Since the beginning of the health crisis, we have all received tons of emails from companies talking about Covid-19, remote work, the business slowdown, etc, etc..
This massive number of emails has particularly saturated the messaging service networks of Internet service providers such as Orange, SFR or La Poste.
The difference between ISPs and email clients
Indeed, we should not mix up email clients whose primary mission is to provide access to a mailbox like Yahoo or Gmail and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Orange whose primary mission is to provide access to the Internet. Next comes the possibility of providing access to an online mailbox.
The major difference between ISPs and email clients is therefore the amount of emails a receiving server can receive.
For an email client like Gmail, it can receive a huge amount of emails at the same time. Thus, sending massive amounts of emails to these mailboxes will be less likely to be delivered to SPAM mailboxes (on the condition of respecting good emailing practices, of course).
In contrast to an ISP that is much less likely to receive a huge amount of emails at once.
Usually, it is important to have a clean database, but it is also important to know your database so that you know if you have a lot of ISP addresses.
If this is the case, it will be necessary to set up warm-up phases which consist in sending emails to a small number of contacts and then to increase as you go along in order to familiarize the reception servers of the ISPs with your IP and your domain name to optimize the deliverability of your emails.
This is even more important in this period of Covid-19 because the servers are saturated. Thousands of companies are sending massive emails at the same time. On May 23rd, the servers of La Poste were down because the number of emails sent was too high.
Careful not to fall into the trap!
It is important to keep the relationship with your prospects and/or customers. But avoid unnecessary mass mailings. The reputation of your domain name is at stake.
Segment your contact database
In order to optimize the deliverability of your emails, clean up your database. You will then be able to identify which are your active and inactive contacts. It can be interesting sometimes to relaunch your inactive contacts. But in this period of crisis, it is better to focus only on your active contacts for the moment. We consider contacts as inactive if they have not opened emails for more than 6 months. You can also take into account contacts who have visited your site in the last 6 months, if your emailing or marketing automation tool provides you with this information. This also allows you to delete NPAI addresses. The more up-to-date and active your database is, the better your deliverability will be.
Once your database is segmented, you will be able to send the right message to the right person and eventually to be as efficient as possible at the right time and via the right channel (email, SMS, push notification, etc.). By correctly segmenting your database, you will inevitably improve the deliverability of your messages, and moreover you will be more relevant to your contacts. After all, deliverability is not only impacted by the quality of the database, but also by the behaviour of the contacts.
Indeed, if your opening rates are very low, your reputation will be negatively impacted as you send out more and more emails. And on the contrary, the higher the opening rates of your email campaigns will be, the better your deliverability will be. That's why segmentation has a very important role to play.
