Best Practices for Good Deliverability

What are my goals for good deliverability?

Our goal is to reach above-average engagement rates on bulk sends (Smart Blasts and Promo Blasts).

We are looking for:

• Open rate above 15%
• Click rate above 6%
• Deliveries above 99%
• Blocks below 1%
• Bounces below 0.1%
• Spam Complaints below 0.1%

How do I check my Deliverability Stats?

Are you concerned about your brand's email deliverability?

First - Check your stats by getting a detailed report from Report Builder, or by looking into the deliverability stats shown under "Blasts" on the AI Stats page. Compare your delivery rate against a target of 99%.

Second - Export the Email Domains report from a recent promo blast.

Third - Evaluate your Delivery rate and Open Rate to see if there are any specific problem domains.

If any of your domains are well below average in performance we'll want to apply special filtering to those domains specifically.

How do I improve my deliverability?

You will need to practice responsible List Management. If deliverability problems are isolated to only a few domains you can consider applying special rules to those domains.

How do I segment by a user's email domain?

It's easy! We'll define the email domains by listing them out in a comma-separated format, and we'll use the "users in segment" feature to apply additional rules to those users. You'll want to list them after the "is any of" operator.

Building domain-specific filters

Step 1 - Select Your Engagement Filters

First, you'll need to select the level of restriction to apply. You can select from the pre-built segments in Cortex which are ranked here 1-5, from most strict to least strict. If you wish to build your own please review the lower section (Legacy Method - Custom Segments).

1. Engaged Extremely Recently - Includes users who have engaged within just a few days. 
   You should select this segment if you see deliveries under 40% or an open rate under 2%.
   
   
2. Engaged Very Recently - Includes users who have engaged within about a month.
   You should select this segment if you see deliveries under 60% or an open rate under 5%.
   
   
3. Engaged Recently - Includes users who have engaged within about two months.
   You should select this segment if you see deliveries under 80% or an open rate under 7%.
   
   
4. Engaged Somewhat Recently - Includes users who have engaged within about three months.
   You should select this segment if you see deliveries under 90% or an open rate under 10%.
   
   
5. Engaged Not Recently - Includes users who have engaged within about six months.
   You should select this segment if you see deliveries under 97% or an open rate under 12%.

Step 2 - Build your larger segment

You'll need to use a large "OR" grouping with nested "AND" groupings to combine your engagement filters with your problem domains. We recommend separating your problem domains into three or fewer groups, it is not necessary to use all five segments. Many customers will be fine with one "problem domains" group and one group for "everyone else" when building these segments.

Step 3 - Send, Monitor, Repeat

Rebuilding your sender reputation takes time, and it takes email sends. We recommend sending no more than three times a week, but a minimum of once a week, to work on actively rebuilding a sender reputation. Sender reputation is built around email engagement, and if you aren't sending you can't build up those critical opens and clicks.

Check back on your numbers every 2 weeks at first when working on problem sites, but it's normal to check in less often as numbers continue to improve or stabilize.

Legacy Method - Custom Segments

Step 1 - Define your restrictive segment

Step 2 - Define your standard segment

Step 3 - Combine both, with your problem domain list, to create a master segment for email blasts