Name: Deliverability Academy: Peak Season, Fewer Answers
Uploaded: 2026-10-14T16:16:18.655Z
Duration: 1 h 1 min 20 s
Description: Deliverability Academy: Peak Season, Fewer Answers

Transcript for "Deliverability Academy: Peak Season, Fewer Answers": Good morning. Good evening. Good afternoon. My name is Thomas Steberg Canarian, and you are watching another email deliver... Deliverability academy. Say that five times fast. Ladies and gentlemen, I've got some amazing people. First and foremost, we are missing one person right now, but they're gonna make it in here. We're having some audio issues, but we'll get to that in just a moment. So first and foremost, I'm joined by my favorite people, and I call these my favorite people. Why? Well, today, I wanted to have a discussion to talk about Black Friday sending, getting ready for the peak season, and also Google postmaster tools and all that fun stuff. But I'm talking about my favorite people, all these folks in here and also other guests that's gonna be coming here in just a moment. All these people have taught me everything about deliverability. They're my mentors, and so I want them to talk to you folks about getting ready for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, all that fun stuff. So that's why we're doing this. So starting from the top, this was a lot of her concepts. All this creativity and all this amazingness comes from her. I would like to give a massive shout out and introduction to our own Allison Goody, the deliverability advocacy advocacy specialist over at Century Milga. And, Allison, what's going on? How's it going? Good. I only have, like, five nightmares about this exact thing happening, so I'm glad to make my dreams a reality, but thrilled. to be here. okay. And thank you guys all so much for joining and for being patient while, while we got things together. Really appreciate it. All good. All good. Katie, so good to see you. So good to see you. Awesome. Ladies and gentlemen, you're gonna have a really fun deck today, so I'm excited for you to see this. Also, moving on down the line, shall we? The host of Email's Not Dead, our own podcast here at Mailgun, Jonathan, JT Torres, the TAM manager of our technical account managers over here at CenturyLink. JT, what is going on today, man? How's it going in the office? It's going it's going okay in the office. I'm just hoping the connection holds out because with all the technical issues, that's the last thing I need is the Internet to go. But, yeah, I'm excited to join you here. I'm excited to join you with all these lovely people. It's some of my favorite group too. I I won't mention any nicknames right now. I should have put my own nickname in my in my, in my little, nameplate here. But, you know, yeah. Thanks thanks for having us, man. I'm I'm just excited to... Again, these folks are the highlight. I'll I'll just add some, you know, additional comments here and there. So I'm just glad to be part of the convo. Awesome. Awesome. And then moving down the line to one of my oldest coworkers and good friends, a mentor of mine, always. We like to call him the original daddy of deliverability, deliverability daddy, mister Nick Schafer. Nick, how's it going, my man? You just couldn't you just couldn't avoid that that awesome infamous, nickname. I stayed away. I can't. You taught me everything about. deliverability. How how... You are the father to my deliverability. So Hey, man. It's always fun to to get together with you and and these other, folks for for the webinar today. Just to chitchat about email, see if I can still teach you a thing or two, Thomas. But, yeah, it's it's been it's been fun. You mentioned you... We... We've been working together for a while. It has been a while, and we're we're still going strong, and I'm I'm looking forward to to this one today. Hopefully, we can keep the technical issues till after the webinar. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Alright. Let's see if this is gonna work okay. Mister Gurley, I hope you can hear us loud and clear. My good friend, our good friend, actually, mister Brad Gurley, director of deliverability over at Customaro, our good colleague and friend that we've known for so many years now through our Mog organization and all that. Brad, good to see you. Hope you can hear us loud and clear. How's it going, my man? Yes. Yeah. It is great to see you and hear you finally. Yeah. I don't know if y'all heard. I'm the I'm the problem child this morning. So, technical technical seems to be all up and running now. I think we're all good. So, yeah, I'm I'm excited to be here, excited to actually hear and be heard. So, yeah. Thanks so much, guys. Awesome. Awesome. That that makes me happy. Okay. Look at their amazing faces. There they are. Awesome. Look at them. They look amazing. Amazing. Okay. And then just a real quick... Just showing you what we're talking about. Yeah. Peak season fewer answers. Also, I'm gonna see if I can... Let me see here. Make myself a little bit smaller. We'll get to that in just a moment. But, yeah, so peak season for your answers. Getting ready for Black Friday, Cyber Monday. House centers prepare, monitor, and troubleshoot when mailbox providers give them less certainty. So... Okay. Also, just to remind everybody, we'll be talking about q and a. So if you have any questions for that stuff, please do that in the q and a tab on the far right hand side. We'll be, making sure we answer those questions toward the end of the webinar. I also highly encourage you to upvote the ones that are more pertinent to the subject because we wanna make sure we stay on topic, and there's gonna be, lots of lots of fun stuff we talk about today. So, okay. I am gonna mess with this for just a moment, make sure we're all seen. There we go. I wanna make sure we could all be seen because we've got a lot of amazing people in here. So... Okay. Let me send that up. Alright. So Gmail's reputation score. Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Was one diagnostic. We had some major changes this year. That was we we went from v one to v two. Right? Gosh. I don't know how many years v one was out, v two. Now that we've got this rolling, it's gonna be... It's been interesting. So, and, yes, someone wanted to know, is the recording going to be sent out? Yes. Check your inboxes later in the day, and you'll receive that. But back to the topic. So, yeah, Gmail's reputation score is one diagnostic, not the entire diagnosis. So, yeah, there's a lot of things we could be using to obviously be tracking your sends. But I wanted to talk to our folks here, especially, I want to actually ping on, Allison. Allison, so this peak season, you know, we're getting ready for it. A lot of these gauges are changing. What do you think is gonna be the main takeaway, or just where do we need to start essentially to get ready for this peak season as we, you know, get ready? Yeah. Good question. I think one big theme today is definitely going to be keeping in mind each sender's individual goals. You know, we work with a lot of different types of senders who may be doing marketing sends, transactional sends. They may be developers. And so, you know, the marketing advice may not necessarily be the same for a transactional sender. So I think before you start sending at this super busy time of year where everyone is doing the same thing, it's a good idea to sit down and think about what you actually want to accomplish this season because if you're just working on receipts, maybe versions, you know, you need to think about how you are catering to your customers to help them make a better informed purchase. You wanna make sure that you're keeping in mind the entire picture of what each recipient is dealing with because your mail is super important to you, but maybe the... For the meals. What do I... Then because I'm sure you have leadership saying, like, send more, you know, send to the whole database, dig as far back as you can. And, you know, it's a lofty goal, and I understand of risk at this time of season. There's a huge reward, but there's also the potential to really hurt yourself. And so I'm hoping that, with our group of experts here, we can really the scoreboard that just said, like, hey. You're in the Got. You're. in the yellow. You're in the green. There's a lot more to think about than just this one score. And so this was a little bit of an unpopular opinion when this first came Or is, like, the be all and Yeah. Trying to trying to follow the actual colors and... Yeah. It's it's it's it's definitely, trying to keep in mind the actual art and science of deliverability. So, okay. It looks like, ladies and gentlemen, we're having our own connectivity issues again. Goodness gracious. So, yeah, we're gonna try and make sure, we try and get as much through this as we can today. Bear with us with this connectivity issues. Let me see here. It actually might be our own, IT Wi Fi that we're having issues with, so bear with us, ladies and gentlemen. Okay. We're gonna try and get through this as much as we can. Okay. So what we wanna talk about, I'm actually going to throw this one over to JT here. So as we move on, let's talk about what changed and what remained. So, JT, what was... Let's just start from the top. What did Gmail remove? Well, you see it on the screen. It's a lot of the the the, domain rotation, IP rotation. I think that the biggest thing though is that that colors that color coded shorthand. Right? Like, I think everybody had relied on that for so long just to, you know, take one quick look at the, the the Google Postmaster tools and go in there and see, like, okay. I'm green. Okay. I'm yellow. Okay. I'm I'm red. And we can kinda see why they would have done that, in in a way of people being too reliant on that color and then just kind of reliant on that color being, the one way to get a quick glance and then assume that things are going okay without looking at the rest of the information. So, and and that, you know, cleanly brings us into what remains, which is that we do get those signals still. Right? Like, what's the complaint rate? What's the spam rate? What's it looking like for our own authentication and sending into that platform specifically? Like, we have all the other platforms we should also be worried about, but we wanna make sure we're we're noticing what's in there. So, there is a lot of those things that that is, you know, a lot of things that remain, a lot of things that are still there, a lot of new, ways to look at that information and looking at the the analysis of the way things are going, which is awesome. Like, I I like the tool. I know it's been an adjustment for everybody, so just, you know, heads up. You know, know that that that's a thing, that that has changed, and and taking a good look at it and understanding that information is also really good to do. But I think most importantly, you know, having that nice clean look go away is definitely a little painful. I get it. But keep keep an eye on those things. Like, looking at those things constantly, seeing what's there, understanding those new... The new ways of getting all that information is definitely helpful. It's definitely one of those things that we're encouraging everybody to do. That was quick, but I think it covers most of what we got here. Unless anybody else has anything else to say about it. I think, Nick actually wanted to say something about that. Oh. Yeah. Like, I mean, I I can echo what what JT said. You know, particularly the part, like, people just kind of relied on that. It was an easy thing to to check-in real quick, the the color, the reputation level. But what I really wanted to chime in on was, like, the remaining information. Like, there's a ton of data for senders to be reviewing. The one I particularly like and, have always used all along and I think senders should focus on is what are the mailbox providers actually saying? And you can find out what they're saying by looking at those SMTP responses. That's where you should be digging in. That's going to answer a lot of your questions. It makes sense. Right? I'm trying to send something to someone and I get a response back. Well, they're probably giving you a a hint or an inkling of of what's actually going on. So, yeah, pay pay close attention to the data you have. Sure. The the reputation, you know, colors and and, levels were easy to use, but all of the data is still there. Brad, hit me with your take. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. So the one thing I would add to that too is that, you know, lean on your ESP. You know, if you're using a Mailgun or a customer IO or whomever, like, your ESP is gonna have visibility into not only what you're seeing in in PostMaster tools, but also those live metrics, even maybe some behind the scene things, maybe some of the server responses that are coming back. And we know that Gmail is really, you know, the bulk of most customer lists. You're looking at, you know, anywhere 50 to 60, 70% for some customers. But that's still not your whole list. So there are other providers there that are gonna have some other data, and your ESP will be able to help you get a more, kinda holistic picture of what you're seeing with those metrics. Love it. Love it. Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Okay. Now let's talk a lot about preflight, shall we? Okay. Next slide. Alright. Awesome. Massive shout to Goody. Look at... I always love these illustrations that she comes up with. Oh, it's just so amazing. Alright. So preflight. What does normal look like? Okay. Four peak volume makes every chart weird. What should assemblers establish? Alright. So we're talking those baselines. So even I was trying to establish baselines, getting ready for this webinar, trying to get this campaign ready, trying to figure out who my... You know, what was the healthy baseline that, you know, created my best metrics for this? Guys, which baselines do you think should we be pay... Excuse me. Should we be paying attention to? Judy, are you able to... See if you can give us a a a good take on this one. I'm so sorry. Can you hear me better now? think so. I think we're good now. Love the... If on the Internet... So fun. Anyway, I... And, again, they're gonna be individual to your business. That's something that I was trying to say before. Apologies if that didn't conclude... Come through clearly. But, basically, it... It's gonna really depend on what your goals are, and so I think it's really important to take a look at how your recent performance has been trending. If you've been already having, deliverability issues leading up to the Black Friday, Cyber Monday holiday season. It is probably not a great time to take big risks and reach further back into that database that may be riskier. I also think since we were using kind of a color coded reputation score as our baseline previously, maybe try to think about what those numbers actually reflected in your own first party metrics. When you were having a high reputation at Gmail, what were you doing that led to those things, and can you keep doing those things as we are entering this holiday season? I think one thing to really keep in mind is that complaints... Spam complaints are a huge negative indicator about your messaging. It's going to be underreported, especially in Gmail. Gmail may give you a complaint rate. They're never going... Cleaners were, so you will never be able to unsubscribe those people. So if you are sending to just recent engagers, in mind that at Gmail... May actually... No idea. So pay very close attention to your baseline complaints. And if you see an increase in those, know that it's time to take a step back and reconsider what you've been doing. Gotcha. Gotcha. Some good some good baselines there. Any, any last comments on those baselines? Brad. Brad had one. Yeah. Actually, a quick one. I would just note that... And I think you did allude to allude to this a little bit, Gud. But, look at your engagement cohort. So like you said, if you're looking at those kind of, you know, red, yellow, green, if you wanna use... You know, maybe the red folks are the folks who didn't engage, you know, in the last ten months. Or, you know, maybe yellow is folks who didn't engage in six months, and green is the ones that engaged in three months. So look at those different levels of, okay, what have people... Where have people been engaging, and how has that been either holding steady or changing? And do that before you go into the season because what happens a lot of times is folks will say, well, here's my overall, you know, engagement rate for everyone, And then they add in a bunch of new unengaged contacts that just tank everything, and they're really not seeing a difference between their engaged contacts. They can keep kinda targeting and and really kinda leaning on those folks, whereas the unengaged are pulling down the overall aggregate metrics. So look at those individual, you know, segments, individual groups of recipients that you're sending to by engagement, to help establish those baselines as you're going into it. Next. Yeah. I wanted to... So I was reading the chat. I know I shouldn't be reading the chat because it's distracting, but I was, and it it reminded me of something. So I'm gonna I'm gonna point it out real quick, and then we can move on to the next one. But, I spend a lot of time these days working on on the abuse side, keeping our platform free of things like spammers. That's the chat that, someone just kinda reminded me of. Whenever changes happen with these different providers, it's usually because of spammers. Yes. Most changes in the email industry are because of spammers. I like to think I have a job because of spammers because we, like to keep them off the platform. So one of the things I was going to say is, you know, we're establishing baselines and everything. But one thing that also increases during this time of the season is bad activity. Make sure your forms are protected. Look at, sign ups. You don't want your sign up list or or the list that you're sending to to be infected with, poor addresses. That's always a good one that comes to my mind. You wanna build a healthy list, and and bots are a thing that will go out and sign up on forms. So keep, keep a close eye on that as well. Awesome. Thank you, Nick. Alright. Okay. Cool. Let me see here. Alright. So moving on. So let's talk about some of these next situations, and then Allison's gonna come back and join us. Okay. Cool. Alright. So peak season changes more than volume. So, yeah, so centers really change one variable at a time. So you could... Frequency rises, dormant audiences are returning. Yeah. I think we're all doing that right now too. Getting ready for the holidays, shopping around, sign up for list right now for your partner. You know? Like, I'm trying to get those deals, you know, trying to see what I can do now before, you know, Black Friday and Thanksgiving and all that fun stuff. So, yeah, then you gotta get creative in your targeting, your timing, your your infrastructure all shift inside the same short window. Gentlemen, before Gritty comes back, JT, comments on this. Yeah. All the comments. change too much. Yeah. Yeah. You you can't you can't change everything all at once. Like... And I think that that's also the hard thing to do. Right? It's it's, it's something we have to be very cautious of to not do, but at the same time, it's it's under a lot of pressure to actually make a lot of those changes very quickly. And I I love that it's, you know, that that those top two are are always the the big thing. Right? You wanna increase the amount of sending that you're doing, but then also, at the same time, you're trying to bring in this older audience or audience that is, you know, maybe removed. Right? And this is this is the way I always frame it for everybody. Like, you do wanna bring in people that maybe haven't been around since last year's, you know, annual holiday sending. Maybe they were engaged, like, you know, as far as ten months back, and you removed them from your list. Great. That's awesome. That's what you would have been asked to do, you know, by the person you're consulting with, you know, the the... Who who you're looking to for advice on on what to do when you're when you're talking about an engaged audience. Can you bring those people in? Yes. You just gotta do it now. Start doing it small pieces at a time. You can't do it all at once. You can't just decide, like, hey. This is the send that I'm gonna do. I've been sending, you know, three messages a week now for, you know, the past two weeks, getting my holiday sending in check and ready, and then, bam, you you bring them all in at once. And you should not do that. Like, as you start increasing sending, as you start looking at that dormant audience, you need to bring it in a piece at a time. And and, yes, that then stacks the amount of changes that you're doing, but it also helps, you know, very... Do it in a very metered way where you're bringing in that small percentage of those... That dormant audience as you... You're starting to increase that frequency. And you can't just increase from 1¢ a week to 5¢ a week. Like, you have to do that gradually as well. So everything is gradual. Everything is metered. That just helps build that resiliency as you continue to grow that. So, you know, that's something to keep in mind. It's something that you're doing and that if you're not doing it today and you haven't started already doing that, start doing it now. You know, again, you can't go to that high super high frequency, and then you... I... I'll leave it there. There's more advice to come. I I don't wanna spoil the next slides, but this is something that you start thinking about and you have to frame it in this way so that you're not doing too many things at once. But... Yeah. I... I'll I'll throw it up to Brad, who I know has, some comments on this too. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. So, you know, like everyone else on this panel, you know, we've seen a number of, you know, the holiday season, come and go. And this is a pattern that we see every year, particularly when you're dealing with a larger customer set, and especially if you're dealing with any kind of shared IP infrastructure. You have to be especially cautious of that because, you know, if you are on shared IP space and you do go adding, you know, increasing frequency, bringing in, you know, lapsed recipients, you know, being more aggressive with your messaging, those things are gonna compound. And if you're sharing IP space with other customers, there's a potential that you're going to negatively impact, you know, the performance of that pool for that ESP. So when they come to you and say, hey. We're seeing these negative metrics for you. You need to have a clear understanding of, okay. What exactly did I change? When did we start seeing these changes? So you can, you know, either revert those changes or ideally not run into those in the first place. Write it down, y'all. Logs. Make a log, please. Yes. I think I myself need to make my own log. Alright. Okay. Cool. Let me see here. Alright. Moving on to the next one. Okay. Scenario one. Okay. Volume rises. Gmail performance falls. The decline begins during the biggest promotional push of the year. Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Overall, delivery remains stable. Gmail clicks and conversions fall while other providers look less affected. And she's back, ladies and gentlemen. Gooty, where do you think we should check first? I don't know. I think you need to to and what you are sending. And I also think this gets lost a lot, but your individual subscriber's entire experience... Because, for example, if someone has just signed up for your list to get holiday deals, are they now entered into your, like, welcome automation and then they're also getting your potentially twice daily deals emails? What does that experience look like for them, and how does it feel as, you know, person you're looking at dollars. And to them, they're opening and going, oh my god. These guys I'm ever given an email address to. So definitely check for that each person is getting, what their prior engagement has been like, if you're doing marketing messages, what their purchase history has been like. It's a personal pet peeve of mine to make a purchase and then get a coupon the next day, and that is such a trap that marketers fall into during the holiday season because it's like more deals, more deals, more deals because you're, you know, riding the line all the way up until Christmas and beyond. And I think that can feel a little bit abusive to the recipient. You know, they... They're like, I feel like an ATM right now, and I'm I'm just one lady with a wallet that's not really... They're gonna keep trying to milk me like that. And so I think you definitely need to check at your own behavior because I think we get a little bit obsessed about this equation where we're looking at what happens after the equal sign and forgetting about all the, you know, the formula that you put together to get to that result. And so I think we we always need to start with, you know, with our own selves before we think maybe Gmail changed, maybe the filters changed, maybe the algorithm has done something different. Like, you've probably done something different, so I think we should definitely check inside first. The call has come from inside the house. Yeah. 100%. 100%. Check inside. And Alright. Okay. and I do think when it comes to that, like, I think, you know, in this group, I'm sure, like, a lot of the audience too is, like, in the email space. Right? Like, we're we're really focused on the email side of it. This is one of the things that I think we talk to customers a lot about, that it's not just email. You have to think a little bit outside of that too. Because when we talk about that sign up flow and and what's going on, there's opportunity to put messaging right within that too. Right? Like, if I'm gonna send out a coupon, knowing that my email program sends out a coupon for a certain discount, I should be able to tell the person on sign up, like, hey. Hold off. We're gonna send you an email, like, you know, look look for that coupon. Right? And some flows do that. There's a lot of things that, you know, proactive. We've been all all on those sites, right, where it's a, you know, sign up for a 10% off coupon. But if I go to the sign up page knowing that I've, you know, maybe changed or adopted or, like, the the holidays are coming and that's gonna change what I'm sending out to customers on that first one. Like, I I can proactively let them know. So looking at what your website is doing, look at what you're you're putting in front of the customer as they go through that sign flow is also something you have to evaluate and keep in mind, as the program changes and as things are happening within the email space because, they do work hand in hand. And you can create a very poor customer experience if you're not paying attention to all those triggers and everything that is happening down the line once they hit that sign me up button. Love it. Love it. Okay. And then, distinguish your placement from audience or campaign mix. You want to mark on that one? I can... I mean, I can can add in a little on that one. I think when you're looking at, you know, so many changes, I think this kinda falls back on what we talked about a little bit on the last slide that when you make four different changes at once, it's very difficult to note which of those four changes is having the impact. You know, if you changed your audience and your messaging and your cadence and, you know, the... These other things that you're doing all at the same time, it's gonna make it very difficult. So that's where, you know, fall back on the logs. Make sure, you know, see exactly when the changes happened. You know, if you're sending to folks during holiday season and you know you brought in, you know, a less engaged cohort, start there. You know, that's, you know, 80% of the time, and and that may be a generous estimate. That's where your problem lies. It's the folks that aren't expecting the mail that haven't been getting mail from you. You know, start with that one and and we'll kinda work out from there in a lot of cases. And and that's a point too because what we're... That's the next thing we're talking about. We're talking about evidence. So you're talking we're talking about the logs. So it's like, okay. What's what's... It's what's telling in the actual logs is... It was what your actual evidence is in in what you're actually going to make action on. So it's like, okay. Following the logs, make some changes. There you go. Yeah. I think that last point Brad mentioned solves, like, a lot of the deliverability problems senders are dealing with regardless of what provider we're talking or or campaign, it's it's the targeted audience. If you're mixing in some older, staler data, you know, the quickest way to to improve things is to target those engaged users. So if you look at the flip side of that, you know, yeah, weed out those, less active users. And, yeah, again, what evidence would justify reducing volume? Read the logs. Read the SMTP logs. I know I talked about it earlier, but but it really does come down to that. Like, the the mailbox providers really do try to tell you what's going on before something bad happens. So. take a close look at those, you know, bounce logs. Whatever you call them, it'll it'll tell you something. Yeah. K. Yeah. Look at Santa. He's, like, literally, like, oh my gosh. Like, there's something wrong. I have to... He's looking. It's not a log, but he's making a reactionary... He's making a decision, and that's, what we're talking excellent. the excellent graphics from from Allison again. I love. it. I'm a picture guy. I need pictures. Alright. Moving on to scenario two. Okay. Alright. Postmaster looks fine. Results don't. Also, this situation totally happened to me a few weeks ago. I had a package get delivered to a a complex behind my house, and I had to go search for it. And it was the most aggravating thing ever. And so I feel Santa's pain in this because I feel like he's looking for where this package is supposed to be delivered. So... Alright. Compliance is green, spam rate is low, and delivery areas show nothing alarming. Revenue and engagement are declining anyway. Oof. Alright. So what evidence would support a placement problem? Who's burning on this one? JT, I saw you shake your head. I mean, I think I think it's definitely the stuff that we've we've kinda talked about and touched on a little bit. You know, it's a... You have to look at what's going on. You have to look at those logs. You have to look at, you know, any stats that you can, get from your ESP. Right? And then know... Knowing our platform and knowing the Milgram platform and and exactly what's going on there. I know there's a lot of things that we use as indicators. You know, so everything from, like, temporary deferred messages, to, you know, like, that that open rate kinda falling, it's one of those things that it's... It coincides a lot with the signals that you're getting from that information and what you're doing. So it's hard to say, you know, like, you use this one metric and and you're gonna look at this one thing. It is a thing of, you know, what am I doing? What have I changed? How have I changed it? And what is then the response from that? And what am I... What are the examples I use? And I know... I'm... Hopefully, nobody's doing this exactly, and then, hopefully, we're not stepping on any toes. But, one of the things that we see happen a lot is, you know, you start... You know, normally, you send one message a day, maybe maybe one message every other day or every three days, and now all of a sudden you've increased to this, like, a message every, you know, or twice a day. Right? You... You're wanting to get that frequency. You you wanna hit the customer. You wanna make sure that they know that deals are there. You wanna get to the top of the inbox because, you know, everybody's increasing email. Well, what does that do to your open rate? Right? The open rate is going to fall. Like, the more... You're you're artificially creating this unengaged audience because of the things that you have done. So you need to pay attention to that. Are still people... Are people still looking into that? Am I sending to people who are actually opening that email two, three, four times a day? You have to look at that that behavior. So, you you have to take one with the other, and it can't be isolated for for one thing. So pay attention to what you're doing. Use that as part of the information that you're gathering, along with those signals and indicators that are that are happening from, you know, the logs that you're seeing. Gotcha. Alright, Allison. Any other potential explanations that should be tested or looked out for? I definitely think that the third question, when do you stop waiting for Gmail? Never wait for Gmail. There... If you're, like, opening a ticket with their you're prob anything very actionable on their end. So pay attention to your own follow your gut. If you are seeing signals that make you concerned about your performance, go ahead and dig in deeper. We're not ever oh, here's where you went wrong or looks like this was the we did rely on that score for Gmail, but even the score didn't tell you exactly what to do. And I honestly think one of their new, deliverability analysis tools is a lot more to your emails or people who are not emails, and so that's a little bit more actual guidance. Then you need to dig in again to your own actions, not necessarily what Gmail has been doing, and see what you're doing that gets I definitely think don't don't wait for... And and what you are seeing. Yeah. And never hesitate to reach out like Brad mentioned earlier. Talk to let you know our other peep something going on on the network your results, and they might be able to say looks like you're sending to garbage addresses, things of that nature that give you a little bit something more actionable. But... Yeah. Don't wait. of the things. that... One of the things I also would call out on this is, the spam rate is low piece. I... I've fallen back on this numerous times over my career here. I'll I'll hear it all the time from from customers where they're just like, our our complaints are low. Right? It must mean my traffic is wanted. The messages I'm sending are wanted. But the thing I always fall back to is, well, maybe you have a filtering problem. Users can't complain on messages that are not making it to the inbox. So don't always assume that because your spam rate is low that everything is fine because it's clearly not. So just wanted to add that in there. Yeah. And, you you stole a little bit of my thunder there, Nick. I was gonna say the same thing is that we know that, you know, Currently. spam folders don't get, you know, you don't... You can't mark it as spam if it's already in spam. So that doesn't really help you from that regard. But also, like, we put a lot... And I say we collectively, because I do it as well, put a lot of stock in what shows up on this dashboard. And we also know that there are many times that this dashboard will just go for days without an update, that there will be days that don't show data that we know that things were sent. So I think it's a great barometer. It is a great tool in our in our, you know, toolkit. But, you know, yeah, as Allison said, don't wait for Gmail. You know what you did. You know what happened when you did that. You know, take a look at at that. Look look inside yourself, and I think you'll find the answer within you. I like that. Hell, yeah. Alright. Moving on, shall we? Last scenario, ladies and gentlemen. Alright. Fix it for tomorrow's end. The next major campaign is already scheduled, and your leadership wants a new IP, a new domain, provider escalation, or just any other immediate proof of action. They want you to make a decision today. Yeah. We've all we've all had that conversation. But what can you safely change before that next end? They're breathing down your back. Ugh. Gosh. Who wants to take this one? Oh, I'll I'll take this one. I... Yeah. This, one... you. tell us. We we... I know this one very well. So. this is, this is not an uncommon, uncommon scenario or uncommon, thing that I hear. So, you know, I think whenever you're getting into this, I I completely understand the the motivation for this, especially if you've got, you know, leadership coming down on you and they're like, hey. This is on you. You've gotta fix this. Like, I I get it. You know, I've been in that situation where somebody's like, hey. I don't care what the problem is. Like, you have to fix it and, you know, go through these channels to do it. I think from our perspective, you know, again, I keep harping on this a little bit. But from the ESP side, we've been in that situation. We know where that comes from. So we're not going to... We're not steering you wrong just because we're like, no. We really don't want you to do it this way. Like, the advice that we're giving is gonna be based on what we've seen work. And in this case, you know, any any reputable ESP, I know anybody in this room right now, is going to say, you know, hey. That's that's probably not the best way to handle this. You know, bringing in a new domain, and sending to the same audiences is absolutely gonna flag, you know, at at the providers, Gmail and and others. They're gonna see, hey. We've seen this traffic stream coming from this domain for six months or a year or whatever, and now all of a sudden it's the same traffic, but it's all on this other new domain. That looks like a fish to me, you know, or that looks like something that that somebody's trying to scam folks by, you know, leaning into a reputation that that this sender has has established. So, you know, a temporary blip or a temporary kind of drop in your reputation, is stressful, especially during the holidays, but taking the drastic action like that is actually gonna make it worse. I have... I can think of one very specific, you know, holiday centric, sender that I worked with that ran into that situation. They changed infrastructure despite, you know, kind of advice to the, to the contrary, and it took them six months. You know, they they tanked in the middle of their holiday season and ended up having to spend a total of about six months getting their reputation back to kinda prep for the next holiday season. And they went through just this type of process. Like, they they switched out a domain. They're like, hey. We're just gonna keep sending full volume, switch out domains. You know, not only is that... Does that not work, but it gets you flagged. You know, that is that is more of a red flag for all the receivers to say, hey. Not only is this not necessarily performing the way we want, people are not reading it, the marketing is spam, but also this seems like a bad actor. Like, this seems like somebody who's actively trying to do something that that we don't want, and they're more likely to block it as opposed to just routing to spam or maybe a temporary issue there. Sorry. I get a little heated about that one. That's a very, very, very personal topic could hear. the passion. So... We could hear that. There's a passion in that one, Brad. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But but, we also. I it's it's because of that. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead, Gooti. sorry. I think I finally fixed my problem. So sorry, everyone. I I think, one, Brad, I love your passion. Totally agree. I think people need to remember that anything new that you're doing that you think is, like, so new and cool and exciting, it... You're not gonna be familiar to someone who has a very full inbox right now. And so if you're thinking, like, rebranding, new domain, we've got this new crazy, like, color scheme. Are people gonna recognize you when they're flipping through their inbox and seeing their email? Is it going to be enticing to them? Because I have heard the argument for, like, oh, you know, new domain. That'll get eyeballs on it. Or I even got into a LinkedIn argument about this the other day about adding, a personalized from name. You know, someone was like, oh, I saw this email, and I just wish they would have put, you know, from Bianca at the bookstore. And I'm like, I don't I don't know Bianca at the bookstore. I know the bookstore. And so if this is... If you decided that you wanna make some kind of experiment to, like, get more opens, why? Like, do you wanna trick people into opening your email, or do you want them to actually take some kind of an action? And so this is not really the time for experimenting with, like, new crazy things that you heard about that are great for engagement. This is the time to do the stuff that you know is going to work. And if you are compelled or, you know, forced to try something new, this is a great time to keep track of everything you have been changing and then track the results too so that you can say, you know, next month or, I guess, in January or February, hey. Here's what we did, and here was the direct impact of that. It worked really well or it didn't work very well at all because it's so easy for people like Brad and JT and Nick and even you, Thomas, to sit here and say, like, oh, that doesn't work. But a lot of times, the senders need to see that firsthand for themselves, and their own evidence is going to be the thing that makes that case. And so if you're being asked to do something risky and fix it before tomorrow's send and you just need to say, like, yeah, boss. I'm on it. Write down everything that you're doing and track it so that you can make that case. And, you know, maybe something is going to go really well and you're gonna have a great time, but maybe it's a learning experience that's like, let's not try that again. Yeah. I I was kinda getting... You know, mentioned a little bit about that too because, you know, it... It's a... It's definitely something that we see. Like, we have that experience, like, same same way Prad was saying that, you know, we we get the other side of it. Right? We were working with customers who, have been told by, you know, their boss, by the CEO, by, you know, people that are saying like, hey. You... We gotta make this work. Right? This is the lifeblood of what we're doing and how we're doing it. It it has to work. And and changing things is... Sounds like a great idea if you're not experienced with an email, but it... It's not. So many times we're talking about going slow to go fast. You know, doing things that you're gonna scale back a little bit, like focusing on engagers, like, do the things that you know you should be doing, and then you get the opportunity to to start building on that again. You know, a lot of times when we see those issues, it's it's it's those warnings, you know, that that Nick was talking about earlier that the the ISPs themselves are saying, hey. You're doing something wrong. They want you to slow down. So if you don't slow down, if you try to do things that are gonna go around all those warnings, if you're gonna go around what they're trying to get you to do, it can only cause much more problems. So, so, you know, so we get it. We we empathize with everybody. You're like hearing you. We're we're... You know, we hear from this side, but, it's definitely one of those things where, you know, as as much as we would want to advise, like, hey. Go ahead and do these things, make massive changes. We have seen it fail and fail and fail. So we just wanna make sure that, you know, we're we're communicating that to everybody knowing you... Like, giving you that warning that, hey. It's probably not gonna work out. So this is this is what we've seen. Yeah. This is one that, we all have talked on this one, and I know we need to move on, but we're all passionate about this. I'm just gonna close this with the fastest way to make a deliverability problem harder to diagnose is to change your infrastructure in the middle of it. It's just not a good idea. It's like it's like trying to change landing gear, tires midair. It's like let's let's not do this. Even though no one would do that, but, like, still, just don't do that. Alright. Alright. Moving on, shall we? Alright, y'all. So all those scenarios. So it's like, okay. After all that, which signals are gonna change the plan? So monitoring only matters when it changes what you do next. So peak traffic is underway and the evidence is mixed. We could either hold, we could continue, or good on the narrow path. Continuing. What would be what would be continuing, I guess, what? Continuing your actual plan that you've been doing for your strategy? Getting that expected... Yeah. Yeah. I I mean, I I think everyone is, like, prepared to take some risks during this season. One one thing I wanted to mention earlier and couldn't, is that I think it would be really helpful for you to sit down with your team. And if you're a one man team, sit down with yourself and say, like, here are the things that I'm prepared to deal with, and here's what I'm gonna do when I get to this point. Because when you're in the heat of the moment and you really need to send more email and you're... You wanna take those gambles, it can be so tempting to say, like, just one more email. Let's just see how it goes. But you should set those parameters ahead of time. It's like, hey. If I see a complaint rate like this or if I see conversions tank to this level, I need to stop what I'm doing. Or if I see this, I... I'm free to continue because it's hard to make those decisions when you're in that heat of stress and competition. So I I think if you are prepared to deal with a little bit of degrade in deliveries or degrade in your bounce rates or, an uptick in complaints, define that ahead of time so that you're not having to wiggle about it, like, later and have a big meaningful discussion in the middle of the stressful time of year. So, anyway, I I think an expected variation is if you know you are taking a risk and you are prepared to shoulder that risk, you know you're reaching out to an unengaged database and you know that you're going to see a decline in those engagement metrics, that's an expected variation. However, you may wanna pull back on that when you're getting to that point that you have previously defined as being kind of the danger zone for you. And, I mean, I think, personally, in my personal life, I am very much a fan of, like, well, let's just keep going and see what happens. But when it comes to your deliverability, it can take a really long time to recover from a misstep. And so I I think everyone should be very careful. I like to think of it as, like, you have a frozen pond and you just wanna step out one little step at a time. You're not just gonna race to the middle of the pond and be like, oh, hope that worked out. So make these variations small and controllable so that they're easy to peel back should you need to do that. So, anyway, your expected variation can be something that you have previously defined. I know I'm gonna reach out to these folks that haven't heard from me in a while. I don't expect a ton of stuff to happen from them. You can continue down that path if you are still in a comfortable area, but you may want to pull back on that stuff when you are seeing trouble start at an... At a range that you are uncomfortable with. Gotcha. Gotcha. Alright. Now which audience stream or provider would you isolate a panel? I... Somebody in the questions was asking, like, is Gmail the most important? This webinar is primarily about Gmail because we did lose that reputation signal. And to be clear, most senders' audience is primarily Gmail. If they're in a b to c type of situation, Gmail just is the largest provider, so it's a good one to focus on. If your ESP gives you reporting on a a per mailbox provider basis, then you don't need to necessarily isolate them as far as traffic goes. I mean, the traffic is already separated because Gmail, Microsoft, Yahoo, they're not, like, sharing notes about what they got from you. But it may be helpful to isolate, you know, previous purchasers or app users or people who just signed up so that you can track how they are doing as they are receiving this mail from you during this time. So I don't think you necessarily need to isolate the providers. But if you have meaningful cohorts or, like, customer profiles, it would be helpful to isolate those so that you can measure how they are performing, when you are, you know, taking these kind of samples. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. And then hold, Nick. Yeah. On this one, like, what evidence justifies reducing or pausing volume? Again, those SMTP logs like Google. I I don't have them offhand, but, I've I've read these logs so many times. They will literally tell you, we've detected this message as spam. They may say something about your sending domain or IP. If you're seeing that, you should absolutely 1000% hold and figure out what you did wrong, and and work towards fixing that. You should not continue sending messages whenever they're flat out rejecting them, for for reasons they're stating. I think I think Brad might have had something on this one or maybe one of the other. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. But I think for me, it really... It leads into all of them, I guess, but hold more specifically is, you know, since we are focused on Gmail and and PostMaster tools here, you know, look at that spam rate chart. There's a reason there are two lines there. Like, the point three is the one that everybody sort of focuses on. They're like, oh, my spam rate is is always below point three. I don't have a problem. You know, but there's also a separate line at point one, which says, hey. This is an area that you should start paying attention to this, essentially. So that's like... They... They've said, you know, sort of unofficially and sort of given indications that filtering does start when you hit that point 1% spam complaint threshold. So if you see that your, you know, if your spam complaint rate is always right at that one, you know, that point 1%... Sorry. Not 1%. If it's 1%, we're not talking. But point 1%, and it stays steady even as you increase volume, do things, then great. You're probably okay there. If you see it start to go, you know, spike up above that, even into that point two territory, that's a cause for concern. You know, it doesn't have to go above point three. Above point three is kind of like the plane is on fire and is now, you know, headed down into the icy cliffs. So you need to be you need to be paying attention before it gets to that point. And the other piece, you know, again, falling back on the ESP and and a little bit on on Allison's point there is that, no. All of those providers are not talking to each other. So you might be having, you know, different performance at Yahoo, Microsoft, Gmail. I'm your ESP. I can see all of them. And I can see how they're they're kind of interacting. And I can see, hey. If I see a pattern that looks like, you know, maybe no one, signal is glaring red, but all of them are very orange, then I can probably call that out to you and say, hey. Maybe you need to take a pause before you even see anything that shows up as a as a huge red flag on your end. When Gmail was doing their updated sender requirements, what was that, like, 2024, they've edited it several times now. But when they said, like, keep your complaints below, you know, 0.03 or whatever, they had said keep your complaints as close to zero as possible. And I'm like, that's the life that everyone needs. to see because everyone immediately is like, oh, cool. So I can get to point whatever. No. Keep it at zero. You don't have... There's, like, not a ton of leeway here because that spam complaint is the strongest negative signal that someone can say, I do not want this. And, you know, to that point, sorry, I wanna get to the q and a, but I I think we need to keep in mind that if you're sending transactional mail, you do not have a free pass to the inbox. You do not have spam folder immunity. Just because you are not legally obligated to include an unsubscribe link does not mean that it's going to protect you reputation wise. If people cannot unsubscribe, they will report your mail as spam. So if you're sending out, like, a big terms and conditions update this time of year, first of all, do not recommend. Second of all, just because your legal team says that something is, like, legally considered transactional, does not mean that your recipients care at all about what your legal team has said. Their their experience has nothing to do with that. So always keep your user in mind what their experience looks like. Are they going to be excited to get this mail? And if not, make it easy for them to not get it anymore. They don't care about your legal obligations, and they do not have a similar obligation to enjoy your email just because you have to send it. Got it. Alright. We've got three minutes, and we got three slides. So last two slides. Alright. After landing, what do we keep? Alright. So the promotion ends, the volume drops, and Gmail performance begins to recover. Now the team must separate actual recovery from seasonality, audience exhaustion, and lower volume. So what? After you do this in maybe, what, January 5 or something, which temporary changes should be reversed y'all? Oh, any of the ones that were dangerous and you don't think went that well? Or if you have, like, a seasonal product... Like, I have a million of these cups. I don't need more of them. Like, if I bought a cup at Christmas, you don't need to send me about cups every single day. Or if you sell cars, you don't need to try to sell me a new car every single day. So if you were temporarily blasting the crap out of your audience to sell more stuff, Keep in mind that come January, maybe they don't need more stuff, and it's time to pull back on that. Love it. Love it. Yeah. Now probably what coincide with the audience, and, you know, what decisions you make for the rest of the year and, determine your next baseline from then. Yep. Yeah. 100%. I definitely think, you know, everyone is going to be increasing that cadence. They're they're trying to do, like, six days of deals or whatever. We don't need the six more days all in our outcome January 5. You know? We're, like, sick of it. So it's time to pull back on that. And as far as the evidence that becomes next year's baseline, like I talked about earlier, keep a close eye on what you have done and what those outcomes are so that that evidence becomes what you can talk about when the next holiday season rolls around. Gotcha. Yeah. And. and and I think one of the things too is is that when you talk about things to keep, if you did bring in some of the audience that was previously engaged and you did get some that, you know, became engaged that maybe, you know, bought products again and do those kind of things, Those are okay to keep and reintroduce into your flow. Just be careful with what you're doing with them. There's a reason they became unengaged. So, like, pay attention to what you're seeing with that that particular audience, and then, you know, do the right things for them so that you're not just bombarding them with new messages as well. So, I'm just gonna say it. I know I said it a billion times already, but preference centers. Like, preference centers are, your biggest help in that situation. Alright. Last slide, ladies and gentlemen. We're gonna run through this really quick because we wanna take one last question. Okay. I'm actually gonna let Gudy run through this really fast. Okay. Cool. I wish I could talk like the micro machines guy. So, before takeoff, make sure that you establish those baselines per provider, per stream, per audience, anything that's meaningful to your business. Keep track of what you're doing change wise and what the outcomes were. Document those planned changes before they launch and confirm, of course, that you can monitor the outcomes with Google Postmaster tools and your internal reporting so that you can keep a close eye because you're going to see it in your data before it's going to be reflected in Postmaster tools or Microsoft SNDS. When you're in flight, compare trends with other providers. Again, Gmail is going to be probably the largest portion of your audience, and so things may not be totally aligned with the other providers. But keep a close eye on, like, generally, what are opens, conversions, your clicks, your unsubscribes, spam complaints. Keep an eye on those numbers to see if anyone is wildly out of whack. You may be having an issue with that particular provider. Document those changes as they happen, again, so that you can track what the results look like and act based on your own evidence. Again, like the Gmail Postmaster tools, the Yahoo Sender Hub, the Microsoft SNDS, those are great tools directly from the provider, but they're not perfect. They can have bugs. They can be slow to update. Your data is the best source of truth. And after landing, unwind those temporary changes one at a time. You don't wanna make a huge mass of changes all at once because you're going to have a really hard time figuring out which things move that needle. Review the outcomes after the volume returns to normal. Are you back to where you want to be? And save some of those decisions and baselines for next year. You always have time to think about this and experiment again. We've got twelve whole months to see what was working and what isn't before we have to do this again. Thank goodness. Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Alright. We're gonna take one quick question, and then we gotta let everyone roll for the day. Alright. Let me see here. And if my panelists see one before I do, give me a holler. And I do see... I don't know if we wanna maybe group a couple of questions together. There are three or four questions about, like, subdomains, like, using a different. domain or a subdomain. Does that is that one that you wanna maybe tackle? Yeah. Let's talk about that real quick. Yeah. So I'll I'll chime in here since I'm... I'll try. I know. we're right at time. Yeah. So I think a lot of what we talked about here is that, you know, reputation is tied to what you're sending. It's not just your root domain. It's not just your subdomain. It's the pattern of everything that you're doing, your infrastructure, your IPs, your domains, your branding, your, you know, your URLs. Everything in your message has kind of a fingerprint, that that, you know, the providers will see that identifies you. So changing one of those things, midstream, is not necessarily gonna be a good thing. We did talk about a little bit earlier that that can actually throw up some view signals, that it can look like you're fishing or a bad bad actor. But I'll I'll hand off to some others. I don't wanna take over anywhere. Yeah. I think I'll I'll pick up on that, sort of there. Like, because it's it's one of those things that if you do use a new subdomain, like, that that can be okay, but you have to make changes, with what you're doing. You can't just use a new subdomain and think it's gonna fix that problem. You have to, you know, pay attention to what it was going on, see what those signals were, you know, look at any kind of evidence that you can find for that, and then making... Make enough significant changes that it's not gonna impact that new domain because otherwise, you're just gonna end up in the exact same boat. Last remarks? Goody, Nick? I would say on this one, I would say that, the providers aren't gonna give away their secret sauce. So, like, to answer the question directly is kind of impossible. But there could be things, signals from messages, from emails, like a subdomain might carry over, and it might be used, for for a separate stream on a a different subdomain. I'm not saying that a 100% because, again, we don't know. We don't know the secret sauce. But to JT's point, fix what caused the problem in the first place. 100%. I also... Yeah. We can't give away the secret sauce, but I do want you guys to keep in mind, like, we have a thing in the industry. Look like a spammer and get treated like spam. And so if you're considering doing techniques that a spammer might also choose to do to evade detection or overcome a reputation issue, don't do that thing. The the whole point of building a sender reputation is that you are standing on who you are and your own behavior. So if you make a mistake, no big deal. That doesn't mean scrap your whole identity and start over. It means you need to recover. Your sender reputation is your regular reputation, and so you need to just be consistent and dedicated to doing the right thing over time. Gmail would rather see you improve and make a sustained improvement than have to assess a brand new subdomain and figure out, are you the same person that was giving us trouble before? Do we trust you? Are you not trustworthy? It is always going to be easier and quicker to recover a poor reputation than to start one from scratch when you're... When you already have a bad one somewhere else. Love it. Love it. Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Okay. That is all the time we've got today. First and foremost, I wanna thank our amazing speakers for being here with us. Thank you for bearing with us, with our technical difficulties today. But most importantly, we had an amazing time. I had an amazing time. I know our panelists had an amazing time. So, I'm gonna go around the room. I'm gonna start with... We're gonna go with Gudy, and then we'll go with Nick, then JT, then Brad. But, please, my panelists, please share where they can follow along with you to follow along with everything you got going on in the email world. Yeah. Absolutely. I post on LinkedIn every week. Allison Gooty follow me there. Happy to connect. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. I love talking about this stuff. I probably need a real hobby. I also have a mail gun blog called the bounce house. And so I I write about all kinds of stuff over there, so feel free to give that a Google. I also post that on LinkedIn as well, but I would love to connect. Nick? Yeah. Same thing. Find me on LinkedIn and, send a message. Did you? LinkedIn, I'm not super active on there posting stuff, but I do respond, like, when people message me. So, feel free to connect there. And then also, Email's Not Dead, the podcast, that wonderful shirt Thomas is wearing. So, yeah. Look us up there. And girly. Yeah. And I am also on LinkedIn. Feel free to find me, message me. Trying to put more content out there. May have a little website update coming up in the near future, but, yeah, check out on on my, LinkedIn or on the customer.io. Awesome. Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, make sure you check out customer.io. Check out Mailgun. Check out Allison's blog post, the bounce house. Check it out. It's super awesome. A lot of fun. Check out our podcast, Email's Not Dead with JT and I, and check out anything that we do. So ladies and gentlemen, thanks for hanging out with us. We had a lot of fun today. We'll see you real soon, and, be good to each other out there. Alright? Take care. Thanks, everybody.