0:02

hello everybody my name is Drew and I'm

0:05

in customer success here at viip cloud

0:09

and today we're going to talk about Mass

0:11

emailing best

0:13

practices and this is a really important

0:16

topic for anybody at all who is looking

0:18

to send emails to lists of people that's

0:21

what a mass email is and uh For Better

0:25

or Worse the days of Simply uploading a

0:28

list and creating an email template and

0:31

sending it off to whoever is on that

0:33

list uh those days are no longer here

0:37

and uh it's all because of trying to

0:41

avoid uh emails spamming emails

0:44

basically so the powers that be you know

0:47

the the systems that manage our inboxes

0:50

are all trying to get those spammy

0:53

emails out of our inbox and so we don't

0:58

want to be identified as spam people

1:00

when we are sending and another thing

1:02

that's important to mention here too is

1:03

that this is uh this is all going to be

1:05

very useful information uh whether or

1:07

not you've sent emails in the past like

1:09

unless you are a like a heavy duty

1:12

marketer who is monitoring all of these

1:15

things and has been doing so recently uh

1:18

there's going to be some important

1:19

information in here for all of you and

1:22

uh so yeah let's uh let's jump into

1:27

it so we're going to be

1:30

heading over here so we got our ask

1:32

emailing best

1:34

practices and so I just kind of covered

1:37

a a decent amount of this actually right

1:39

out of the gate so um basically we are

1:43

looking to not be

1:45

spammers um and whether or not we

1:47

identify as that and basically uh the

1:52

important punchline here that I actually

1:53

didn't mention is the fact that it

1:56

doesn't just affect you the sender

1:58

because that's maybe like thing that

2:00

some people might think is hey I

2:02

actually don't really necessarily care

2:03

that much um I'm going to just kind of

2:06

experiment a little bit and see if I can

2:07

get get some uh results well

2:10

unfortunately the platform VIP Cloud if

2:13

you are not adhering to best practices

2:15

when you are sending emails that will

2:18

reflect poorly on VIP cloud and as a

2:21

result it'll actually reflect poorly on

2:23

the people who use our platform and so

2:27

therefore uh we want to make sure that

2:30

VI cloud is optimized for everybody who

2:33

is paying and a subscriber of our system

2:35

they deserve to have the best

2:37

deliverability possible and so that's

2:39

why we simply can't accept anybody that

2:41

is not going to play by the rules

2:43

mistakes happen we certainly get that we

2:45

are uh we are understanding uh we're

2:48

we're human here but um it's all it's

2:51

important that everybody makes a good

2:53

faith effort to adhere to these best

2:57

practices so um and here I'm going to

2:59

get rid of my uh my image here because

3:03

it's blocking some of the text so um a

3:07

great way of like thinking about this is

3:09

to kind of reverse engineer it and just

3:12

think about what would a spammer do and

3:14

don't do that so for instance spammers

3:17

like to buy big bulk lists of of emails

3:21

people who don't know who they are and

3:23

people who they don't really know who

3:25

those people are they like to buy lists

3:27

of people and send emails cold to them

3:30

and so that's something that we really

3:32

strongly uh discourage anybody from

3:34

doing and we actually prefer people to

3:37

use things like our signup forms and

3:39

collect people who are actually opting

3:40

in and who are interested in receiving

3:42

your content that's a great way to go

3:44

about um about your marketing verifying

3:47

your list is also very important we're

3:50

going to talk about this in more detail

3:52

later on because we have a list of

3:54

verification tool in our system

3:56

available to Enterprise users um but

3:58

there are third parties out there as

4:00

well and so you can uh whether you're an

4:02

Enterprise user in vibecloud or not

4:04

verifying your lists is something that's

4:06

available to you and this is a great way

4:08

to mitigate bounces before they even

4:12

happen uh sending in a consistent way is

4:14

also very important you know spammers

4:16

will buy a big list they'll just send

4:19

all of the emails to those people right

4:20

away and they're just going to have

4:22

spikes in their sending and they're also

4:24

not going to have an even inbound and

4:27

outbound uh ratio uh it's just going to

4:30

be all outbound with them with maybe a

4:31

few inbound emails that come through and

4:34

that is something that you want to avoid

4:36

you want to have a natural flow of

4:38

communication wherever possible sending

4:41

maybe you got a spike if you're sending

4:42

like a a monthly newsletter or something

4:45

but that that's totally fine and uh

4:47

those people are obviously people who

4:49

you've sent to before they open and

4:51

engage with your content so you don't

4:52

have to worry about that uh so you don't

4:55

want a domain Hub so what I mean by this

4:58

is you spammers will churn and burn

5:01

through domains these are domains that

5:03

are not really associated with their

5:05

business in any kind of meaningful or

5:06

traditional way uh and so often we'll

5:09

have people kind of come along and say

5:11

like hey I I'm afraid that my company's

5:13

domain is going to get damaged if I

5:15

start sending emails uh like in a

5:17

marketing kind of a sense on behalf of

5:19

my domain so they just want to like spin

5:22

up a domain and uh that they they've

5:25

never used before and use that for

5:27

sending emails and we really discourage

5:29

people from doing that because that is

5:30

spanning behavior and if you're adhering

5:33

to best practices you really don't have

5:34

anything to fear when it comes to

5:36

sending on behalf of your actual company

5:39

domain and it's actually better that way

5:41

too because you know you're the people

5:42

you're sending to if it's not actually

5:44

your domain and they go to that that

5:46

website that's uh kind of that's like a

5:49

red flag basically um so it really is

5:52

best to uh for your brand to just send

5:55

on behalf of your domain I mean Amazon

5:56

sends on behalf of their domain but why

5:58

shouldn't you so uh this is now this

6:01

next thing here too is actually

6:02

extremely important so you want to make

6:05

sure that your DNS is fully configured

6:08

with your SPF dkim dmark and any

6:11

necessary uh C names or MX records now I

6:14

understand I might be speaking Greek to

6:16

most people here um but basically a good

6:19

analogy here is that this is like

6:21

putting the license plate on your car

6:23

like sure you can jump in a car that has

6:25

no license plate on it and drive down

6:27

the road uh and you will be able to

6:29

drive so just like how you can send an

6:32

email that is not fully that does not

6:34

have its DNS

6:36

authenticated that that email will

6:38

technically be sent but just like how a

6:40

car is not going to get uh to its

6:42

destination without a license plate on

6:44

it and email with without any of these

6:47

boxes being checked is very likely to

6:51

not get to where it's going or it's

6:53

going to have warning labels on it uh

6:55

these are the these these rules

6:57

basically are what tell the email world

7:01

who is allowed to be sending on behalf

7:02

of your domain and it assures them that

7:05

you are not a a spammer or actually in

7:08

this case really like a scammer so um

7:12

yeah definitely we're here to help with

7:14

this so if you're not sure about it and

7:17

you are sending on behalf of a of a

7:20

custom uh business domain um just you

7:23

know reach out to our support team we'll

7:25

be happy to uh make sure that you're

7:27

optimized here so treating spam reports

7:30

very seriously I really can't uh I

7:34

really can't overstate that spam reports

7:36

are one of the most damaging things that

7:38

can happen to you as a marketer um just

7:41

earlier this year in 2024 the uh like

7:45

Google and Yahoo both uh created a new

7:48

policy uh they actually kind of upped

7:50

the strictness of how they uh and the

7:52

severity of how they treat spam

7:55

reports and they said that uh people who

7:58

are like heavier senders like you know

8:00

in excess of about 5,000 emails a day

8:03

cannot exceed 3% of a Spam report rate

8:09

in their sending now I understand that

8:11

most people who are listening to this

8:12

probably don't send in that kind of

8:13

volume but it is still a really

8:16

important signal that we all need to

8:17

listen to that they are only treating

8:21

these with more and more severity as

8:23

time goes on so um in VI Cloud you will

8:27

see if somebody spam reports you so just

8:29

just uh treat that seriously and uh

8:32

reconsider how you handling things if

8:34

you start to see like a trend of spam

8:36

reports coming through and at the very

8:38

bottom here it's actually related don't

8:40

don't be shy about having an unsubscribe

8:42

button in your emails um somebody who

8:45

unsubscribes is basically somebody who

8:48

would have probably otherwise fan

8:49

reported you but they saw you had an

8:51

unsubscribe button they clicked it and

8:53

now they're confident that that you

8:54

won't be reaching out to them anymore um

8:57

because yeah occasionally when I'm

8:58

helping people out I'll hear them be a

9:00

little bit sheepish and shy about

9:02

they're unsubscribed they might want to

9:04

hide it one way or another like with

9:05

maybe you know muted colors and stuff

9:08

don't do that you know encourage people

9:11

to unsubscribe if they don't want your

9:12

emails you really shouldn't be sending

9:14

it to

9:16

them and so how is all this measured

9:21

well it's measured with sender

9:23

reputation and it's basically your grade

9:28

your score in the email marketing World

9:32

um and what that means is basically like

9:34

as a domain are you doing things that

9:36

are

9:37

suspicious and are you doing things that

9:40

sh like for instance like too many

9:41

bounces bounces being emails that are

9:43

rejected you're sending emails to people

9:45

where they they don't they don't even

9:46

have an email address anymore so what

9:48

were you doing sending them an email to

9:50

begin with that means you didn't even

9:52

know if that was a real person or not so

9:54

that's why bounces are uh are a mark

9:57

against you spam reports this is really

9:58

obvious somebody literally just said get

10:01

this out of my inbox I don't want be

10:02

receiving emails from you and then

10:04

unsubscribes as well even though we

10:07

really do prefer these over spam reports

10:09

uh and this is like the least serious

10:12

thing out of the bounces spam reports

10:14

and unsubscribes um unsubscribed still

10:17

are a signal that you're sending

10:18

unwanted emails and so vcloud at vcloud

10:22

we calculate this based on our our best

10:25

understanding of how this is all kind of

10:27

measured in the email world so this is

10:30

not your official official score because

10:32

there's no way of knowing that that's

10:34

all proprietary and nobody the Google

10:37

and mic Microsoft being like the main

10:38

powers that be here they don't

10:41

share uh what your actual grade is but

10:45

um this is just based on our best

10:47

understanding and so you can see our

10:49

this score is tallied from your last

10:51

three weeks of

10:53

sending um so basically it's just like a

10:55

rolling window and we base it on that

10:58

ratio of your successfully delivered

11:01

emails against the issue emails that you

11:04

sent and you can see that your score is

11:08

um it's the default is 100% you start

11:11

with a winning score and it only goes

11:13

down from there uh as opposed to having

11:16

to build it up uh 80% you'll receive an

11:19

email from us automatically saying that

11:22

uh you know hey things are getting a

11:24

little bit low you might want to take a

11:25

look at this and then if you dip below

11:28

70% you will be forced to pause your

11:31

sending until your reputation resets

11:34

which because it's based on a 3-we

11:35

rolling window that will generally take

11:38

about three

11:40

weeks uh and now it's not the end of the

11:42

world if this happens so don't freak out

11:44

don't and also if you see the score

11:46

going down that's only kind of natural

11:48

one thing I'll be mentioning later is

11:49

how your first send actually is usually

11:52

going to be your worst one so it's okay

11:55

if things are not uh if you're not

11:57

getting a 95 at the very beginning

11:59

um but still it's something you want to

12:01

pay attention to and we certainly want

12:04

to uh make sure that your domain doesn't

12:07

get any uh any red flags on

12:09

it and so I'm going to show

12:12

you how you can see uh what this all

12:15

looks like so in VIP

12:17

Cloud I have clicked on emails and then

12:21

reputation and I can see the breakdown

12:24

right here of my reputation this is the

12:27

overall

12:28

number got our bounces

12:30

here spam reports and

12:34

unsubscribes and the thing that kind of

12:36

noteworthy here is that you can you can

12:38

see a breakdown of these results and you

12:41

can also see some of the some guidelines

12:43

here like how we expect our users bounce

12:45

rates to remain below 5% spam spam

12:48

reports to remain below .2% unsubscribes

12:54

2% and you'll also see under Mass Emil

12:59

emails this is where you'll be seeing

13:01

all your reports of the mass emails that

13:02

you send and You' got basically the same

13:05

thing up here so rate reputation with

13:08

just another version of that same report

13:09

we were looking at so you'll see it in

13:11

both of these

13:16

places so verifying lists now um this is

13:22

something that's built in for our

13:24

Enterprise uh

13:27

accounts um but you can do this this

13:29

with third parties so if you're uh if

13:31

you're an email marketer and you got a

13:33

new list um that you're going to be

13:36

sending to and you are not an Enterprise

13:39

user then I encourage you to do this

13:42

with a third party reach out to us if

13:45

you would like any uh any

13:46

recommendations

13:47

there but uh our Enterprise accounts can

13:50

verify up to 10,000 contacts per month

13:53

and also like I said before uh what this

13:56

what the the goal of verifying your Emil

13:59

emils is a way to mitigate bounces

14:02

before you hit send now verifying is not

14:06

infallible uh it's not a way to wave a

14:09

magic wand and not uh have any bounces

14:13

happen but it is an extremely useful

14:16

tool to avoid uh just to mitigate those

14:20

bounces and basically the way that it

14:22

works is that a tool that's verifying is

14:24

going to basically ask the server of

14:28

your recipent

14:30

um hey if I send an email to this person

14:31

would you deliver it and uh and also

14:35

checks other things too like for syntax

14:37

errors and stuff like that um now one

14:39

thing here when you're verifying through

14:41

our system is you have to make a

14:43

decision you can see here that um and

14:45

actually here I'll just take you to this

14:47

and I'll show you in real

14:50

time so we go over here to you do this

14:54

from your contact list so upload a

14:56

contact

14:57

list and then and you can hover over the

15:01

list click on the more button and then

15:05

go to verify

15:12

emails and then you will see here this

15:15

little

15:16

popup and you get a choice here you're

15:20

going to no matter what you're going to

15:22

filter the undeliverable people these

15:24

are the uh like the definite uh Bad

15:27

Emails but then you got risky and this

15:31

is a decision that you have to make

15:32

where risky emails are going to it's

15:35

going to the main thing that's going to

15:36

filter out is what what's a accept all

15:40

uh email and actually as an example VIP

15:43

cloud is one of those where you could

15:45

just kind of like mash some random keys

15:47

on your keyboard hit atvp cloud.com and

15:50

then you could try to verify that and

15:52

it's going to say that yeah uh you can

15:55

deliver it but it's you know but but we

15:58

accept everything and so what's tricky

16:00

about that is the um the verifying tools

16:03

have no way of knowing that whether

16:05

that's actually going to be delivered or

16:07

not because technically speaking we just

16:09

accept everything um so if you if you

16:13

sent that email it will

16:14

bounce but it'll also be like delivered

16:17

to an accept all inbox a little bit

16:19

technical but basically the thing here

16:21

the punchline is that with a risky when

16:23

you're when you're verifying risky that

16:26

uh and sorry you're verifying and you're

16:27

filtering out risk risky emails then

16:31

those um if you do that then you're

16:35

going to be basically throwing out the

16:37

baby with the bath water to an extent

16:39

you're going to be getting rid of some

16:41

emails that were otherwise going to be

16:44

good in favor of just trying to mitigate

16:47

bounces as much as possible that's

16:49

really what it is if you're going to be

16:50

extra safe filter out the risky but you

16:53

just know that you're going to be

16:54

getting rid of some good emails

16:59

all right now moving along Advanced mass

17:03

emails now um this is also something

17:06

where we recommend uh this is an

17:08

Enterprise

17:10

feature um and so the goal of advanced

17:14

mass emails is to be able to send out uh

17:18

emails in a very smooth manner uh

17:21

basically uh what it'll do is it'll drip

17:23

out one email per minute on a schedule

17:26

and so you have a 100 cont in a contact

17:30

list it's going to send out email one at

17:34

minute one it's going to wait a minute

17:35

and then send out email two wait a

17:37

minute send out email three um and and

17:40

and this is just or rather I guess I

17:41

should say to contact one contact two

17:43

contact three and the goal of that is it

17:48

uh it it slows things down it gives you

17:51

much more consistent sending it makes

17:54

your emails look more like a sales

17:57

communication rather than a marketing

17:59

communication uh and therefore that will

18:03

make emails more likely to go to the

18:05

primary tab as opposed to the promotions

18:08

Tab and also something that I love about

18:11

it is that it has the option to pause

18:13

the campaign so if you're sending uh to

18:17

a to a list that that you haven't sent

18:19

to before and let's say there like 500

18:22

contacts on that list and after you've

18:25

sent 50 emails you just see like hey

18:28

I've bounced

18:29

like five of these emails this is a 10%

18:31

bounce rate I really don't want to be

18:33

doing that right now this isn't

18:35

sustainable well you only

18:38

incurred five bounces as opposed to the

18:41

potential 50 bounces you would have

18:42

gotten had you just sent uh your mass

18:46

email as a normal just blast where it

18:49

sends all of them right away or we call

18:51

that a batch me mass email in our

18:54

system and so basically if it's not of

18:58

utmost importance to you to get all the

19:00

emails out right away like maybe it's a

19:02

larger list and you just don't have time

19:04

for it to work its way really slowly

19:07

then in that case um you know if you

19:10

really have to send it all right away

19:12

send it as a batch get all the emails

19:14

out right away but if you don't have any

19:17

urgency then I always recommend using

19:20

Advanced mass emails um if you are able

19:23

to and I'll just show you really quickly

19:26

here in the system you're able to send

19:29

these by going to let's just go to

19:32

emails mass email got pick my contact

19:36

list preview

19:39

send and I'll go down here and you can

19:42

see I got my choice where I can send a

19:44

batch mass email and send them all right

19:47

away or enable Advanced mass email and

19:50

the goal with this is because obviously

19:53

sometimes this might this might take a

19:55

very long time it might take more than

19:57

one day and we don't want to be sending

19:58

emails to people at 2 in the morning so

20:01

you're able to set the schedule here so

20:04

that it'll be sending until when

20:06

whenever you said it you know maybe we

20:08

want it to go to 6 and then it'll pause

20:11

and then maybe it'll wait until 8 in the

20:14

morning and then it'll keep

20:16

sending um so it's a great way to send

20:20

to more people in a just safer uh but

20:24

doing it in a safer way

20:30

okay and then lastly here um this is an

20:35

important topic for a lot of small

20:38

businesses which is whether you're going

20:41

to be sending uh using a generic email

20:47

like a Gmail or an Outlook versus

20:50

sending using a business domain which

20:53

would be a do com that you actually own

20:56

and control so we're talking about best

20:59

practices here using a business domain

21:03

is absolutely the best practice um it's

21:06

it's more professional it helps people

21:08

to find your stuff you know if you've

21:10

got a website but actually note that

21:12

technically speaking you don't really

21:13

need to have a website or you could just

21:15

be like a bit of an online business card

21:17

even um and then you are able to just

21:22

you have better controls on that domain

21:25

um like that DNS we were talking about

21:27

before you can get a really good domain

21:29

setup or strict DNS setup and it's

21:32

actually more secure too when you think

21:34

about it uh like using this example here

21:37

Johns widgets gmail.com well anybody can

21:42

go to Gmail and create johnsen widgets

21:47

gmail.com and start emailing people as

21:49

if they're John's widgets and this guy

21:51

John here has no way of stopping that um

21:55

so there there's just security

21:56

implications that are good to think

21:59

about uh also generic emails when you're

22:03

sending through a system like VI Cloud

22:05

they need to rely on a workaround like

22:08

sharing a domain so you can see in this

22:11

second little bullet point down or sub

22:13

bullet point you can see it so if this

22:15

John's widgets is sending emails through

22:18

VIP Cloud he's technically going to be

22:20

sending it at John through john. Johns

22:24

widgets.

22:26

gmail.com at vcms s r.com which is a a

22:30

vcloud sending domain for emails like

22:32

this so that's the actual address that

22:35

these emails are going through uh now

22:37

the recipients most of them are not

22:39

going to tell the difference you know if

22:41

these these emails get delivered it's

22:43

it's a just fine way of of

22:46

sending um but it's just not it's not a

22:49

best practice we would say and then so

22:51

these people they they receive the email

22:53

if they want to reply they'll hit reply

22:55

and there's a there's a setting in that

22:57

email for the reply to so that when they

23:00

click reply it's going to go to his

23:02

actual email address Johns widgets

23:05

gmail.com but the thing that's important

23:07

to know here is that email inboxes gmail

23:12

specifically uh are kind of they're

23:14

they're becoming less and less

23:17

Cooperative with this kind of sending

23:19

and that they don't always listen to

23:21

that reply too um it's a really kind of

23:23

annoying bug that they have that they

23:25

just don't seem to have any incentive to

23:27

fix it's been going on for a couple of

23:29

years now and sometimes they'll just hit

23:31

hit you hit reply and it's actually not

23:33

going to go back to that person it's

23:34

going to go back to the original email

23:36

address that had sent it um so they just

23:40

don't listen to that reply too so

23:42

basically the punchline here U is that

23:45

we really encourage you to use a custom

23:48

domain uh wherever possible and if you

23:51

have questions about doing something

23:53

like that and you just want to know what

23:54

would be involved uh certainly just

23:56

reach out to us we're more than happy to

23:58

give you some helpful pointers there and

24:01

once you've got that email up and

24:03

running we're happy to take the ball

24:05

from there and help out with the DNS and

24:07

make sure bip cloud is able to send uh

24:10

on behalf of your uh custom email

24:15

address all right well uh hopefully that

24:18

wasn't too dry this is definitely a

24:20

little bit longer than we usually like

24:21

these kinds of uh lessons to be but it

24:25

there's a lot of important stuff here

24:27

and um

24:29

you know ultimately the goal here is to

24:32

make sure that your emails get delivered

24:35

and that we are protecting your domain

24:37

from uh any delivery issues and so

24:41

that's all extremely important to us and

24:43

of course if you have questions about

24:45

any of this stuff especially some of

24:47

that more techical stuff uh just reach

24:49

out to us we are always eager to help

24:51

our customers and also to answer

24:53

prospective customers questions about

24:55

these kinds of things too um and until

24:58

then just want to wish everybody Happy

24:59

sending