A lot of our inbound marketing work involves creativity and collaboration with our clients. Sure, innovative and catchy designs are a vital part of appealing to new users and build trust instantly.
However, there is a mundane yet critical part of building the custom marketing systems that win customers which we are involved with to an even larger degree. It is the behind the scenes development and IT work to ensure triggers, rules and processes work as designed.
We spent some time with our partners at SendGrid yesterday understanding the rapidly changing rules with email. Transactional emails that get triggered from our marketing systems to provide timely communications and confirmations of transactions require both design and IT plumbing. I took notes on the Twitter hastag #SendGridDelivered yesterday. One of the issues which continually arose from the handling of transactional emails is managing your email reputation. If you are blacklisted from loose and shady practices and use gimmicks to try and reach a new audience, then it is very difficult to regain your reputation.
I liked what they have understood from the 7 billion emails they handle monthly,
“You are putting your domain reputation on the line every time you send an email.”
Before you hit that send button remember, remember:
Domain = Brand = Reputation = Revenue
If you are tempted to spam via email, then you can ruin your reputation. If you use web spam with keyword packed web pages under your domain, you are damaging your brand and reputation.
There is increasing governance with internet service providers (ISP’s) to filter out and block domains from delivering into the email inbox. This lack of deliverability has varied rules, but knowing that if you seek to create great content and play by the rules, you are staying inbounds without issues. There are algorithms that will filter out the spam reports and your domain could be jeopardized if you try and skirt the system.
We do have a smarter web than in times past. The spammers are getting caught and the oversight is increasing.
The hard work of building your brand and assets one article at a time is the long term path. Communicating with the right message to the right person at the right time and right frequency is the rule of thumb.
We will continue to stay tuned in to the ever changing rules out there and managing our client accounts with our commitment to great content to position. In the mean time, it’s good to know that those that are trying to build audiences with substance rather than gimmicks are being rewarded.