Trust is an important quality to have when marketing your business online. It is even more important when you market directly through a person’s inbox. If you have ever received an email from an unknown source or one that looked suspicious, then you probably moved the email from your inbox to your trash folder. How can you ensure your business’s marketing emails reach your intended audience and that you are effectively spending your dollars?
Understanding Your Email Marketing Platform
Some of the big names in email marketing are Constant Contact, MailChimp, MyEmma, and ActiveCampaign among others. In this blog, you’ll see us throw out the name Postage Primate solely as an example. No matter what platform your company utilizes for your email marketing efforts, you want to ensure your marketing emails are being delivered to maximize your profits and goals. Not all platforms may present challenges at first, but there is one instance we have noticed in our own inboxes.
Some of the emails we have received have come from addresses that look like the following: <John.Doe=JohnDoeConstruction.com@mail33.abc42.mcsv.net>. Aside from the fact that we are using sample name John Doe, this is email appears as if it is coming from a not-so-reliable source. On the other hand, an email address like info@JohnDoeConstruction.com looks more credible to a user and software.
The first email address is quite long and makes an email user question if the source is really whom they are claiming to be. Even though you may recognize the name of the sender, the email address still looks untrustworthy. You could close the door on potential sales by ignoring this small detail.
Knowing Where Your Emails are Going
Email applications, like Outlook, have become more advanced in sifting out potential spammy or harmful emails. Longer email domains could present a red flag to Outlook and the post could be automatically sent to a person’s spam or junk folder. Another possibility is that the emails are not being delivered at all.
Your email marketing dollars could potentially be going down the drain. You could consult the analytics to determine how many emails are being delivered, but not all email marketing platforms are built the same. Some will offer more insights than others, but this still leaves the question of how to fix the long-winded email address issue open.
Getting A Little Bit Technical
Let’s say you use Postage Primate, as mentioned earlier, to deliver your company’s marketing and promotional emails. Even though the emails are coming from Postage Primate, you still want it to look like it’s coming from your company, i.e. info@JohnDoeConstruction.com. When your email is delivered in Outlook, the user receives an email coming from info@JohnDoeConstruction.com, but it’s not actually coming from that domain’s server.
Instead, it is presented as the long email address with a slew of numbers and letters that don’t make much sense to the user or the application. How does Outlook know that Postage Primate has been authorized to send an email on John Doe Construction’s behalf? After all, anyone could sign up for a MailChimp account claiming to be John Doe.
Email marketing platforms will not let you use an email address from your desired domain (e.g. JohnDoeConstruction.com) unless you have verified that you own, or have administrative access to, the site. Though you will still be able to send out emails with the company logo, images, and text, the email address still presents risks of being sent to junk folders or not being sent at all. We do not want to bore or overwhelm you with the technical details, but the root of this issue is caused by domain verification.
What does all this mean? You may need to do more research to fully understand the issue in accordance with your specific platform, or you could trust a digital marketing agency to handle all the details of your email marketing campaign—from creation to execution to analysis—and take the burden off your company’s shoulders.
Get in touch with Social Spice Media today to learn more about our email marketing campaigns designed to drive sales and create more meaningful connections with your customer base. We look forward to getting to know you and starting a campaign to advance your marketing goals.
Do you know someone who could benefit from our services? Refer them to us today! Our team is eager to connect with businesses in any industry. We serve the local needs of Ventura County and Santa Barbara as well as anywhere in the United States.
