This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Welcome to another episode of Side Hustle School. In this one, we're gonna tackle the challenge of email deliverability. What does that mean? Well, it means it's hard for emails to get through, especially on newsletters. If you have a newsletter list, which you probably should, if you have an online business, you definitely want to be collecting emails, much better than social media because with social, there are these algorithm things and often people never see your posts, plus the whole nature of social media can be fleeting.
So for years, decades now, people have talked about how important it is to have an email list, but an increasing challenge is that people sign up and then they don't actually get what they have signed up for. It goes to a spam folder or a promotions folder, otherwise out of their line of sight, or sometimes it doesn't go anywhere at all. So people sign up, but they can't receive your messages. What can be done about this? We're gonna hear from Aaron in Nevada.
He has been writing a newsletter on tech and is increasingly frustrated with this problem. And I hear him, or at least I'm gonna hear him along with you in just a moment. But I hear the frustration because this is a big challenge for lots of people these days. Open rates, which is an important metric. Like if you've got a newsletter list, you're sending it out to a thousand people.
What's the percentage of people who actually open the email? Those have just gone down and down. And so what can we do? Well, there are a couple things you can do. And it's not just about radical acceptance.
You know, just kind of accepting the things you can't change. There are a couple things that will help. So let's talk about it. My subscribers aren't getting my email newsletter. That's the challenge.
Detailed question and my answer in 30 seconds. [Music]
This is Aaron from Reno, Nevada. I've been running a newsletter on tech innovations for about a year now. Lately, I've been facing significant challenges with email deliverability affecting my engagement rates. As a longtime listener of your podcast, I'm seeking your advice on how to improve email deliverability and ensure that my content reaches my subscribers inboxes consistently.
What would you suggest? [Music]
Hey, Aaron, thanks for the message. This is definitely a challenge for a lot of email marketers or really anyone who's building an email list. And if you're selling an e-commerce product, if you're doing a coaching service, if you're doing pretty much anything aside from maybe some technical projects or maybe something else, but really, you know, the majority of online projects, if you're trying to make money and trying to sell to people over time, then you really want to have an email list. Like you don't need to be on 12 social media accounts, but you should have an email list.
That said, this can be a challenge. So that's probably why you see a couple of things happening as a consumer. Like when you get emails from companies, they say things like, hey, you know, add this to your address book, like add our email address to your address book. Or sometimes they ask you to reply because that creates engagement or to click a link. That's also engagement.
The more engagement, the better the deliverability. And, you know, once you start engaging with emails that are sent to you, then Google or whatever email program you're using tends to know, okay, this person actually wants to get this. So that's the first thing. But as a sender, you want to have a consistent sending schedule. You want to let people know what's coming, especially when they sign up.
You know, like right when they sign up, you're like, hey, here's what's happening. I'm gonna send you this message on this day. Well, you know, most likely there's one right now, and then there's gonna be one tomorrow or next week or whatever it is. You also want to clean your email list regularly. Now, what do I mean by this?
I mean, you want to remove inactive subscribers who haven't opened or clicked your emails in quite a while. This is hard because you're like, oh, why would I want to like take subscribers off? And I wish I had done a better job at this a few years ago because, you know, I kind of had that mentality of like, oh, I might as well keep people on. Maybe they'll open it at some point, but your deliverability rates are gonna go up if you take people off who, you know, for six months you've been sending messages and they're not opening them. Basically that person has moved on.
They're never seeing the messages. They're always going to spam. Maybe they have a new email address, whatever it is. And so you can easily identify who those people are in a tool like ConvertKit or MailChimp or whatever you use. And, you know, feel free to email them one more time and say, hey, I'm gonna take you off the list unless you respond.
And that can actually generate some engagement, but most likely it'll help you have better open rates and such moving forward. And so maybe the last thing is to segment your audience, tailor your content to different groups based on their interests. That in turn leads to more engagement, which creates better deliverability. A few tips for you there, Aaron, good luck. Keep building that email list.
Definitely don't stop. I do think it's an important strategy in 2024 still. So keep going. Listeners, if you've got a question, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Much more to come.
New episode every day as we are now in the 2600s. This one in particular is episode 2601. Thanks so much for listening. My name's Chris Guillebeau. You are listening to Side Hustle School.
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From the Onward Project.
