NOTE: Due to changes in industry practices, Discussion lists that are mentioned in this article are no longer available in MatrixMaxx.
Everyone wants to know how to improve email and list deliverability, which include both broadcast (staff sending to members) and discussion lists (members talking to each other).
First, a little info …
– Email delivery is best for personal emails sent from one person to another person. Delivery rates start to go down when you start to send in bulk (more than 20+ per email) or when you use any type of list program.
– There are a variety of filters that catch or reject mail, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it is because people are marking your email as spam. But some corporate filters simply decide that too much mail has come from one particular group/IP and they cut it off. (So if you sent a message to 100 people at ACME Company, 20 of them may get it while 80 do not).
Second, some immediate solutions that may help …
– We have already done some technical things to help, when we implemented MatrixMaxx for your organization. We have created DNS records called “SPF” records for our clients that say we are an approved sender. We also request a ‘reverse DNS‘ setup, which can also help.
– Ask your members to ask their IT groups to whitelist your organization, either by root domain (including all subdomains, like www. and lists. and mail.) or by IP (if you don’t know your MatrixMaxx server IP address, contact Matrix!).
– Remind your members to not mark your messages as spam or junk, but to simply unsubscribe or contact you if they want help getting off some of your lists.
– Watch the amount of email you are sending out; don’t make your members want to press the ‘junk’ button. Also be careful with your subject lines; don’t make them sound ‘spammy’.
– Beware of attachment sizes! Some corporate groups block emails with attachments even as small as 5MG. (See more info in our email attachment article)
– Have someone on staff look at your delivery report at minimum each week in MatrixMaxx (Communications Module, under Reports) and followup on a couple of them each week. i.e., call that person or the primary contact of that organization, and confirm people/email addresses. (This is also a good time to ask if they can whitelist your organization!) A couple of our clients systematically do this, and they report it is a good way to ‘chat’ with the members, casually, in addition to help keep the database clean.
Third, some longer term thoughts …
The MatrixMaxx built-in list server is a good deal (free with the MatrixMaxx AMS product) with decent functionality, and paid list and community services offer more benefits, like the fact that they spend even more time/effort trying to improve delivery rates (and keep off of reputation and black lists).
Email Delivery Improvements …
We have started routing email for some heavy traffic organizations through Amazon’s AWS SES Simple Email Service. AWS works very hard to maintain a good reputation, so if your organization has dedicated time/resources to keeping your database emails clean on a daily basis, AWS SES is a great option.
- We will route bounces directly to staff/aliases provided to us by your association/organization.
- AWS SES has a low tolerance of bounces and will put the emails very quickly onto a suppression list if the bounces are not addressed quickly, even if the bounces are potentially coming from another Amazon user! The suppression list emails are pulled and displayed as part of the Delivery Report in MatrixMaxx, under Communication reports, so it is critical to check this report weekly if not more frequently!
- When reading bounces, the term ‘Transient’ in the bounce indicates a temporary bounce causes by an out of office or vacation message, and these are treated differently than other bounces (i.e., with more forgiveness/understanding)
- Contact Matrix for more details and pricing!
Marketing Automation and Email Services …
– MatrixMaxx has integrated with MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, SharpSpring and Hubspot. The MailChimp integration is part of the generic product; if you want more info on these other integrations, contact Matrix!
Community Forums …
– Have you surveyed your members about upgrading to a community forum for discussions? (You could even use the built-in SurveyMaxx component under Communications, if you wanted!)
– If you want to ‘try out’ forums for a low cost/effort, you could experiment with a CMS forum ‘plugin’. Most CMSs, including both SiteFinity and WordPress, have forum plugins that could be great
– If your members like the forum, you could upgrade to something bigger/better. We have already integrated with Higher Logic, and would be happy to integrate with any other integration-friendly forum system.
– If you want to browse around the current/best community offerings, I might recommend you check out: https://reviewmycommunity.net/
Paid Email ‘Verification’ Services …
– There are some paid services the purport to be able to run your emails against their ‘system’ and figure out which ones are bad, but a couple of our clients who have used them have had mixed success with these services. There are false positives and some still get missed.