. Absolutely. And I'm just gonna add right there. I remember when we first implemented DMARC, for the Mailgun domains, and we were starting to get, all of the reports from the different providers. It's a lot it's a lot to go through if you don't have a tool to to read through those reports. Yeah. Use something that that makes it easier for you. Also, real quick plug. So a lot of these tools and all these integrations that we've been talking about the last few, you know, moments that we've been, you know, doing this webinar, I'm pinning them to the chat. So if you're trying to look for everything that's like, okay. What's all these good helpful links and and articles and stuff like that? You should be able to find in the chat right now. All that stuff is pinned. So but lots of good stuff coming through. And, ladies and gentlemen, don't forget to throw those questions in the q and a tab later on so we can answer them because I'm seeing a ton of good stuff, a ton of good stuff. So alright. Moving down the line, shall we? Up next, broken email design. Neli, how are you feeling about this one? Oh, man. So I I know that we all like not to not to go on a tangent. Right? But I know we've all seen the emails where it's like you get an email and it all looks great and you open it. And then it's usually something like a link's missing or it's got, like, insert link here, kind of place marker. And then usually, about, like, five to ten minutes later, you get another email that's like, whoopsies. Sorry about that. This is a little bit different, but kinda it's same same, but different. You know, it's one of those things where, like, if someone had just taken an extra an accident's happened. But if someone had taken just, like, a couple of extra minutes to read through the copy and be like, oh, we forgot to take out a placeholder. We should really fix that. It just it saves you the headache of having to send out another email, and then you have your head in your hands moment of how did I get here. You think about your life at least I do. Think about my life choices that led up to this moment. Right? Like, everyone hates doing that. Don't do that to yourself. So but it the same kinda goes for design. Right? So you do just kinda wanna take the time and really go through it. Right? So I I've seen some some comments in the chat, right, talking about, you know, do you include images, links, you know, so on and so forth? You can. Right? But within certain limitations. And sometimes it's hard to know what those limitations are. So just making sure that you have some sort of, like, QA testing environment that you're able to actually preview your emails before you send them out to the masses. Right? And there are a lot of different providers out there. Of course, email and asset, which, is is up in our up in our space, is is one such tool. There are plenty out there. So, again, whether it's us or someone else, please take the time to quality assurance your emails. It doesn't take that much time, and it's really, really helpful. And on top of all of this, right, as we especially if you're sending in the EU, we have a lot of, different things coming out around accessibility. Right? So the, European Accessibility Act is gonna be going into enforcement in June. So it's really important, right, to go ahead and start thinking about those things. Are your emails accessible? Are they easy to read? Are they breaking? How do they look like on different clients and devices? So test that HTML. Get in there. Dig around. Make it look nice. Make it look good for everybody. Really, really important. And, also, make sure you have one click unsubscribe. If you don't, you're you're in for a world of hurt, and I'm very sorry, but there's nothing I can do to help you with that. Nick, do you have anything to add? What what I would add here is that, like, I I'm usually talking about, you know, email best practices, list hygiene, you know, building really good quality list like we were talking about, earlier. And, you know, I I always talk about that, and I'm and I'm like, you can nail all of those things. Mhmm. And and you can send out a a message that has, an email that has, you know, something broken in it, and it's, like, all for nothing. And it and it's the same, you know, on the flip side. You can have the best email ever. Like, you you checked all the boxes. It's like the the the most beautiful email ever, but they are not addressing the the the the previously aforementioned things, then it's all for nothing. You have to do all of these things. So, yeah, make sure you're checking everything. You know, once you you have the first part nailed, then obviously make sure your content looks good and is is rendering, as it should across all devices and and platforms. It's the art and the science, Nick. Yeah. We did it. We made it. You made you made it into one term. Art art shifts. I can't even I can't even come up with one. But, also, real quick plug, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah. We're gonna have a feature coming out on Mailgun real soon real soon to help you kind of inspect your emails and stuff like that. Make sure you keep a lookout on our blogs or emails and stuff like that for the announcements coming real soon to help you inspect. Alright. Moving down the line, shall we? Okay. Oh, this is gonna be Nick's favorite. Poor sending Tim Moses. Nick, hit us with it. It's favorite. Yes. The thing I the thing I I just said that I'm I'm always talking about. Yes. Email sending practices. You've gotta have those in line. You wanna avoid those poor sending practices. So much like what Natalie was talking about earlier with, you know, making sure you're getting opted in recipients. Right? You gotta comply with all the regulations. It doesn't stop there, though. Like, once you've you've got all of your your list built and you you got good good campaigns that you're sending, you gotta you gotta regularly monitor what's going on, and and you gotta use all of the resources available, not just what you have within, you know, the e email service provider that you're using. Of course, you're gonna be checking, you know, delivery rates, deliverability, clicks, opens, all of that. Use the other tools. Google Postmaster tools as as an example. Microsoft SNDs. Yahoo's working on some stuff. Like, there are tools out there that, all senders should be using. It helps you to get a a bigger picture of of how your campaigns are doing. And, you know, I think one of the the biggest problems that senders senders run into is, you know, they got that good list. If they don't, well, make sure you're you're like, we're talking about cleaning out the closet. But once you have that list, it doesn't end there. You need to segment and personalize. You should not be sending the same message to all of your users. You should be sending them personalized, emails. You should you should understand some some things that your your recipients want to want to receive and and tailor tailor content to them, and and segment. You know, you have you have you're all gonna have those users that are highly engaged with your traffic. That's your bread and butter. Those are the ones that are gonna help you keep your reputation where it needs to be, at the highest, possible area. You should send to them maybe a little bit more than those customers that maybe engage, you know, every month, like, once a month or something like that. So just think about it more than just, you know, I have this list. It's good. It's healthy. How can you how can you amplify, things, though? How can you improve your reputation even more? So so segment and and personalize that traffic. And, obviously, you know, provide value and be mindful of send frequency, like I was just talking about. Really, really pay attention to that, because the last thing you wanna be doing is sending too much traffic or too much, too many emails to a group of, recipients. You really need to to pay attention to those things. You know, we provide some some great tools as I mentioned, but, you know, use all of the the third party tools that that are available. It's really gonna help, one, just you getting an understanding of, again, reputation. I I mentioned earlier, reputation is is so important here. How are you being perceived? It's exactly what those tools are gonna tell you. Google's gonna tell you, oh, you're a, a high quality sender or a high rep sender. You're a low rep sender. If they tell you that, well, then you need to go back, take a look at your email practices, what's going on. You know, one of my favorite things that I I have seen to really help, senders whenever maybe they're they're going through a period of, you know, low reputation or their reputation has just dropped maybe from from really good to, like, it's okay, but it could use improvement, sunset policies. Like, really take a look at that that, engagement from your users. And if there's someone that just hasn't engaged in a long time, you should have a policy in place where you you maybe, you know, say goodbye. I I know everyone wants that that like, you talked about Natalie. Everyone wants that that big number. Right? You want that that big list, but you gotta really pay attention to to engagement, above all else. And Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like it's almost like when you when you invite a friend out. Right? Whether it's, like, trivia night going out. I don't know what your life is. But you always invite that, like, one friend out, and then you keep inviting them, and they always say no. They They always say no. And then at one point, like and it is fair to ask. Right? Hey. Do you want me to keep asking you if you wanna go out or nah? And then if they go, like, it's nice to be included. Right? Great. But if they're, like, I'm I'm good. Great. Awesome. I'm gonna go have a fun night. I'll see you later. So it's it's good to kinda think about it almost like that. Right? Like, if you're going out with friends and someone just keeps saying no. Right? Like, maybe have maybe maybe send them a message. Like, hey. Do you still wanna get emails from us? It's okay if you don't. Very similar in that regard. The same too. Like, I think, you know, we we talk about email, but and, again, not to get on a tangent, but, you know, we we talk about email. And I think sometimes people forget, like, there is a person on the other side of that email. Right? So it's like, if I were writing a letter, you know, if I printed it if I printed it out on nice, you know, printed paper in Ariel or Times New Roman or whatever I decided, Comic Sans for all I know. But then I'm just like, hello, person. It is nice to see you. I would really like it if you told me about how your life is going. Yo. That's weird. Right? Like, it just doesn't resonate. Whereas, like, if I actually, you know, like, send a card that's like, hey. How are you? I hope you're doing really well. Even if it's just a postcard. Like, that added bit of personalization both in life and in email goes a long way. So I'm a stationary nerd. Sorry. Just is what it is. But I I think, you know, as long as you remember that, and remember that there's a person on the other side of that, it can really help guide some of these, like, harder reputation decisions. I think more than people realize. I'm sorry. I gotta I gotta mention this this comment in chat because I'm just I'm cracking up at it. Lou said, I wanna be invited, but I'm definitely not going to what you're just talking about. That is a that is see, that that's an opener, though. That's an opener. Right? They wanna see the message. They're they're opening. They're reading it. They're just not ever, you know, activating on it. They're not clicking through, if we wanna compare it to the email side. But, yeah, that's a great example of, you know, those people that you invite out to, you know, trivia night or whatever it is. And they always want the invite, but they never actually follow through. If they're if they're reading the message and, you know, they're still engaging with it a little bit, then you're you're good to go. You can still send them. This is the only way I've ever heard a sunset policy be applied to real life. I love it. I love it. Sense. It makes so much sense because I had someone in my life a few months ago do that to me, and I was like, you know what? I'm gonna go ahead and unsubscribe you now from my life because you just don't show up. Like, oh, man. That's too good. That's too good. Oh, alright. Moving on the line before I get distracted even more. Up next, let's see here. Bad architecture. Oh, Nick. I know you got some thoughts on this one. Yeah. So what do we mean by bad architecture? Really, what we're talking about is your IP setup. You know, we all know about dedicated IPs and and shared IPs. What what is best, for you, really depends on on a lot of things. You know, if you're sending a a if you have a a huge list and you're sending a lot of traffic, obviously, you want to, you know, ensure that your traffic is is coming out from a dedicated IP. You don't wanna be, impacted by, you know, other senders, because that's a that's a real problem sometimes with shared IPs. You could be in a a a shared IP pool with with other really good customers just like you. But every now and then, maybe someone messes up. You don't want to expose yourself to that risk. So, you know, when we're talking about architecture, that's kinda what we're talking about here. And and there's not it's kinda like the whole Cinderella thing. Not there's not one shoe that fits everyone. You you just gotta kind of understand what what your needs are. You can be on a dedicated IP and sending far less than, you know, another person on a dedicated IP. Just comes down to personal preferences, what your goals are. But even further than that, you know, once we've figured out, okay. I wanna be on a dedicated IP or I wanna be on a shared IP. What else can I do as a sender? You wanna segment your traffic by different email types. Right? And and what I'm I'm talking about that mainly and and this, you you can you can probably, you know, break this out further. But mainly, you know, think about transactional versus marketing and or promotional traffic. You're sending password resets to to your your customers whenever they need something quickly. That traffic probably shouldn't be going out from the same IP that you're using for your marketing traffic. Those transactional messages are extremely important. They need to, you know, make it to the the the recipient on time quickly and and obviously to the inbox. So you wanna segment, by by different email streams almost like every time. And and it doesn't have to stop at just transactional verse marketing. Like I said, you can you can break that down further, based off of your needs. And and also when we're talking about, you know, transactional and marketing messages, it doesn't have to end up just like the IP. You don't have to segment at just the IP level. You know? Spin up a a separate domain or or a subdomain. Again, depending on on your needs, like, all plans are are are different, but but you wanna segment you wanna get as much kind of separation between, you know, different, streams as possible. So, you know, maybe you have a subdomain for for password resets, subdomain for marketing messages, etcetera. You wanna you wanna add any kind of segmentation. It it also helps in diagnosing issues as well. If you have, a way to look at the traffic separately, then you can kind of understand. Maybe if this this domain is not doing as well, maybe I can figure out what's going on with this domain. So anytime, you can do that, it is definitely something that I I fullheartedly will recommend. And we have a lot of blog blog posts and and help center articles that are kind of around this. And I think if if you have particular questions, you know, we have teams here that are are ready to help. Yeah. And I think something to that and this is just to kinda tie in a bit more of that, like, science and art. Right? Like, I know a lot of people, you know, will hear the difference between dedicated and shared IP at first blush. Right? And be like, oh, I want a dedicated IP, like, right now. But it helps that you're sending a lot of email or at least a a a pretty decent chunk of email, but that you're also doing it consistently. Right? If you're only sending emails, like, you know, maybe once every two months, Do you need a dedicated IP? Because I think what what people don't understand is that inbox service providers, right, will see that infrequent traffic and and worry. Right? They're like, wait a minute. Has this, you know, is this an account that's been compromised? Is this, like, someone sending, like, spam? Like, we don't know. Like, the habits, can can look even though it's innocent. Right? Even though you mean nothing by it, it can look really, really suspicious to a mailbox provider. So something you just kinda keep in mind right before you go and, like, really getting excited about a dedicated IPs. Like, I get it, man. Like, I too love to be in a room by myself. But sometimes, right, it's better to have, you know, just a group that can support you. And that's kinda how I see shared IPs is, like, you all kind of have a similar reputation. You're all kind of helping each other out as long as you're all doing the best that you possibly can. There's something wrong with a shared IP. So just something to keep in mind. Yep. Absolutely. I I'm I'm reading through some of the questions, and and there's some good ones. I'm I'm sure some of them are getting pushed to the q and a for for later. But, real quick, I do wanna to answer one. How do you find your reputation score? That's a good one, and everyone would love to know that. Right? Like, how what what's my score? Where you find that is by looking at those third party resources, Google plus best tools, SMDS. It's all separate. It's based off of the the receiving server. Right? So it's got you could be you should you could have a high reputation with Google and a a low reputation with Microsoft. That happens. So you just want to kind of look at, all the different available resources because there's not one magical score that's gonna tell you, you know, what your reputation is. Right. Exactly. Like, I know at Mailgun, you know, we do have, like, a sender score that we provide to, like, our optimized customers. But, again, like, there are plenty of other third party tools that you can look at that will give you something similar, but they're not all gonna be the same. But they might be telling you something very similar. So a lot of times, like, these scores are an aggregate of your own habits and your own infrastructure. So spend less time focusing on that number and more time on what's influencing all of those numbers that you're seeing across the board. Yeah. You gotta look at the whole picture. Yeah. You have to take a a look at all the different resources available, whether it's, you know, a center score on our side or or another score somewhere else. Yeah. Look at them all. Love it. Love it. Nick, glad you saw that one pop up. That was such a good question. Yeah. There's been a there's been a lot of good questions. I'm trying to keep up with them without getting too distracted. But Yeah. I see. Good activity. Love it. Love it. Yeah. Let's, let's power on through here, shall we, so we can definitely answer some of those questions because we, definitely have some time for that, ladies and gents. Alright. Moving down the line here. So that was just bad architecture now. Oh, lock it down, ladies and gentlemen. You gotta keep that email strategy secure. Alright. Got gotta definitely had to, pull from, Clad with a Chance of Meatballs because, it's always locking it down over there from that end. But, alright, let's see. Alright. Nick, Natalie, hit us with those best practices for 2025. How do we lock it down? Nick, you wanna go first? Yeah. So real real quick. Now I wanna go watch Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Fortunately, it's one of my kids' favorite movies. I just love it, and I love the images that have been used in this, slideshow. So kudos, to y'all for for putting this together. Authentication, honestly, we we already talked about it. It's one of the major things, that you should be focusing on. You know, SPF and DCAM should be taken care of, obviously, if you're sending traffic already. But, really, really focus on on the DMARC, pieces that that we were discussing earlier. And and don't stop at that policy of none. Be a be an overachiever when it comes to DMARC. Set yourself up for the future. Yeah. For sure. And then just kind of, like, as we as we talk about, like, added security. Right? So some LSSO and two factor authentication are wildly important. It's one thing to, like, set a strong password, which all of you should be doing. But, you know, any anybody anything can happen. Right? Like, whether you have a password manager, something could get compromised. Please don't ever write it down on a piece of paper and leave it somewhere, but sometimes people do that, and it breaks my heart. But it added things like SAML SSO or two factor authentication really do make sure that things kind of stay just a little bit tighter. So two factor authentication is usually easier to implement. Right? It's usually like you you flip a switch, you scan a QR code, and bam, you got your code, which is great. But for especially, like, larger businesses, like, looking into SAML SSO, not just for your email, but, like, all of your applications that you're using in your tech stack is so imperative in making sure that you are keeping everything locked up tight and safe. That's just kind of like an added on top of, like, passwords and API security, which I know Nick could can speak more to. Yeah. If you talk to me these days, you will know how passionate I am about the security of of your your account here at Mailgun. But just in general, security best practices are extremely important. Yes. If if there's the ability if you have the ability to, you know, use SAML, go for it. There are a lot of bad actors out there that really want access to your accounts. So yeah. As I said, I spend a lot of time these days working on the the anti abuse side and security side, making sure our customers have a good experience, which leads us to the next, point here. Passwords and API API key security. Yeah. Obviously, passwords need to be strong and never shared. I think everyone knows that at this point. You shouldn't be reusing passwords across applications, because if, you know, your password gets, you know, if if an account gets hacked at some, you know, account I don't know. It could be something like, you know, Target or or Walmart, some some completely unrelated application, and you reuse that password. Well, then bad actors have the potential to, use that password for other places you use it. So it's something that, I think I think people really need to understand the these the importance of of the security of of any kind of service that you're using, because, like I said, email service providers, are are good targets. Bad actors want to be able to send, bad email. So, you know, accounts like Mailgun are are are prone to this. So, you know, talking about API key security, we see it a lot. There's some blog posts. I don't know if it can be shared in in the channel, but, unfortunately, you know, customers will sometimes, you know, integrate Mailgun into their application or or something else into their application and leave some settings, that aren't configured correctly. Like, maybe debug mode is on, and that could leave sensitive information visible to to bad actors. And, I'll be at first to tell you that, bad actors are are clever, and and they're they're sitting and waiting for this stuff to happen. So take security seriously. It's extremely important. You don't want to wake up one day and see that your account was used to, send out spam. So I could talk about this this stuff for for a long time, but I will I will hold off. If you have any questions, you can you can reach out to me. Yeah. And then just to kinda, like, wrap up, like, all of this in a nice, neat little bow. Right? Yahoo and Google updates did happen last year, but they're affecting you know, they happened, and they will continue to influence us. So, you know, of course, you need SBF and DKIM authentication. We've we've talked a lot about that. One click on subscribe, you need to make sure that you have that. And you also just need to keep your complaint rates to a minimum. And, really, everything that we've talked about previously in this will help keep those complaint rates low, making sure you're only engaging with people who wanna hear from you, making sure that your emails look nice, making sure that your passwords are safe, making sure that you clean your email list. All of that feeds into keeping your complaint rates as low as possible. So and, you know, you never know when mailbox providers are going to decide, hey. You know, DMARC is in, baby. And then we just hard commit to to a a very specific enforcement of DMARC. So, that's kind of like an add on top of this. It's like, keep on track and, like, pay attention to what mailbox providers and your email service providers are saying. Right? Whether it's keeping on top of their blogs or just checking to make sure, you know, they haven't posted anything new and earth shaking to their newsroom. It helps the sooner you know that because then you're not scrambling at the last minute to make sure that you're in compliance with anything that might be coming through the pipe. I'm gonna pick another question real quick if y'all don't mind. Yeah. I did it. Because it's important. How do I report security issues to Mailgun, specifically phishing it to pertaining to be Mailgun employees? Abuse@mailgun.com. We will Yes. We will get that. We will review it. But, yes, that it's a good it's a good call out. There has been, phishing messages targeting, you know, all kinds of people across different industries, but always be always be vigilant. Always, you know, make sure the messages that you're receiving, are are legitimately from who they are, purporting to be from, because fish is prevalent. Oh, yeah. And it's being spoofed. Yeah. Oh, man. It's not And for what it's worth, If anyone out there is posing as me, there's nothing as good as the original, so so cut it out. Yeah. Exactly. Cut it out. Really know me. Yeah. You don't know me. Alright. Alright. Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. So that's everything for security best practices. Alright. We got one last one, ladies and gents. What the heck do we track down in 2025? There's been so many changes. What are we counting? So let's find out what we're counting. Top stats tracking 2025. Nick, Natalie, how are we feeling? Man, I'll say Google Postmaster Tools, SNDS, Yahoo, what whatever tools are available to you. I think this is probably the third time I've I've mentioned this. Use use what is available out there. They they are there are really good tools out there that can can help you get that holistic view of your email program. Yeah. Definitely. And then the other thing too that, like and I I know that people talk about it. Like, are open rates dead? Well, they they certainly are inflated. So it is more important to pay attention to your clicks and your click through rates. And, really, that's more of the engagement of what we want anyway. Like, as a marketer, I see opens, and I go, yeah. Okay. You open an email. Or or Apple opened it for you because they open all of mine for me. So but, like, clicking shows intent. Right? That's like, oh, neat. And then, like, going over to the website. I care more about that engagement than I do about Apple deciding to protect my security, which, like, thank you for that. But, also, there are more important things to focus on. So if you've never really taken, like, that hard of a look at your clicks, now is the time to start doing so. Your opens are lying to you, and no one no one no one likes that. The other thing too is keep an eye on your bounce rates as we talk about, like, your email list, as we did earlier. Right? Like, bounce rates are going to be one of the biggest indicators that, like, one, you should probably be checking your email list to make sure that it's clean or has if it hasn't been cleaned recently to go ahead and do that. But it can also especially, like, soft bounces and things like that, it could be telling you something else and does, like, warrant investigation. Nick, I don't know if you have anything to add to that point. On the bounce rate, the way I like to to think about bounces is there's a lot of extremely important information in all bounces. So you can check your bounce rate just to, you know, understand, okay. I have a problem with some some emails bouncing. But take it a step further. Look into the logs. Look into the responses. What are they saying? Oftentimes, there there will be little nuggets of information that can help you, identify problems with your with what you're doing, as a sender. So really review, all of those logs that you're getting back. Kind of you see a a a spike of of bounces come out of nowhere, maybe to a specific provider. You you can you can you kinda click into those and and see what exactly, is causing those. So always review the data that's available to you. Definitely. Love it. Love it. Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, guess what time it is? It's question time. Oh, it's question time, ladies and gentlemen. Alright. Alright. Let's crack the knuckles. Let's get into this, shall we? Alright. Let me see. Let's take a look at some of the first ones that we got here. And, ladies and gentlemen, please upvote the questions that you want prioritized because we've got a ton. We've got a ton here. We only got ten minutes left. Alright. I love this one, so I wanna go and throw this up on the screen. So let me stop sharing and throw this one up here. This one comes from Sean. You want to wonder, is, raw text email generally more deliverable compared to emails with fancy HTML images given that the content of both messages are the same? I'm gonna let you take this one, Natalie. It depends. So I I I that's really and I I hate having that be the answer of it depends, but it really does depend on your audience. Right? So if your audience is expecting kind of like that, you know, sort of raw, like, personal one to one email thing, then, yeah, you might get better engagement that way. But for the most part, if you're a business that is sending email, most people are going to expect some sort of, like, dress and decorum about what you're sending. Even if it's just a really simple, like, you can use a template builder, right, to make just a really simple template for you to use. That's that's going to do you a lot better than something plain text. And especially, like, if we're talking about transactional emails like receipts or password resets, if I were to get that in plain text, I would see that as suspicious personally, and I think a lot of people would too. So making sure that you have, like, the appropriate branding, the appropriate look and feel, that is just in alignment with what your business is trying to do, that's going to be your best foot forward. And, again, like, test it as much as you can. But even if you're not, like, an HTML wizard, there are plenty of of email template builders that you can use that is literally drag and drop. Right? You put the heading here, the image here, the link here, the copy here. Makes it so, so easy. So that's an option that is available to you. So, again, it depends, but more often than not, you are going to wanna use some HTML within your emails to make them just look nice, neat, and pretty. Exactly. Exactly. Alright. Moving down the line here. Don't stop sharing that one. Okay. And, Nick, now if you do see one that I that you see before me, call it out. We can get it on the screen. I'll take this one. Cool. Clicks can be bought to checking links. How do we better account for that? The way I would answer this one is that those pesky bots, bot detection is is difficult, and we can get it wrong sometimes. So, it it's it's hard to to give a direct answer on that, but, I I will tell you that, you know, the team is constantly reviewing how things are being categorized. And if we are able to identify that something is, highly likely to be not behavior, then there there are options to to filter, you know, that bot activity out. But, yeah, it's it's something that's you know, we've definitely seen a rise in it over the years. There's been a lot of talk about, you know, bot interactions, nonhuman interactions. Love it. Love it. Alright. Okay. Let me see here. Thanks for knocking that one out, Nick. Thank you, Laura, for throwing that up there. Yay. There was another priority one we had here. This one was from Hannah. She wanted to know, does enabling tracking on email services hurt your reputation and placements in inboxes? It depends. It's it's funny. The the answer, it depends. To to a lot of things. Like, no. The sense of the the the action of enabling tracking, does not in and of itself, hurt the reputation, and is not going to affect the placement in inboxes. Now if you're using tracking at a particular service that is getting heavily abused and and maybe the way that those, you know, tracking URLs are being generated, it it could carry some some weight. But I I will say that, you know, when using Melgon at least, you know, click tracking is done where it's unique to to each sender's domain. So there's separation. But, yeah, it's not the same for for all, you know, types of tracking solutions. So if if whatever service you're using is is getting abused, it it could, but chances are it won't because there's a lot of things that, receiving mail mail servers are are looking at, you know, when when determining the reputation, of a sender. So it it's one little piece of it. So if if a lot of the other signals that those, receiving mail servers are seeing are are positive signals, then it will outweigh, some of that risk. Love it. Love it. Alright. Thank you, Hannah, for throwing that one up to us. See, make sure we mark that as answered. Alright. Moving on. Oh, hey. Adan. Can I share one that that got an answer? But Yes. Okay. Because I think there were a lot of people that voted on this one. And there was some some articles shared. I'm sorry if I'm missing ones that are getting higher votes, but I saw this one. It was sticking out with five votes on it. Melvin doesn't support dedicated IPs for low quantity senders. Why? So I think, you know, back to the whole, Cinderella thing that I mentioned earlier, not all. There's there's not one plan for for all senders. It depends on what that that quantity is, what that volume is. I like I said, I've absolutely seen senders use dedicated IPs that send less volume than others, but there's gotta be there's gotta be consistent traffic enough to hold a reputation. So anytime maybe you get pushed back for maybe not sending enough, that's probably, you know, us looking out for, hey. You're not sending enough to to carry a reputation. So it just depends. Like they've said, reach out, reach out and, we can get you some more information if if those articles that have been shared don't don't help address it. Love it. Love it. Nick, thank you for calling that one out, actually. Perfect. Yeah. One size does not fit all, ladies and gentlemen, especially for our dedicated IPs versus shared IPs. Okay. Let's see here. Let's see here. Any Nick, you see any one of those, that's, a top answered one from our support team? Trying to think. Let's see. Someone asked Adnan asked, one click oh, where'd it go? I just lost it. Oh, no. Where'd he go? Yeah. One click unsubscribe even for passage resets. Oh, yeah. Sorry. I'm having issues. All good. All good. But, yes, you still want to have one click unsubscribe one click unsubscribe. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. Based off of requirements, yeah, you still want to have that one one click unsubscribe, functionality. There it is. Yep. It's gotta be there, folks. Gotta follow the RFC eighty fifty eight as our favorite article of the year, last year and a half, it feels like. But make sure you get to know those. Alright. Let's see. This one's got a a lot of them up. Yeah. I couldn't get the pin function to to work to help get it on the screen. But I wanna talk about this one too. So what is the ideal sending pattern? Yeah. It depends. So, again, it depends. But a lot of this depends on both yourself, but also your recipients. So you know? And a lot of times, you can actually, like, go and see this kind of in practice. So whenever you, say, sign up for a newsletter from a business, right, they might say, don't worry. We're not gonna spam you. We'll only send you an email quarterly or every couple of weeks or whatever. Right? So they're setting the expectation upfront for how often they are sending and kind of what that sending pattern is. So the recipient knows ahead of time, right, exactly kind of the cadence that they're going to be expecting. Now when you do that, you don't want to then do a one eighty. You don't wanna flip it and then email them every single day. Very few times is is a recipient going to expect to get an email every single day unless it's something like, a daily newsletter about what's happening in your city. I know I get one for San Antonio. I love opening it every single morning. Or, I don't know if anyone here is a fan of, like, the Yidi, which does, like, daily T shirt designs, but I love looking at my daily T shirt design email. But that cadence was, made very plain to me when I signed up, so I expect that. If I'm saying I'm gonna do a monthly newsletter, I shouldn't be sending that newsletter every single day. Now does that mean that you can only strictly adhere to that ever? No. Every once in a while, you might be like, hey. Something really important happened, so I thought I'd reach out ahead of time. Or, hey. We have this big thing happening for our business that we wanted to let you know about. Great. Like and sometimes you can be like, hey. We'll let you know whenever we have any major updates to to tell you about. That might be every couple of weeks. That might be once a month. Just making sure that you state that pretty plainly, both at sign up and just kind of reassuring that within your email, copy as well every now and again. Like, hey. You may or may not hear from us, you know, in the next couple of weeks. We're gonna be heads down. Just keep that in mind. And send what people want. Send an email that people want and not and not stuff that people don't want. Okay? Or you're gonna have a bad time. Yeah. That that kind of goes in line with some of the other questions that I've kind of been just reading through. Yeah. Understand your user base. Understand what they want. Yes. Give them what they want. I know that's easier said than done, but, there are are are ways of of really kind of understanding, you know, what type of content, I guess, gets the the best engagement and, you know Give the people what they want. Exactly. Exactly. What our colleague, Julie, just said. Give the people what they want. They want good email, not bad email. Only ever good emails. Exactly. Exactly. Alright, ladies and gentlemen. That is all the time we have today. We wanna thank you so much for being here with us. I wanna thank my amazing experts, Natalie Hayes and Nick Schafer for being here. Y'all, thank you so much. This is the part where I get to ask you, hey. Where can people follow along with whatever you're doing in the email world? Natalie, go ahead. You can follow me on LinkedIn, but I will say I'm a bit of a recluse. So I might not post very much, but I should start posting there again here shortly. But other than that, I do, plan to be attending, un not un inbox expo that's coming up. That's what that's right. I will be at inbox expo. So if you wanna come say hi, talk to me, about anything. It could be email. It could be whatever you're doing in life. I'd love to chat. Love it. Love it. Oh, yes. And to drop to me, myself, and the, Emails Not Dead team will be co hosting Inbox Expo here in Austin, Texas. So if you come out, come hang out with us. There's gonna be a bunch of us. Nick, where can the people follow along with with everything you've got going on in the email world? Well, firstly, I plan on being there as well. So it's gonna be a email party. So if if anyone is able to go or in the area, it'd be great to to see people in in person. But, yeah, same same as Natalie. LinkedIn is probably the best place. I try to get on it from time to time. So drop me a message, and I will try to get back to it as as soon as I can. Love it. Love it. And, ladies and gentlemen, my share is our podcast. Email's not dead. Make sure you follow along with our new season. It is out right now. Our our newest episode, we were talking about our newest demark integration with the Red Sift. So super stoked about that. And now, ladies and gentlemen, we're a video podcast. So now you can watch our beautiful faces. Hey. You may see Nick on there. You may see Nelly on there. You may see a ton of our friends on there as well. So make sure you check that out. Also, ladies and gentlemen, if you wanna get more involved with Mailgun or you wanna actually find a custom solution for yourselves, I'm gonna give a quick shout out to our, our sales department right now, Carlos. He is in the chat. Carlos, if you go ahead and drop your email right now, and people can reach out to you. If you wanna talk to our sales organization as well, you can go to the very top of this page and click talk to sales, and they can get in contact with you as well. So ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much. Yes. You can rewatch this webinar. All you gotta do is come back to this page and or go to Mailgun. You can go to our YouTube Mailgun. It's at youtube.com/@Mailgun. And be and, you can be able to watch all of our webinars and stuff like that. Ladies and gentlemen, make sure you keep an eye out on your inboxes as well. More of these are coming your way. We'll see you in a few weeks. So Yeah. We'll bring you another deliverability topic with me and my partner in email, Natalie Hayes. Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for being here. We'll see you around. Take it easy, gang. Have a good one. As well. Bye. Bye.