EmailTrends newsletter 02/21

I’ve just sent (two days ago) the latest newsletter:


The answers or “feedback data” are the basis for the metrics
behind the reports on the performance of email marketing campaigns.
Let’s outline what they are and how they are measured:

two levels of permissions (privacy-related issues)
how user tracking works
how the open rate measurement works

» https://emailtrends.com/news/2021-how-to-measure-email-marketing

The best technical tools are useless if the messages do not reach the
recipient’s inbox. This is where “email deliverability” comes into play:

seed emails
bounce rates
email marketing benchmarks

» https://emailtrends.com/news/2021-how-to-measure-email-marketing

:-:-:

Those who send newsletters often need to setup additional mailboxes
to receive the bounced messages (e.g. bounce@…).

RealSender hosts “newsletter mailboxes” that have been configured so that
they can receive large amounts of emails in a short time, as for bounces,
following the rules to send DMARC compliant emails on behalf of customers:

» https://realsender.com/link/newsletter-mailboxes


It has been more straightforward than the previous one.

On Monday I still didn’t have a clear idea of what to work on.
Then I got a call from an old client’s marketing manager,
who uses Inxmail Professional server, the email marketing platform.

They send out a lot of emails, approx. 400k per week.
She asked me if I had ten minutes to explain some points to her and her colleague:

I thought the answers might be interesting for other people as well
and I already knew most of the contents, I just had to organize them.
The only point I researched was the updated data for the email marketing benchmarks.

It was like knowing exactly where I wanted to go,
with a fairly clear path ahead and everything you need ready in the backpack:
https://emailtrends.com/news/2021-how-to-measure-email-marketing


Oops, I forgot to mention the topic related to RealSender,
the “promotional area” of the newsletter.

Well, it’s related to Inxmail too. At the end of summer 2020, their “Head of Deliverability”
requested that the last customer I’m managing resolve the domain authentication problems.

He suggested to set up a subdomain and use it as both From (sender)
that as Mail-From (also known as bounce/return-path/envelope address).

"When From and Mail-From are identical, we can work with DMARC Policy Reject (strict alignment).
It will relieve the customer's IT massively and the domain is protected against spoofing.

In addition, the customer's root domain would be protected against reputation damage, 
because if for any reason the domain reputation suffers, 
it will have an impact on the entire mail communication in the company. 

I am sure that the Mail Admin will welcome this mail setup. 
It will make his work easier if he wants to protect their domain via DMARC."

Well, it’s a big company (over 20k employees), it took about four months to decide.
The internal IT department requested the changes, but others wanted to keep the root domain in the From.
Eventually, they chose to use the subdomain as the From address, as initially suggested by Inxmail.

Going back to RealSender, we already had a service called “newsletter mailboxes”.
It offered email addresses for bounced messages, under the rsXXX-realsender.com domain.
It was NOT DMARC compliant, because the domain was different than the sender’s email address.

DMARC allows you to send authenticated emails using a sub-domain (such as email.company.com),
and still be able to use the top-level domain in the From: header (e.g. From: offers@company.com).

By asking customers to set up a subdomain, the service became DMARC compliant with “relaxed” alignment:
https://realsender.com/for-email-broadcasters/newsletter-mailboxes/