Hello and good morning! Chase and Jimmy here.

We wanted to kick today’s edition off with a game of true or false. Ready?

Okay, true or false: Deliverability is your ESP’s job.

You might think that the fate of your email lies in the hands of your ESP (and many do). BUT, you actually have more control over your deliverability than your own social media posts.

Those that understand deliverability will win in 2025 and beyond. Those that don’t? Well, we’re here to make sure that doesn’t happen. So gather round because today we’re sinking our teeth into everything you need to know to ensure your emails land a spot in the coveted inbox. We’re talking Google Postmaster, deliverability tests, and quick hacks…

But first, a few goods:

🎙️ New Episode Alert! Email Personalization at Scale: Automating Without Losing The Human Touch

Personalization—it’s more than a buzz word and deeper than a first name.

In this NEW episode of Send It, hosts Jimmy Kim and Chase Dimond pull back the curtain on personalization. They cover all their favorite strategies like dynamic content, behavioral triggers, and segmentation, outline tactics for personalization at scale, and reveal common mistakes to avoid.

And a major thank you to our sponsor AppBrew! Now, without further adieu, let’s send it—Watch the episode on YouTube or listen in on Spotify or Apple.

💡 Knowledge Drop of The Week

Ah yes, the good ‘ole subject line. Arguably the most powerful part of your email and often the most overlooked.

This 140 character line holds the fate of your email and this 7 step process will ensure it hits every time: ⤵️

Mastering Email Deliverability: Tips for Success in 2025 + Beyond

Why email deliverability matters more now than ever before

Before we delve into the technicalities, let’s talk about why email deliverability should be at the forefront of your mind. Simply put, if your emails don't reach your subscribers' inboxes, they won’t be read—It's foundational to your email marketing strategy. In addition, it: 

Ensures Messages Reach the Inbox: Good deliverability means your emails actually make it to your audience’s inbox, not their spam folder.

Protects Sender Reputation: ISPs and email providers evaluate your reputation based on how often your emails are marked as spam, opened, or ignored. 

Maximizes ROI: With higher deliverability rates, your marketing dollars work harder, reaching more of your intended audience and ultimately boosting your revenue potential.

Increases Engagement: Emails that consistently land in the inbox have higher chances of being opened, clicked, and engaged with.

Builds Trust with ISPs: High deliverability signals to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that you are a trusted sender, which can improve inbox placement over time.

Supports Long-Term Strategy: Good deliverability allows you to build and nurture relationships with your audience, which is essential for long-term customer retention and brand loyalty.

Protects Against Deliverability Issues: By focusing on deliverability, you’re proactively working to prevent potential issues like blacklisting or low engagement, which can be difficult and time-consuming to recover from.

TL;DR: No deliverability, no $$$.

Meet Google Postmaster, your new BFF

One crucial tool that many brands and marketers overlook is Google Postmaster. Think of it like Google Analytics—but for email. It’s a free tool from Google that provides invaluable data straight from the source. Just like how Google Analytics monitors your website’s performance, Google Postmaster monitors your email reputation, showing you key metrics like spam complaints, sender reputation, and overall email trends. So you can keep tabs on:

• Spam Complaints: Know when users are flagging your emails as spam.

• Sender Reputation: Track how Google views your sender reputation over time.

• Inbox Placement Trends: See where your emails are ending up (Primary, Promotions, or Spam) and identify patterns to help improve deliverability.

Jimmy’s Simple Test for Optimal Inbox Placement

When it comes to testing, this is the strategy I’ve always recommended:

1. Go to your ESP and look at the breakdown of your audience by email provider. For instance, if your list is 50% Gmail and 30% Yahoo, use these percentages as a guide.

2. Create 10 test email addresses (“seed” inboxes) across these email providers according to your audience breakdown. If you have 50% Gmail, create five Gmail addresses, and so on.

3. Log in to each test account but don’t click, open, or engage with the emails in any way. 

By sending your campaigns to these seed inboxes, you’ll observe where they land: some may go to Primary, others to Promotions or Social, and a few may end up in Spam. This insight gives you a clear picture of where your emails are landing and how different segments of your audience might be seeing your emails.

Optimizing Your Email Strategy

1. Subject Lines and Preheaders: Crafting these with care ensures they’re engaging but not spammy. Avoid excessive punctuation, all caps, and over-usage of emojis.

2. Content and Links: Ensure your content is genuine and the links point to appropriate, well-functioning sites. Avoid linking to unfamiliar domains.

3. Image-to-Text Ratio: Blend at least 40% text with images in your emails. If using images, make certain all text descriptions (alt text) are accurate and descriptive.

4. Understand the Warm-Up Process: Gradually introduce your emails to ISPs with consistent sending habits and merged audience lists. Avoid transactional emails until you're stabilized.

10 Quick Tips for Better Deliverability

1. Monitor your sender name and email for consistency.

2. Use clear subject lines and pre-headers.

3. Limit the use of exclamation marks and emojis.

4. Keep your email content wholesome and free from spammy terms.

5. Ensure full compliance with regulations, like including an easy-to-find unsubscribe link.

6. Regularly prune your lists of inactive users.

7. Protect yourself by creating seed inboxes for testing.

8. Analyze warm-up metrics across various domains.

9. Understand your current reputation through tools such as Google Postmaster.

10. Always test different aspects of your email to improve future sends.

Improving your email deliverability takes time and ongoing adjustment, but with the right strategy, your emails can reach more subscribers and drive more sales. Keep these tips in mind as you refine your approach, and remember—you're not just sending emails, you're building relationships.

🔥 DTC Wins of The Week

The holiday spirit is alive and well—Trending sunflower seed brand, SMACKIN’, launched and SOLD OUT their holiday advent calendars in yes, you read that right, 36 HOURS. 🤯 

And if you’re curious to see what 6,000 Shopify sales in 4 minutes looks like, check this out from Portland Leather Goods. Pretty impressive right? Click through to read the full post and video.

🗞️ Quick Clips

• Building a Resilient D2C Brand Through Channel Diversification: In this latest episode of the 7-Figures and Beyond Pod Greg Shuey and guest Neal Goyal get nerdy on diversifying acquisition channels.

• Can a Saas platform be copied in 24 hrs? Greg Isenberg argues the great Saas repricing coming.

• The Future of Retention Marketing: Relive CRSD ‘24 and watch Chase and I on stage this past September as we talk iOS, deliverability and key insights for email & SMS marketing.

🔍 The Hiring Vault

New This Week:

• Sr. Director of Brand Marketing (Remote): Nutrafol

• Customer Experience Manager (Remote): PrettyLitter

• Marketing Director (Remote): Poppy & Peonies

• DTC Acquisition Manager (Remote): Bulletproof

• DTC Paid Social Media Manager (Los Angeles,CA): Posh Peanut

• Vice President of Brand Marketing (Los Angeles, CA): Fancy Sprinkles

• Senior Manager, Retention (El Segundo, CA): LiquidIV 

• Director of Digital Marketing & eCom (Houston,TX): Shipley Do-Nuts

• Head of Digital Marketing (New York, NY): SBH Fashion

• eCommerce & Digital Marketing Manager (Hybrid, NY): AAVRANI

Last Week:

• Influencer Marketing Manager (Remote): BRĒZ

• Creative Strategist (Remote): TheKiddoSpace

• Director of Retail Marketing (Remote): Liquid Death

• Category Marketing Director (Remote): Hims

• SEO & Content Marketing Manager (Remote) : Northpeak Agency

• Sr. Growth Marketing Manager (Marina Del Rey, CA): Dr. Squatch

• Retention Marketing Specialist (Los Angeles, CA): Fashion Nova

• Digital Marketing Specialist (Beaverton, OR): Nike

• Social Media Strategist (Hybrid/New York): Nestig

That’s a wrap for this week’s edition! We’ve been seeing some exciting movement from your holiday sales already. Keep pushing, you got it.

Thanks for hanging out with Chase and me. If you found this newsletter informative or just fun, share ecomemailmarketer.com with your favorite DTC marketer. Get them to subscribe so they don’t miss out on next week’s rundown.

Remember: Do shit you love.

🤘 Jimmy Kim