Why Deliverability (Still) Matters in 2024
Ahhh, deliverability. A common term within email today, but it wasn’t even a word until about 22 years ago when there became a need to describe the state of having troubles reaching the inbox.
So, how did we get here? Let’s go back to the beginning to find out.
The History of Email Deliverability
Just kidding. We don’t have time for that, friend! If you’re really curious, Email on Acid has a pretty comprehensive piece on the history of email. Lots has been written about Ray Tomlinson, the inventor of modern email, too, so go Google that and take your pick.
On this blog, right now, here’s all you need to know about deliverability:
Modern email was invented in 31 B.D., the time before deliverability (circa 1971)
The term deliverability was coined in 2002
I sent my first professional spam mail in 5 A.D. (circa 2007)
We’re now in the email year of 22 A.D. (circa 2024)
Email’s been a dumpster fire that whole time. Still is.
The history of email: before and after Deliverability (B.D. and A.D., respectively)
Which is why email deliverability still matters as much today as it did 20 years ago. In fact, there have been so many changes within email over the past couple of years (including Apple MPP, Yahoo and Google’s new sender requirements, and the very real shift we’re seeing from IP to domain-based reputation, just to name a few), it’s safe to say it matters more than ever.
Why Deliverability (Still) Matters in 2024
Jokes aside, email really has been a sweaty mess since the moment the mainstream public got its hands on it. Spam, scams, phishing attempts, and legislation that’s constantly several years behind technology — including one that literally includes the phrase “can spam”. 🙄
It’s like Atlantic City at 3am on a Sunday.
Why?
Email Is Big Business!
For starters, it’s incredibly cost effective to send email, particularly when compared to other marketing channels like SMS. It’s also relatively easy to send an email, even for beginners.
Which means even today, businesses without a lot of budget or email expertise are able to use email to facilitate their businesses.
We’re talking about more than 4 billion global email users in 2022 sending and receiving ~333 billion emails per day with a global email marketing market value of 7.5 billion U.S. dollars just a few years ago.
A chart showing the year-over-year growth in sent and received volume, and additional stats about the number of email users globally and email ROI. Sources: Statista 2022 and 2023, and Litmus 2022.
And those figures continue to grow, year after year.
The problem with that? People think sending email is easy.
Email is More Challenging Than People Think
The majority of decision-makers calling the shots on if and when certain email best practices get implemented fall into that category of not really understanding or appreciating the true complexity involved in having emails reach the inbox consistently.
Beyond the troubles senders face when they’re CAN-SPAMming it, there are 100’s of factors affecting inbox placement: address collection and expectation-setting, segmentation and personalization, authentication, list management, and so much more.
Part of the challenge comes from the fact that email is open-sourced, decentralized, super technical, and lacking standardization across the countless mailbox providers around the globe.
Even harder, the majority of folks pushing send on behalf of their businesses are doing so without worrying about all of the technological complexity that’s happening to connect point A to point B… for every. single. email. They don’t even know most of that stuff exists.
They only see the beautiful swan, gliding serenely on top of the water. Which translates to them collecting email addresses, creating some content, and pushing send. Voila! Email success. Done and done.
They don’t think about (or even realize) how much work that majestically graceful creature is doing under the surface.
That’s email for ya, in a nutshell. Beautiful, and simple, and terrifyingly complex, all at once.
The Folks Pushing Send Are Crowned “Email People”, With or Without the Expertise
…even though they’re not actually “email” people! They’re business-minded folks working in marketing or finance, sales, or product, and because they send some emails on behalf of the company, at some point, someone decided they were the closest thing to an email specialist the company had and needed.
And because people think email is easy, it stays that way.
The business mistakes people who are merely contributing to email campaigns being sent for email experts who are not only gonna notice when there’s a problem, but also figure out why and how to fix that problem...like, yesterday.
That’s a lot to handle for anyone, let alone someone with a plate full of other, non-email related tasks as well. Small problems go unnoticed until something big happens.
Sometimes IT’s the lucky bingo winner, noticing an issue because their doomsday dashboard’s lighting up — meaning your mail is being rejected, not just sent to the junk folder.
Other times the issue appears in the form of customers complaining about it on social media. Which means you’re now at red alert, red alert!
One major problem:
The Folks Troubleshooting Disaster Aren’t Typically the Ones Pushing Send
Our firefighting friends in IT and devops aren’t typically the ones managing the inner workings of email campaigns for their companies, so they have limited awareness about how lists have been collected, managed, segmented, and marketed to. They have no idea what marketing and sales, support and finance have really been up to.
If this is the experience for the people closest to email when they’re not email specialists, imagine how big the disconnect might be for their bosses, and their bosses’ bosses when it comes to knowing how email works. These are folks who think in outcomes and dollar signs, and only see email as one of many channels their go-to-market teams can use to help drive revenue without spending a lot of money.
Which makes figuring out why there’s a problem and how to fix it so much more challenging. Particularly when…
Businesses Don’t Properly Invest in Email
It’s because people think email is easy and cheap, they don’t properly invest in sending it right.
Most companies in 2024 are staffed with marketing generalists in place of email specialists, who naturally prioritize the best practices that are easier to implement or more closely align with their business model…or they follow the ones their predecessors put in place or trained them on. And they stick with what’s working until, well… until it isn’t.
And when it’s not driving enough results, leadership asks for answers.
Unfortunately, the answers they get don’t help. Because…
Deliverability & Business Folks Speak Different Languages
Email practitioners with a mind for deliverability tend to be cautious, thoughtful, intentional with their actions…which are mostly related to preventing bad. When a problem arises and deliverability is called to answer, here’s how the rundown tends to go in…Deliverabilitianese (that’s a language now, just roll with it).
Things deliverability folks will tell Leadership:
What happened and where (e .g. “mail from Shared Pool X was being blocked at Hotmail”, or “going to spam”).
What caused it, if they know. If not, they’ll say “we’re still investigating the root cause.”
When it started. We might even share a graph here. Deliverability people love to share graphs. At least, this gal does. 📊😍
Who caused it, if they know, and how that customer has been dealt with (usually with some sort of rate limitation, suspension, or termination).
If the issue has been resolved. If yes, when and how they’re continuing to monitor. If not yet resolved, they’ll share what steps they’ve taken, when they expect an update or resolution, and what they’ll be doing in the meantime to improve the situation.
What best practices need to be implemented to avoid this in the future. Some of these changes are small, such as a few tweaks to the copy on a signup form to improve expectation-setting. In other cases, you could have an underlying sender reputation issue stemming from a poorly built and managed list.
This summary from the deliverability practitioner normally comes with a lot of details. Speaking from my own experience here, the recommendations
What Leadership actually wants to know:
Is the issue fixed yet? What steps are left for remediation and cleanup?
What’s the impact? More specifically, what % of our customers (and email volume) were potentially impacted, how were they impacted, and do we need to communicate this incident to affected customers?
How much did it cost us? Imagine, if we had to pull DevOps away from that high-priority project, and support worked overtime to handle the high ticket load, and leadership had to step in to save 2 customers from churning.
How do we prevent this from happening again? Notice how I skipped right over what caused it? Intentional. C-teams don’t really care what happened as long as they know what’s needed to prevent similar issues in the future.
Taking one last look at these lists before we move on, note how the details aren’t that much different. But the translation matters.
It needs to be brief.
It needs to be informative.
It needs to be aligned with what the business cares about.
Everything else should be left in the appendix of your deliverability mind. Don’t get me wrong. The practitioner who’s solving the issue needs to have answers to all of the questions on their side of the equation. But leadership doesn’t need to hear it.
If they care to learn more, they’ll ask. And you’ll be ready to answer. But note their reason for asking usually has nothing to do with wanting the nitty gritty details of what happened and how the day was saved. They’re actually looking to understand if preventing this from happening again has repercussions for the business. Such as having to pull devs or IT away from high-priority projects, find budget for a 3rd party solution, or plan for more of leadership’s time to be spent with VIP customers to prevent churn.
Explaining what happened, how big of an impact it had, and what it means for the business in a very succinct way isn’t easy with so much complexity involved in deliverability.
But it is important! Because when leadership doesn’t get answers in a language they understand — one that translates to business impact — email gets devalued, deprioritized, and defunded.
Which is typically when senders start to run into even bigger problems. And it’s up to the person who’s been crowned “closest to an email expert” to figure it out, with less budget, while still managing the rest of their workload.
Which is really tough to do when…
Reactively Fixing Problems is Harder Than Sending It Right
The amount of time it will take to solve an issue really depends on what’s wrong and how long it’s been happening. If you’re generally a good sender, the impact should be minimal, however digging yourself out of the spam folder or resolving a blocklisting issue can be particularly challenging if the problem has gone unnoticed and given time to snowball. Or, for example, if the problem is deeply rooted in a foundational piece of your email strategy such as the way you collect email addresses.
Reacting to Problems is More Expensive Than Sending It Right, Too
While not always easy to measure, the less direct impacts of a deliverability issue on the business typically extend well beyond the revenue being tied directly to email.
Here are some unforeseen costs of deliverability issues that businesses fail to plan for:
Time & Focus. Analyzing and troubleshooting deliverability issues is not just time-consuming; it’s a major distraction from your core business activities. You’ve got plenty of things on your to-do list, but all of those get pushed aside when a deliverability issue appears.
Staffing. Support and success teams might have to work extra hours to manage the fallout. This overextension can lead to burnout, decreased morale, and ultimately, a decline in overall productivity.
Money. Less emails landing in the inbox tends to mean less revenue. Not to mention, the hours marketing and IT teams will spend firefighting issues. Let’s not forget the overtime hours customer support faces to handle the influx of customer complaints.
Customers. That’s right. Some of those complaining customers will bail if they aren’t able to successfully deliver emails.
Your Health. The stress of managing deliverability issues can be intense. Constant firefighting can lead to burnout and negatively impact your mental and physical health. It's a marathon with no finish line, draining your energy and enthusiasm.
Deliverability is complicated. And if the person (or people!) you’ve tasked with fixing an issue doesn’t have experience dealing with those kinds of problems, and doesn’t really understand how email works because that’s just one of 80-bajillion jobs they have at your company, resolving a deliverability issue can end up feeling like this…
Making matters even worse…
There’s More Bad Information About How Deliverability Works Than Good
As one of the most well-recognized experts in our field recently mentioned, “Deliverability advice that’s been AI-generated is a waste of time and resources for other people to correct. It takes twice as long — if not longer — to undo the damage.”
This was during a conversation we were having about AI within email, but I’d venture to say we’ve been fighting this battle since the beginning of (email deliverability) time.
“AVOID THESE SPAMMY WORDS OR YOUR EMAILS WILL GO TO SPAM.” 🙄
“THE PROMOTIONS TAB IS A DEATH SENTENCE!!! HERE’S HOW TO LAND IN THE INBOX…” 😒
“PURCHASE 20 DOMAINS AND SWAP THEM OUT WHEN THEY STOP INBOXING.” 😤
“WE’RE CAN-SPAM COMPLIANT SO THIS IS NOT SPAM.” 😑
That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works!
But if you do a search for deliverability in just about any search engine or forum, you’re gonna find this kind of advice popping up first.
One example of…well, so many I could give: it’s been a full decade since Google introduced their tabs experience, and probably even longer since “avoiding $pammy words” was a thing anyone needed to care about, yet deliverability folks are still regularly fighting the good fight against these myths and misconceptions.
It’s exhausting, to be honest. But it’s important if we want people to send it right — and be rewarded with inbox placement and active engagement from their email subscribers.
Deliverability matters to a lot of people
…like, a lot of people.
There are companies staffed with full-time deliverability professionals (or entire teams) offering support and professional services engagements related specifically to deliverability, compliance, and anti-abuse measures.
Heck, some folks have built entire businesses around deliverability consulting or tooling, or both!
I rarely mention those we do not speak of (aka spammers), but deliverability consulting has become particularly lucrative within the affiliate marketing and cold email spaces, because, well…you know why. Those folks are sending less-than-wanted mail and typically need a lot of help getting it to the inbox.
There’s one other role that’s often forgotten within this mix. Which is funny, considering it likely represents the majority of people managing deliverability issues in this day and age: the general marketer or IT person who’s been tasked with making sure emails get to their destinations on time, every time, even in stormy weather, even though they are not at all deliverability experts…they’re just the closest thing the company’s got to an email person. And boy, are they tasked with a lot sometimes!
I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention the multitude of platforms offering some aspect of deliverability support: inbox seed testing, list validation (or is it verification?? You tell me…), spammy word checks (eye roll…), spam trap and blocklisting monitoring, DMARC reporting, email QA and content optimization, smart segmentation and routing, email analytics, and holy cow, the list just keeps on going (and going, and going, and going…). Wanna chat about tools sometime? Reach out.
The good news? You’re not in it alone.
50+ years after email was created and 24 years after CAN-SPAM was introduced within the US, here we are: deliverability has matured to the point that there are entire Slack channels (and groups!), listservs, blogs, text threads, (crisis hotlines??), in-person and virtual events, Reddit and Quora and Facebook groups, Discord servers — and now, an entire WEEK of the calendar year!! — dedicated to discussing it and only it.
Here’s a list of notable experts to learn about deliverability from. These folks have been helping me send it right throughout my career.
Here’s a list of places you can connect with email nerds (experts and n00bs alike) to ask questions, share your knowledge, and keep up with current trends and changes happening in the industry.
I’ve got other resources to help you learn more about deliverability right here on this site, too: my blog (which you’ve already found 🎉), a free newsletter that goes out every week, videos you can access right meow, and tools created by industry folks that will help you send it right.
Where we go from here…
Your guess is as good as mine! Email deliverability is weird and unpredictable. You’ll have to keep reading my blog to find out what the future holds. 😉 I’ll try to share my thoughts as things evolve.
In the meantime, be sure to sign up for my free newsletter on deliverability. Once a week, you’ll get a lesson on how email deliverability really works, what practices you need to be following, and how to feel confident when you (or your customers!) are pushing send. 💌
Thanks so much for making your way to my little corner of the email universe. Hope to see you again real soon.
Until next time, happy sending, friend!
