Melissa seideman: Today I'm not another email company. I have someone I'm really excited to you to meet. Alyssa works at Kit and is an expert on email deliverability and all things email. I promise you're gonna walk away with something you can use before the episode even closes. Alyssa, welcome to the show.
Alyssa Dulin: Thank you so much, Melissa. I feel like I only podcast with people whose name is similar to mine. I don't mean for that to happen, but it just happens.
Melissa seideman: That's funny, yeah. So explain to our users what does deliverability actually mean? Why should a small business even care about it? What's that? Why is that even important?
Alyssa Dulin: Yeah, it's a great question. I usually start by explaining the difference between delivery and deliverability because I think it actually helps us understand what deliverability is. So an email, whenever it gets sent, it goes from the the sender, which in my case often is kit. it can be another mailbox provider, but it goes from the sender to the receiver, which is often like Gmail, Microsoft, Yahoo, one of those providers. And so when Kit, for example, attempts to send the email to Gmail, we usually get a 250 okay message. That means the email is delivered, a thumbs up essentially. That's email delivery. Is did the email get accepted by Gmail or did Gmail bounce it? We've all seen those messages that say, This was undeliverable, the email doesn't exist, or something like that. So that's delivery. But after Gmail or whoever accepts the message, then they get to go do whatever they want with it. And that's deliverability is did the email go to the inbox or did it go somewhere else? And one of the hardest parts about deliverability is that there's no way really for the sender to know. So there is no metric. There is no reporting back where Gmail says, hey, we put that email you sent in the inbox or we put it in the spam folder. You only find out really from your subscribers or from testing things yourself. where the email landed. but with delivery, you do know. You know, was it delivered or did it bounce? but what happens after delivery is the harder part to figure out.
Melissa seideman: Awesome, that's great. yeah, you want to make sure those emails end up in not in the spam folder. So we're gonna talk more about that in a little bit. As someone opens, have been quietly if someone's open rate has quietly been declining over months, what is the first thing you should check? Like what should people be checking for?
Alyssa Dulin: Yeah, that's a great question. One of the first things I look at personally, if someone writes to me and says this is happening, if your email provider will let you dig in to open rate by provider, that's one of my first places I look. So for example, I want to know: are opens dropping across the board or are opens dropping specifically with a certain provider like Gmail or Microsoft or Yahoo? That can clue me into. Is there a reputation issue happening with one of the large providers? And then I can continue to dig in. Or is it more of just the list is going kind of stale over time? Maybe they're getting a little burned out, which are kind of different problems to solve. So in kit, you can do that in the subscriber engagement section in deliverability. There's a lot of clicks to get there, but you can filter an open rate graph by provider, which is really helpful. But then another thing I would often do is send some test emails. We don't do anything super fancy at Kit, even on our deliverability team. We just have some, we have a Gmail test address, we have a Yahoo test address. We have, you know, just kind of a Microsoft test address. And I like to just shoot out an email to all of those and see what's going on. so if I notice the email went to spam at any of those places, that's typically my next place to dig in. I say, okay, we might have a reputation issue going on here. What have complaint rates looked like at those different providers if I have insight to that data. If people are complaining, meaning marking the message as spam. Is there any trend I'm seeing? For example, I see a bunch of people marking the message as spam and they've been getting an email a day, you know. So there it's like maybe the frequency is just a little too much. that's just one example of sort of where my brain goes when I'm looking into these things. But I'm sort of trying to find the story behind it. So What exactly is the data telling us about the subscriber behavior and what could be tweaked to improve open reads?
Melissa seideman: Yeah, that's like one of the first things I check when I check a client's account. I look for emails, they're using a paid domain email, if their DNS
Alyssa Dulin: Mm.
Melissa seideman: records are done properly. and all of those are really important to make sure they don't end up in the spam. What can you do if you do end up in the spam inbox or not landing in the primary inbox? What can you do to get out of that jail?
Alyssa Dulin: Yeah, I think the most important thing is figuring out the why because the solution looks completely different depending on the why. So I'm glad you just mentioned like the domain email address or the authentication, are the DNS records set up properly? Because if you're going to spam and that's your problem, like the DNS records aren't set up properly, cleaning your list is not going to help you at all. That has nothing to do with it. Or vice versa. if your your DNS is set up properly, But your list is really cold and you go mess around with DNS records, it's just gonna make things worse. So that's one of the biggest mistakes I see people make is they don't know what the problem is. And so they just sort of start trying to solve it on their own, or they use one of the like free email tester tool kind of things that usually flags a bunch of stuff that doesn't really matter, unfortunately. and it sends people down the wrong pathway pretty often. So what I would do is try to find the route. cause. And I think the best way to do that is to reach out to someone like you, Melissa, or someone like me if you use kit. We have a deliverability team fully staffed who can help you figure out what's going on and solve it. So my first tip is kind of like don't don't try to DIY this. however if someone really does want to DIY it, a lot of times especially like a Gmail will give you a banner at the top of the message that tells you why they put it in spam. If it says anything about you not being authenticated or not being a trusted sender, things like that, that's usually pointing to a DNS or authentication issue. And you could reach out to your email provider and essentially tell them what's going on. They can help. If it says something like poor reputation, or this looks like emails that have gone to spam in the past, that typically means there's a reputation or a content issue happening. And I would dive in again to complain. Complaints and engagement of your subscribers. Are people marking it a spam? Are they opening? what's going on there?
Melissa seideman: One thing I learned at the Kit conference, which I loved by the way, was that
Alyssa Dulin: Yay.
Melissa seideman: we should have I've always been telling clients to have double opt-in on, but I learned at the Kit conference you don't necessarily need to have double opt-in on as long as you are cleaning your list accurately and like very often basically. is that is that still true?
Alyssa Dulin: Yeah, I would say I take more of an it depends approach to opt-in confirmation emails, which might not be the most popular advice, but from what I've seen, and one reason why I feel confident with kit customers doing that is because of the amount we've invested in bot protection, which is really the biggest risk when it comes to not having double opt-in turned on, is that spammers might flood your form with invalid email addresses that look like these crazy bot email addresses. That does really harm deliverability and reputation. And it's something that used to be a huge problem. it's still is a huge problem for most people. I would say kit has done a really good job at figuring out how to fight that. And so if someone is using a kit form directly embedded in their site, they're not using like some third-party form service. I feel good about them turning off opt-in confirmation emails because again, we have that really robust automatic bot protection. And it's going to show a recapture if we think someone might be a bot and it won't show it to people who look like they're not bots. and then if they can't complete the recapture, they won't be added to the list. So it's really good at fighting bot signups. and then another caveat is if you're gonna turn off your double opt-in, your opt-in confirmation email, I just say make sure you're someone who actually like logs into your account, glances at your list every now and then, make sure you don't see anything crazy coming through. and that you're someone who cleans your list often just in case people are coming in and they weren't super high quality subscribers, you don't want to just keep them on your list forever and ever. So as long as you're doing all of those things, you're using kit forms, you manage your list, look at your list, and clean it fairly frequently, then I say you're probably fine without it.
Melissa seideman: And clients come to us all the time wanting to clean their lists, so we do clean clients' lists for them. And there's great automations
Alyssa Dulin: Nice.
Melissa seideman: you can get in kit that do the list cleaning for you. It's automatically done, which is pretty awesome. But some clients have us do it also. any if any listener does one exact thing after this episode to protect email deliverability, what would you suggest?
Alyssa Dulin: Ooh, okay, this is my my favorite one, which is to boost replies. I say it all the time if anyone has heard me talk before. It's kind of this secret sneaky tip for deliverability. because essentially what determines your reputation is how people are engaging with your emails. We're all pretty familiar these days with like algorithms, social media algorithms. And so it's a very similar, honestly, situation with deciding what goes to the inbox or the primary tab or with the promotions tab or the spam folder. in order to get your emails to land more in that primary tab. and also just to really boost your sender reputation, highly recommend getting your subscribers to reply to your emails. and one of my favorite ways to do it that anyone could go try right now for free. It's free for seven days. And if you like it, then we can email about it. But I built essentially like DM automation but for emails and I've been using it for my own newsletter and my open rates have gone up so much since I started. but what it does is I'll include something in my newsletter like if you want me to send you the podcast episode reply to this email podcast and I'll send it right over. And then I use my tool to listen for replies where someone replied podcast and it will automatically email them immediately. And say, hey, thank you so much for applying. Here's that podcast you asked for with the link. so that has been a really big boost personally for my own deliverability and highly recommend checking it out. Yeah.
Melissa seideman: What is the tool name?
Alyssa Dulin: Yeah, it's send gage s e n d g e dot com. and anyone, again, all you have to do is go put in like create an account and you could try it for seven days and see what you think. But I have found it to be extremely helpful.
Melissa seideman: Send gauge. Okay, I'll make sure it's in the show notes. That's wonderful. last question. If I could tell your sixteen year old self, if you could tell your sixteen year old self one thing, what would you tell them?
Alyssa Dulin: my gosh. I love this question so much. And I, of course, have been thinking about it since you sent it ahead of time. And I feel like I'm thinking about it so deeply, probably too deeply. Cause I'm like, well, if I say that, then it might change my whole life trajectory. And like, I love my kids and you know, I'm like, I love my life. I don't want to change it. But I would say in general, I would I think my advice would be like to lean in more to my creative side. I think as a 16-year-old, I was very caught up in classic 16-year-old things. And then when choosing my career, I didn't have many examples of people doing careers that are more creative or entrepreneurial. I thought you just had to like be a doctor or a teacher or a lawyer. So I went to school to become a teacher. And I did not love teaching. obviously I'm here today, which it all worked out for me, and that's great. But even as now I'm an adult, I'm realizing that I am more. creative than I've let myself be. And I'm trying now to tap into that more. We actually just had our kit retreat in person and we had a kit house band and I volunteered to play the drums. And I ended up the last night of our retreat, like doing a performance in front of everyone and drumming. And it was so, so, so much fun. obviously I'm not a professional, but like I did an okay job. And I was just like, I wish that like I didn't let myself do things like that as much. As a teenager, I was very serious. So I think I would just tell sixteen year old Alyssa to like go have some fun and be creative.
Melissa seideman: That and as entrepreneurs you have to be creative and think outside the box, so that's really great. how can we
Alyssa Dulin: Exactly.
Melissa seideman: find more information about you? How can we connect with you?
Alyssa Dulin: Yeah. So I'm all a little all over the place. I would say LinkedIn. I post there every now and then, mainly about what I'm kind of learning at work. I'm trying to work in public a little bit more on LinkedIn. I am on Instagram and I've started to try to post more about kit things, email things there. It used to just be kind of me posting about my kids, but you can check me out there. It's Alyssa dot doolin, I believe. and then threads, I think has been a fun little place that I've been talking, bit more about deliverability. So all those places, feel free to connect with me and would love to chat.
Melissa seideman: What is your podcast name also?
Alyssa Dulin: yes. So I have a podcast with my coworker, Melissa, the other Melissa. and it is called Deliverability Defined. We've been on quite a hiatus because we've both kind of been alternating having kids, but we wanna come back ASAP. We have a few episodes that have not been released. So stay tuned there if you want to go subscribe.
Melissa seideman: Wonderful. That's awesome. Well, that's a wrap on today's episode of Not another email company. Thanks, Alyssa, for being the podcast on the podcast. If it gave you something to think about, something to test, or just remind you the email's worth showing up for, share it with a business owner who needs to hear it. You can find me at non-anotheremilcompany.com and I will see you next week. Thanks so much for tuning in.
Alyssa Dulin: Thank you.
Alyssa Dulin: Thank you so much, Melissa. I feel like I only podcast with people whose name is similar to mine. I don't mean for that to happen, but it just happens.
Melissa seideman: That's funny, yeah. So explain to our users what does deliverability actually mean? Why should a small business even care about it? What's that? Why is that even important?
Alyssa Dulin: Yeah, it's a great question. I usually start by explaining the difference between delivery and deliverability because I think it actually helps us understand what deliverability is. So an email, whenever it gets sent, it goes from the the sender, which in my case often is kit. it can be another mailbox provider, but it goes from the sender to the receiver, which is often like Gmail, Microsoft, Yahoo, one of those providers. And so when Kit, for example, attempts to send the email to Gmail, we usually get a 250 okay message. That means the email is delivered, a thumbs up essentially. That's email delivery. Is did the email get accepted by Gmail or did Gmail bounce it? We've all seen those messages that say, This was undeliverable, the email doesn't exist, or something like that. So that's delivery. But after Gmail or whoever accepts the message, then they get to go do whatever they want with it. And that's deliverability is did the email go to the inbox or did it go somewhere else? And one of the hardest parts about deliverability is that there's no way really for the sender to know. So there is no metric. There is no reporting back where Gmail says, hey, we put that email you sent in the inbox or we put it in the spam folder. You only find out really from your subscribers or from testing things yourself. where the email landed. but with delivery, you do know. You know, was it delivered or did it bounce? but what happens after delivery is the harder part to figure out.
Melissa seideman: Awesome, that's great. yeah, you want to make sure those emails end up in not in the spam folder. So we're gonna talk more about that in a little bit. As someone opens, have been quietly if someone's open rate has quietly been declining over months, what is the first thing you should check? Like what should people be checking for?
Alyssa Dulin: Yeah, that's a great question. One of the first things I look at personally, if someone writes to me and says this is happening, if your email provider will let you dig in to open rate by provider, that's one of my first places I look. So for example, I want to know: are opens dropping across the board or are opens dropping specifically with a certain provider like Gmail or Microsoft or Yahoo? That can clue me into. Is there a reputation issue happening with one of the large providers? And then I can continue to dig in. Or is it more of just the list is going kind of stale over time? Maybe they're getting a little burned out, which are kind of different problems to solve. So in kit, you can do that in the subscriber engagement section in deliverability. There's a lot of clicks to get there, but you can filter an open rate graph by provider, which is really helpful. But then another thing I would often do is send some test emails. We don't do anything super fancy at Kit, even on our deliverability team. We just have some, we have a Gmail test address, we have a Yahoo test address. We have, you know, just kind of a Microsoft test address. And I like to just shoot out an email to all of those and see what's going on. so if I notice the email went to spam at any of those places, that's typically my next place to dig in. I say, okay, we might have a reputation issue going on here. What have complaint rates looked like at those different providers if I have insight to that data. If people are complaining, meaning marking the message as spam. Is there any trend I'm seeing? For example, I see a bunch of people marking the message as spam and they've been getting an email a day, you know. So there it's like maybe the frequency is just a little too much. that's just one example of sort of where my brain goes when I'm looking into these things. But I'm sort of trying to find the story behind it. So What exactly is the data telling us about the subscriber behavior and what could be tweaked to improve open reads?
Melissa seideman: Yeah, that's like one of the first things I check when I check a client's account. I look for emails, they're using a paid domain email, if their DNS
Alyssa Dulin: Mm.
Melissa seideman: records are done properly. and all of those are really important to make sure they don't end up in the spam. What can you do if you do end up in the spam inbox or not landing in the primary inbox? What can you do to get out of that jail?
Alyssa Dulin: Yeah, I think the most important thing is figuring out the why because the solution looks completely different depending on the why. So I'm glad you just mentioned like the domain email address or the authentication, are the DNS records set up properly? Because if you're going to spam and that's your problem, like the DNS records aren't set up properly, cleaning your list is not going to help you at all. That has nothing to do with it. Or vice versa. if your your DNS is set up properly, But your list is really cold and you go mess around with DNS records, it's just gonna make things worse. So that's one of the biggest mistakes I see people make is they don't know what the problem is. And so they just sort of start trying to solve it on their own, or they use one of the like free email tester tool kind of things that usually flags a bunch of stuff that doesn't really matter, unfortunately. and it sends people down the wrong pathway pretty often. So what I would do is try to find the route. cause. And I think the best way to do that is to reach out to someone like you, Melissa, or someone like me if you use kit. We have a deliverability team fully staffed who can help you figure out what's going on and solve it. So my first tip is kind of like don't don't try to DIY this. however if someone really does want to DIY it, a lot of times especially like a Gmail will give you a banner at the top of the message that tells you why they put it in spam. If it says anything about you not being authenticated or not being a trusted sender, things like that, that's usually pointing to a DNS or authentication issue. And you could reach out to your email provider and essentially tell them what's going on. They can help. If it says something like poor reputation, or this looks like emails that have gone to spam in the past, that typically means there's a reputation or a content issue happening. And I would dive in again to complain. Complaints and engagement of your subscribers. Are people marking it a spam? Are they opening? what's going on there?
Melissa seideman: One thing I learned at the Kit conference, which I loved by the way, was that
Alyssa Dulin: Yay.
Melissa seideman: we should have I've always been telling clients to have double opt-in on, but I learned at the Kit conference you don't necessarily need to have double opt-in on as long as you are cleaning your list accurately and like very often basically. is that is that still true?
Alyssa Dulin: Yeah, I would say I take more of an it depends approach to opt-in confirmation emails, which might not be the most popular advice, but from what I've seen, and one reason why I feel confident with kit customers doing that is because of the amount we've invested in bot protection, which is really the biggest risk when it comes to not having double opt-in turned on, is that spammers might flood your form with invalid email addresses that look like these crazy bot email addresses. That does really harm deliverability and reputation. And it's something that used to be a huge problem. it's still is a huge problem for most people. I would say kit has done a really good job at figuring out how to fight that. And so if someone is using a kit form directly embedded in their site, they're not using like some third-party form service. I feel good about them turning off opt-in confirmation emails because again, we have that really robust automatic bot protection. And it's going to show a recapture if we think someone might be a bot and it won't show it to people who look like they're not bots. and then if they can't complete the recapture, they won't be added to the list. So it's really good at fighting bot signups. and then another caveat is if you're gonna turn off your double opt-in, your opt-in confirmation email, I just say make sure you're someone who actually like logs into your account, glances at your list every now and then, make sure you don't see anything crazy coming through. and that you're someone who cleans your list often just in case people are coming in and they weren't super high quality subscribers, you don't want to just keep them on your list forever and ever. So as long as you're doing all of those things, you're using kit forms, you manage your list, look at your list, and clean it fairly frequently, then I say you're probably fine without it.
Melissa seideman: And clients come to us all the time wanting to clean their lists, so we do clean clients' lists for them. And there's great automations
Alyssa Dulin: Nice.
Melissa seideman: you can get in kit that do the list cleaning for you. It's automatically done, which is pretty awesome. But some clients have us do it also. any if any listener does one exact thing after this episode to protect email deliverability, what would you suggest?
Alyssa Dulin: Ooh, okay, this is my my favorite one, which is to boost replies. I say it all the time if anyone has heard me talk before. It's kind of this secret sneaky tip for deliverability. because essentially what determines your reputation is how people are engaging with your emails. We're all pretty familiar these days with like algorithms, social media algorithms. And so it's a very similar, honestly, situation with deciding what goes to the inbox or the primary tab or with the promotions tab or the spam folder. in order to get your emails to land more in that primary tab. and also just to really boost your sender reputation, highly recommend getting your subscribers to reply to your emails. and one of my favorite ways to do it that anyone could go try right now for free. It's free for seven days. And if you like it, then we can email about it. But I built essentially like DM automation but for emails and I've been using it for my own newsletter and my open rates have gone up so much since I started. but what it does is I'll include something in my newsletter like if you want me to send you the podcast episode reply to this email podcast and I'll send it right over. And then I use my tool to listen for replies where someone replied podcast and it will automatically email them immediately. And say, hey, thank you so much for applying. Here's that podcast you asked for with the link. so that has been a really big boost personally for my own deliverability and highly recommend checking it out. Yeah.
Melissa seideman: What is the tool name?
Alyssa Dulin: Yeah, it's send gage s e n d g e dot com. and anyone, again, all you have to do is go put in like create an account and you could try it for seven days and see what you think. But I have found it to be extremely helpful.
Melissa seideman: Send gauge. Okay, I'll make sure it's in the show notes. That's wonderful. last question. If I could tell your sixteen year old self, if you could tell your sixteen year old self one thing, what would you tell them?
Alyssa Dulin: my gosh. I love this question so much. And I, of course, have been thinking about it since you sent it ahead of time. And I feel like I'm thinking about it so deeply, probably too deeply. Cause I'm like, well, if I say that, then it might change my whole life trajectory. And like, I love my kids and you know, I'm like, I love my life. I don't want to change it. But I would say in general, I would I think my advice would be like to lean in more to my creative side. I think as a 16-year-old, I was very caught up in classic 16-year-old things. And then when choosing my career, I didn't have many examples of people doing careers that are more creative or entrepreneurial. I thought you just had to like be a doctor or a teacher or a lawyer. So I went to school to become a teacher. And I did not love teaching. obviously I'm here today, which it all worked out for me, and that's great. But even as now I'm an adult, I'm realizing that I am more. creative than I've let myself be. And I'm trying now to tap into that more. We actually just had our kit retreat in person and we had a kit house band and I volunteered to play the drums. And I ended up the last night of our retreat, like doing a performance in front of everyone and drumming. And it was so, so, so much fun. obviously I'm not a professional, but like I did an okay job. And I was just like, I wish that like I didn't let myself do things like that as much. As a teenager, I was very serious. So I think I would just tell sixteen year old Alyssa to like go have some fun and be creative.
Melissa seideman: That and as entrepreneurs you have to be creative and think outside the box, so that's really great. how can we
Alyssa Dulin: Exactly.
Melissa seideman: find more information about you? How can we connect with you?
Alyssa Dulin: Yeah. So I'm all a little all over the place. I would say LinkedIn. I post there every now and then, mainly about what I'm kind of learning at work. I'm trying to work in public a little bit more on LinkedIn. I am on Instagram and I've started to try to post more about kit things, email things there. It used to just be kind of me posting about my kids, but you can check me out there. It's Alyssa dot doolin, I believe. and then threads, I think has been a fun little place that I've been talking, bit more about deliverability. So all those places, feel free to connect with me and would love to chat.
Melissa seideman: What is your podcast name also?
Alyssa Dulin: yes. So I have a podcast with my coworker, Melissa, the other Melissa. and it is called Deliverability Defined. We've been on quite a hiatus because we've both kind of been alternating having kids, but we wanna come back ASAP. We have a few episodes that have not been released. So stay tuned there if you want to go subscribe.
Melissa seideman: Wonderful. That's awesome. Well, that's a wrap on today's episode of Not another email company. Thanks, Alyssa, for being the podcast on the podcast. If it gave you something to think about, something to test, or just remind you the email's worth showing up for, share it with a business owner who needs to hear it. You can find me at non-anotheremilcompany.com and I will see you next week. Thanks so much for tuning in.
Alyssa Dulin: Thank you.
