SIX TIPS FOR STAYING OUT OF SPAM

On February 1st, 2024, the world is going to change for anyone who sends regular emails to their subscribers. And so today I’m sitting down with our resident Klaviyo and Shopify expert, Claudia Howard. She’s going to explain what’s changing, and walk us through what we’ll need to do to stay compliant.

Listen HERE or keep reading to find out how you can keep your campaigns out of your subscribers’ spam folders.

Understanding the New Requirements

You’ve probably noticed that your inbox is filling up faster and faster lately, and much of what you’re receiving is spam, or worse…malicious phishing emails. So in an attempt to reduce some of the chaos, Google and Yahoo are cracking down on abusive senders. This is actually GOOD for ecommerce marketers, because once the changes go into effect, our subscribers’ inboxes will be much less cluttered (and our emails more likely to be read).

BUT

Only if we take the following steps to verify our sending domains. It’s not hard, but grab a pen because you need to get this taken care of right away.

Who Needs to Comply and Why?

The new rules specify that any marketers sending 5k or more bulk emails a day must be compliant. But even if this isn’t you yet, this is the best practice to follow and will ensure that you don’t accidentally get yourself on the naughty list.

The Deal With Deliverability: What’s A Deliverability Score?

We often talk about email marketing as the one communication channel that you “own”. But did you know that email service providers like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc. have their own algorithms? Each sender is assigned a “deliverability score” based on your recipients’ behavior – how many unsubscribes are you getting, how many spam complaints? What are your click rates?

Obviously, you want your email subscribers to see your beautiful campaigns. But they definitely won’t if you end up in their spam folders! So here are our six recommendations to stay out of Spam folders and in Google and Klaviyo’s good graces.

6 Tips For Staying Out of Spam

1. Double-check that the “from” email address you’re using is your own domain. In other words, not “yourname@gmail dot com” but “hello@yourstorename dot com” or similar.

2. If it’s not, change it!

3. Set up your “dedicated sending domain” sometimes called your “branded sending domain”. It improves your branding in the “from” address in the inbox by removing the sent “via klaviyomail.com” disclaimer. This is setup by using the guide in your Klaviyo account to edit your DNS settings at your domain registrar.

4. Set up a DMARC authentication policy on your domain to keep spammers from “spoofing” you. This authenticates the email is coming from your domain. It enhances email security by preventing unauthorized use of your domain, reduces phishing and improves deliverability. Set this up by editing your DNS settings at your domain registrar. Here’s a link to a free DMARC record generator.

5. Make it easier to unsubscribe by adding an “unsubscribe” button to the bottom of all of your campaigns.

6. Keep spam complaints low – the acceptable threshold for inboxes is 3 per 1000. Use Klaviyo’s benchmark and deliverability reports to monitor your spam complaints and if they exceed the threshold take steps to reduce them. Steps include list cleaning and segmentation.

If any of the above tips has your head spinning, Claudia is an expert on Store Tasker, and for just $95 she’ll get your account set up and in ship shape. This is money so well spent, because once these changes go into effect on February 1st, you can really hurt your sales by failing to comply.

Claudia has already made a training for this and it’s in the Inner Circle classroom, but if you’re not a member yet, we’ve made it publicly available. Just go to www.thesocialsalesgirls.com/stayoutofspam enter your email address and we’ll send you the checklist.

AND…if you have any ecommerce store owner friends, please forward them this post! I really don’t want anyone losing sales just because they didn’t know about these new requirements, or how to comply with them.

Email is so important. In fact, we tell our members that at LEAST 30% of their revenue should be coming from email. So set aside some time, go through our tutorial, and we’ll get through this together!