📫Inboxing – a global how-to

New here? This is Inbox Hacking, a Free Newsletter for Awesome email marketers eager to level up. Email marketing insights, tools, & tactics sent twice per week. Someone forwarded you our Newsletter? Please join over 14,677 Email Marketers and sign up for your Free subscription. Today→ a worldwide report on email marketing statistics shows how inboxing is done.

Crazy that March Madness ended in April and a quarter of the year is gone as well. I guess we should now focus on the NBA or document various paint-drying stages.

Anyways, our feature story is a full-court press on the difficulty of hitting inboxes in 2023. Validity turned over every rock on the planet to unearth email marketing facts and figures we can use to correct wrong turns and lean into best practices. Let us devour these morsels of knowledge together to avoid spam folders, promo tabs, and other disgusting crevices.

Global Email Disaster?

Easy, folks. This isn’t the nightly news. There are positive aspects to this study.

See the full report after you wet your beak here.

Know this:

💰Email ROI $38 to $1

You know I don’t toss around those ROI numbers but Validity’s legit, so let’s roll with it.

📈Europe had Inbox Placement Rates (IPR) of 91% (lowest region – Asia Pacific 78%)

One more factor to consider when combing through your campaign analytics. Location, location, location.

🍎Apple mailboxes were at 66% IPR compared to a combined average of 86% with Gmail, AOL, Microsoft, & Yahoo

Can we trust the 66% mark with Apple’s email privacy initiative? Doesn’t sound like Validity does.

“…highlights the difficulties of measuring engagement post-MPP (Mail Privacy Protection).”

Note on Apple Privacy

The good news with MPP is every other email marketer has to deal with it just like you.

We could cry about MPP (I did and it didn’t help), but it could actually be an opportunity:

To find creative ways to increase rock-solid engagement to replace flimsy open rates via Apple.
To amp up subject lines and content to a level that results in better open rates in non-Apple inboxes. Because if you achieve that, it’s logical to assume shadowy Apple subscribers are also opening more of your emails, no?

Transparency

This report plainly states that inboxing is the REAL deliverability.

ESPs like highlighting plain ole deliverability rates…

Because 98.5% of emails ‘not bouncing’ sounds better than only 83% getting to the inbox.

Be sure you’re reading your ESP dashboard correctly. Or you might assume a chunk of your subscribers isn’t interested in your offers. It could be that 15% of them are not seeing those emails since they wound up in the spam or promotional folder.

Email Marketer Survey

Mixed in this report is a survey showing 61% of marketers say email deliverability is getting harder. 23% said it hasn’t changed.

6% said it was getting easier (delusional❓).

10% “didn’t know.”

Let me say that again. 10% of marketers didn’t know if email deliverability is getting harder. Clearly these folks have mentally checked out or perhaps, never gave a damn initially. My kinda people!

Wait, there are more unknowns…

Globally in 2022:

9.1% of emails went missing. So, other people in the email industry have mentally checked out too!

“Umm, those 501,000 emails you sent last year, Mrs. Rogers, yeah, we have no idea where 42,020 went.”

Awesome.

At least we’re certain 6.1% of emails went to spam.

84.8% arrived safely in the inbox.

Using that info, Validity whipped out the Maths.

“The 15.2 percent of emails that don’t make it to the inbox represents a massive opportunity cost: Average revenue per email is approximately $0.10, which means the average email program loses over $15,000 for every million emails sent.”

Makes ya think, huh?

That list hygiene is more vital than ever
A/B testing is hard work but can’t be put off any longer
It’s time to lean into email types that easily boost deliverability (triggered, transactional, and campaigns designed only for your top readers)

All the negative factors in this report make it clear to me that deliverability will be tougher with each passing year. As filters get pickier, email volume increases, and spammers mess things up for the rest of us.

Plus, it’s complicated…

“75 percent of a typical email list will be formed by the Big 4 mailbox providers (Microsoft, AOL, Gmail, Yahoo).”

One mailbox may let your campaigns fly past filters while another catches your emails in a dystopian digital fly trap.

Honestly, though. This stuff will keep you up nights trying to adjust all the ‘email knobs’ at once.

Start off by keeping it simple. Don’t be your own worst inboxing enemy.

If it feels spammy don’t do it
Let go of subscribers who don’t open your emails
The time you’ve been spending on subject lines→ triple it!
Make unsubscribing easier than you think it should be
Check your ESP for issues delivering to certain mailbox providers
Improve writing skills perpetually— yeah, we’re talking about practice

Closing with Other Inboxing Report Morsels

Factors marketers may not consider when it comes to inboxing:

B2C and B2B are two different animals within email strategies.

You have to consider the audience and Validity’s report notes 2 keys:

B2C targeting is more refined
B2B addresses can be easier to obtain (lower quality though)

Also, ‘B2C dad’ buying your golf balls may do so for 20 years. ‘Bob at Atlassian’ may retire or get fired next month (because he mentally checked out), so B2B email marketing can be a revolving door.

Lastly, the report notes the top 4 email filtering services (in order of usage):

Proofpoint
Barracuda and Mimecast (tied)
Cisco Email Security

Ambitious email marketers looking for an edge in a deliverability-deprived world might do some reading on those company websites. Learn all you can about how they filter emails.

After you wake up from those fascinating reads😐, go back up a few lines and re-read my keep-it-simple bullet points on getting emails to the inbox.

*Validity’s full report has example tactics from top-inboxing brands in specific industries.

More stats and facts below + today’s asap hack.

Knowledge Base

🔥Knowledge is power, but first, walking bennies from Shirtless-Guy.

Update on BIMI support across Inbox Land (who’s holding out?).

🏗Proof the Skyscraper Content approach still works (Exhibit 1-2-3).

Buzzword battle→ Omnichannel vs. Multichannel.

🛒Hubspot lists 4 consumer behavior shifts {2023}.

Self Help

Lots of layoffs happening.

At 21, I got fired from my first job.

Wasn’t that hard either😅.

Being a statistic sucks, but does prep you for never being one again.

Sharpen your skills, kiss butt, start your own business… whatever it takes to avoid the firing squad.

“Your daddy stared adversity in the eye, Hardy. And he beat it back with a broom.” ~The Legend of Bagger Vance

*Shout-out to Inbox Hacking Subscribers →

🏡Adam at Pineapple (Mortgages)

💽Adelina at RedBee (Software)

Facts and Stats

1 in 6 legit, permission-based marketing emails fails to make it to the inbox (Validity)
Survey: 48% say a product being made by a small business makes them more likely to purchase (HubSpot)
Only 8% of U.S. adults have ever visited a metaverse

From Our Sponsor

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They’re changing the game.

Their software enables brands to know when subscribers are in their inbox while triggering an email that generates a 50% – 70% open rate→→ with no decline in click-to-open rates💥.

The best part? (((Besides insane open rates & increased click volume)))

Inbox Mailers integrates with almost all major ESPs to easily and instantly fire your triggered email, using your ESP, from your domain at the time your subscriber is in their inbox.📩

🆓Book My Demo

Marketing Musings

Some of you who are further from drawing Social Security may not know this.

Big-time musical acts used to make ridiculous demands – just to test how a venue would work. Like requesting only green Skittles in a triangle-shaped serving dish.

These weren’t whacko or pretentious superstars. Rather, a test to see if the little stuff would be done right. Which says plenty about how the big stuff is handled🤯.

This principle holds true in your email campaigns, sales letters, blog posts, etc. Get the little stuff right and your readers will trust you on major details. They’ll choose your content over a million other options.

Here’s a quick 3-step process from CopyBlogger to gain trust.

Get Hacking

Hunt that Easter Egg Holiday campaign you already sent (or most recent email).

Got your hands on it?

Good, now toss that email to all those who did not crack it open (⭐ if you sent it over 3 days ago).

Go ahead. Don’t let all my egg puns and those easy opens go to waste.

*Know another brilliant email marketer? Please forward this newsletter to them (thanks for reading).

📝Please take survey below. Benefits residents of Okay, Oklahoma battling mediocrity.