Issue #189 All About Email

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Hi, friend. 👋

Welcome to Issue #189 of All About Email!

Last week, Microsoft rolled out the enforcement of their sender guidelines. A new AI native email wrapper dropped for Gmail (Zero Mail), and I launched a new newsletter feature, “Powered by Music.”

This week, we will start exploring “Engagement” and “List Cleaning” by first looking at a problem of my own making, and next week, we will discuss “Engagement Metrics” in more detail.

Let’s go! 👇

It All Started With A Mistake 🤦‍♂️

Last week, I discovered I had made a big mistake with my segmentation in Beehiv.

🐝 I’ve been using Beehiiv for almost a year now, and whilst I love it, with many new features launched in the last year alone, it still has one annoying weakness: delivery reporting and errors (think bounces and blocks).

🫠 Having come from Mailchimp, where I can look up the bounce reasons for up to 30 days after sending a newsletter, not having this data available at all in Beehiiv (that story is for another day) is a hassle sometimes.

So I needed to set up some audience segmentation criteria to monitor deliverability issues like the one I encountered after sending last week’s newsletter (also a story for another week), and that’s when I noticed my problem. 😬

Engagement-Based Segmentation

I’ve several segments in Beehiiv and I won’t explain the criteria in this week’s newsletter:

• Emails Not Received

• Unengaged 30 Days

• Unengaged 90 Days

• Unengaged 150 Days

• Verified Clicks

• Deferred

• Bounce - This is where the problem was. 😭

My criteria for segmenting by bounces were too broad (remember, Beehiiv is currently 💩 at bounce reporting). I will fix things up in the future, but this caused an immediate problem. 👇

The Segmentation & Engagement Problem

The trough in the above chart was when I cleaned my list after the deliverability issue I had with last week’s newsletter (long story short, a DNS issue). 🤬

The problems with my segment were:

• My criteria for segmented bounced contacts were too broad.

• When I analysed the engagement metrics for each of these subscribers, I noticed that I had wrongly excluded a lot of these subscribers from receiving emails.

• Therefore, it had been too long since some subscribers received an email, so I decided they had to go for the sake of deliverability. 😭

Luckily, not only did I get all of those subscribers back within two days, but I grew my list! 🎉

I doubt I will get this lucky again, and now that I’ve caught my mistake, the bounce segment criteria have changed to avoid this in the future.

🧠 The incident got me and others thinking about engagement and the criteria we use to clean lists (I talk more about list cleaning towards the bottom of Issue #175).

⚡️ So next week we will explore engagement metrics in more detail, but heads-up, whilst there is common ground, one industry/business’s engagement metrics might not be yours.

Campfire 🪵 🔥

So, friend, remember last week I said I would have an update on Campfire, my new email community, which I announced in Issue #187?

I’ve been building and creating everything myself, and so far:

• Domains purchased.

• The logo is in development (I’ll be taking some inspiration from Aaron Draplin).

• Typography is nearly there.

• The colour palette is almost finalised.

• Website hosting is sorted, and the community platform software is too.

I’ll be building this in public and will have regular updates soon, which you can subscribe to if you want to follow along.

Powered By Music! 🎧

Last week, I started a new feature called “Powered by Music”.

I listen to a lot of music, friend, especially when writing newsletters.

My tastes are eclectic, and when I hit the publish (schedule) button each week, I’ll share the track I’m listening to and build the craziest playlist you’ve probably ever seen.

This week is all about my hometown from the incredible Foy Vance. 👇

Sponsorship Opportunities

🚨 If you’re interested in sponsoring the “All About Email” newsletter, you can find all the details in this Google Doc. I currently have “Classified” slots and a Main Sponsor slot available.

That’s It For This Week

⏭️ I know I said we would start diving deeper into Zero Mail, but then I messed up, didn’t I, friend? 🤣

Next week, we will look more closely at “Engagement Metrics” and hopefully get to looking at Zero Mail in more detail the week after.

🚨 It’s coming close to the 200th issue of my newsletter, over four years of writing (if you include holidays), and I want to celebrate with something special.

If anyone wants to provide a special offer for my readers, reply to this email and let me know how you can help.

It could be:

• A discounted product or service.

• A free product or service.

• An increased free trial period for your product or service.

• Products or services could be anything from software to consulting or physical products.

Issue #200 will drop in eleven weeks, which is in the middle of the summer, so please get those offers in quickly; that time will disappear.

See you next week! 👋

Email Marketing News & Tips

This week's excellent and insightful email news & tips:

• Free Webinar - Effective Mass Email Sending: How to Plan, Test and Respond (EmailLabs)

• Troubled Email - Making sense of common receiving system delivery errors. (Mailqueue)

• Don’t Buy Lists - With the Hidden Risks of Third-Party Lists and Wrecking Deliverability, Permission-Based Growth Is the Only Real Strategy. (Beehiiv)

• Chase Resonance - What I Learned at The Newsletter Conference This Year. (Inbox Collective)

• Understanding - The 7 Factors that Impact Email Deliverability (Oracle)

• The future of email - What could the inbox look like in the next 5 years? (Travis Hazelwood & Ortto)

• It’s Alive! - Brand Insights gives you a detailed breakdown of your favourite brands' email marketing strategy, technology, creative approaches, and deliverability. (Email Love)

• The Experiment - A real-time email experiment for senders and subscribers. (Danielle C.)

• It’s 30 Days - Going against conventional wisdom. (Tyler Cook)

• It’s Important - Here’s How Email Validation Boosts Deliverability and Results. (ZeroBounce)

• What It Means - Microsoft Deliverability Just Got Tougher… here’s what it means for you. (Lauren Meyer)

• Vertical Newsletters - How Creators Are Turning Niche Newsletters Into Powerful, Profitable Media Empires. (Beehiiv)

If you have a question about this email or email marketing, reply, and I will answer you as soon as possible.

I hope you have a great week! 👋