DEV Community: nataliiapolomkina

How to Track Email Marketing Performance

nataliiapolomkina — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 16:22:08 +0000

When done well, email marketing is a terrific digital marketing strategy that can drive a ton of traffic and generate new leads to your website.

In fact, according to several studies, email marketing produces $44 for every $1 spent. If that isn’t a pretty amazing ROI, I don’t know what is!

With email marketing, you can reach your target audience regularly, provide them with personalized offers, and can give them a much needed new reason to visit your website.

There is also a plethora of great automated tools now available to help you not only create your campaigns, but also schedule them, send them, design them, and even troubleshoot them. So now not only is email marketing a great marketing strategy, but the return on investment is even better than before with time-saving tools like these.

So, needless to say, the value of email marketing in your digital marketing campaigns has been proved. But, in order to make sure it brings as much value to your business as it can, you need to be sure your campaigns are optimized.

To do so, you need to monitor the right stats with an email marketing report – something that would look a little like this:

Having a marketing report that’s tracking the right email marketing KPIs is of the utmost importance, since it allows you to make sure that not only are your emails being opened, but also that you get the traffic, conversions, and sales that you were aiming for.

Without proper tracking, your email campaigns can become nothing less than a monumental waste of time; even worse, they can have a negative effect by increasing your unsubscribe rate, as we will see a little further in this article.

Tracking your different KPIs gives you a much better chance of determining what’s bringing your strategies down, and what’s working best. Therefore giving you time to adjust your campaigns, tweak different things like your subject lines, your call to action, your email design, your segmentation, and more.

So create your marketing report right now, and include these 7 essential email marketing key performance indicators to get the most out of your email campaigns.

1. Number of subscribers

This email marketing metric tells you the number of people who have opted in to receiving promotional or marketing emails from you.

Fundamentally, it’s a measure of how many potential eyeballs will see your email marketing efforts, so monitoring your list growth rate (the number of new subscribers and your unsubscribe rate) can be a gauge of the level of interest in your products or services.

You want to keep your number of subscribers as high as possible and ensure a low churn rate. Also keep this number in mind when you do campaigns to gain new subscribers for your newsletter, contests, or other marketing efforts to grow your subscriber list.

2. Open rate

The open rate tells you how many people on your email list opened a campaign email you sent out.

There are a few things that affect email open rates, such as the bounce rate, subject line of the email, the relevance of the email to your target audience, or whether the emails are landing up in the spam folder instead of the inbox.

So, needless to say, this is one of the most important metrics to track in order to optimize your campaigns. If you see your open rate declining, you’ll want to investigate a bit further and fix any issues.

3. Click-through rate (CTR)

This important metric measures the total number of subscribers who clicked a link in one of your emails.

There are two types of click-through rates you can measure:

Total click-through rate
Unique click-through rate

It’s generally best to focus on the unique click-through rate, which measures the number of people who clicked on links, rather than the total number of clicks an email has received. After all, what you really want to know is how many people were attracted by your email or offer, not how many times they clicked on it.

4. Number of email bounces

Bounces have to do with email deliverability – an email “bounces” when it’s not able to be delivered to a recipient for some reason or another. There are two kinds of bounces: hard bounces and soft bounces.

Hard bounces occur when there’s no possible way for the email message to be delivered, such as when the email address no longer exists.

Soft bounces, on the other hand, mean there’s just a temporary reason for non-delivery, such as when the recipient’s inbox is full.

You’ll want to ensure good email list hygiene and delete email addresses that result in a hard bounce.

5. Website traffic

Email marketing is just one piece of the puzzle – you need to monitor how all your marketing channels, from SEO to social media, affect one another by tracking important metrics in Google Analytics and social media analytics tools.

Ultimately, the goal of an email marketing strategy, apart from lead generation, is to bring in website traffic and conversions. Tracking how your email marketing campaigns are affecting web traffic with dashboards tracking Google Analytics data is a simple and effective solution for ensuring you’re getting optimal results.

Make sure you’re tracking not only your overall traffic, but your traffic by medium, as well as a month-over-month or year-over-year comparison, to really see the trends.

6. Number of unsubscribes

The unsubscribe rate shows you how many people have unsubscribed from one of your email marketing campaigns.

Of course, your number one goal is to retain your subscribers as much as possible. To do so, you should investigate some of the possible reasons for an increase in the number of unsubscribes, such as sending emails too frequently or presenting irrelevant content.

7. Number of conversions

This email metric tells you how many people clicked on a link in your email and then took a desired action, such as making a purchase on your e-commerce website.

The number of conversions, as well as your conversion rate, are key metrics you should always have your eye on since they can have a direct impact on your return on investment and your business goals.

There are many ways you can improve your conversions, such as improving your newsletter design, your CTAs, or your promotions. You can also try to segment your audience better, so that you only send relevant promotions or information to each person depending on their profile.

Track all these KPIs in a marketing report

The tools

In order to track all these KPIs, you can use an Excel spreadsheet (or Google Sheet) and simply copy-paste all this data every month from your different platforms, such as Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, Hubspot, or Google Analytics. Alternatively, you could use a go-to-market platform like Dealfront to track and collect data from multiple campaigns. You could also use an automated reporting tool to keep track of this data without having to fetch it yourself every month.

Automated reporting

There are multiple automated SaaS reporting tools available, such as DashThis, Zoho, Tableau or Geckoboard; all very useful depending on your needs.

DashThis

DashThis is an automated marketing tool for agencies and marketers. The tool is particularly useful if you want to present a good-looking report to your clients or boss. It has multiple time-saving features like preset templates, cloning options, preset widgets, and more. It is known for its ease of use and second-to-none customer service.

Zoho

Zoho is a business analytics tool used to carry out in-depth analytics for different spheres of your business (sales, marketing, finance, HR, etc.). You can then present your data with different types of reports.

Tableau

Tableau is a data visualisation tool that helps businesses track and analyse their data for their different industries and departments. It is very customizable and offers a lot of different options.

Geckoboard

Geckoboard is a dashboard tool that helps you present your data for your team, on either a TV or monitor. It helps your team easily follow up on their performance in real-time.

The templates

You can also use report templates to help you track these KPIs faster. These templates are pre-filled with the most common email marketing KPIs so you don’t have to add them all manually.

Best practices to follow

The layout

Another important reporting tip is to make sure you present your data with some graphs and charts. This will really enable you to better understand the trends in your data. Are you going in the right direction? Is there a causality between my decrease of hard bounces and increase of open rate? It’s all a lot easier to see with clear graphs.

The comparisons

You should also make sure you compare your data year-by-year as well as month-by-month, so that you take into consideration the seasonality of your data. This will help you see if, for example, your lower open rate is due to the campaign itself, the holidays, or if this seems normal for this period of the year.

The frequency

You should create a monthly report for your email marketing strategies. Why monthly? Because less than a month might not represent enough data to be able to see trends and make decisions based on the data. A weekly or daily report can always be used for very short term promotions that you would like to track closely.

However, more than a month is a pretty long time. If you use quarterly reports, for example, you might see that your campaign has had bad results for over 2 months, without you ever knowing. By tracking your data monthly you can stop a bad campaign in its tracks, modify it, and make sure your strategies are always optimal.

The same goes for a yearly report – it should only be used as a recap of all your different strategies and campaigns of the year. You can use yearly and quarterly reports to get a good overview of what worked out or not, and adjust for the next year.

You’re all set!

These are the most important marketing KPIs you need to track for your email reports so that you can adjust your email marketing campaigns accordingly. Make sure to track all this data every month, and you’ll be all set to have successful campaigns.

If you need more email marketing tips, Mailtrap has a plethora of blog posts you should check out!

Thank you for reading this article! Find more articles about email marketing reporting metrics in Mailtrap blog!

Email Click-Through Rate: What to Know and How to Boost

nataliiapolomkina — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 15:18:16 +0000

The humble email remains a cornerstone of any marketing strategy. Tried and tested, but also improving all the time, a good subscriber list and quality content direct to these inboxes can be one of the most effective ways of driving your audience to action. To make sure you’re getting the best out of your email campaigns, you should always be tracking and comparing your own key performance indicators (KPIs) against each other, as well as against competitors and industry at large – and one of the most important of these metrics is click-through rate (CTR). In this article, we’ll explore key ways to boost your email CTR.

What is email CTR and how do I calculate it?

Let’s start at the beginning. It may seem obvious to state that click-through rate or click rate is how many people clicked a link in your email, but it’s important to understand what it is, how to calculate it, and what this actually means as far as your email performance (and later, the all important ‘how to improve it’).

When prioritizing your email marketing metrics, CTR should always be in the mix – see must-haves in this guide to email marketing KPIs.

Typically, CTR will be spoken of as a percentage. To calculate it, divide the number of people who clicked at least one link in your email by the total amount of emails delivered. Then multiply this number by 100 to make your percentage. (Note that it is the total emails delivered, not the emails opened. For that, Mailtrap also has a handy guide to calculating your open rate.)

What’s the average CTR?

Now you know your rate, but what constitutes a good CTR, you may ask? It differs between industries and across devices, and it will also depend on knowing the regions you’re targeting.

According to Campaign Monitor, the average click-through rate across all industries in 2020 was 2.6%. MailChimp turns out a similar figure, by analysing their own data – which comes from small businesses as well as established corporates – and putting the average CTR across all industries at 2.62%.

Generally, both reports conclude that higher CTR belong to sectors such as government and politics as well as the broad category ‘hobbies’. Conversely, food and beverage and retail tend to come at the lower end of averages.

We also know that a user’s behavior on mobile and desktop are different, and the way your audience consumes your content is an important factor in how much they engage and click. Interestingly, many reports point to a higher CTR from desktops than from mobiles. An analysis by Super Office puts desktop CTR at a massive 72% of all email click-throughs, compared to 19% on mobile and just 9% on tablets. Considering this, it’s worth keeping in mind how your audience is reading your emails and planning content accordingly.

Now you’ve got the background, it’s time to think about applying this to your own email marketing. We’ll take it in steps.

1. How should I prepare to send out a campaign?

Control your email list

You won’t get very far without a subscriber list, so this is the first thing to get under control (or build up if you’re just starting out). For recipients that are active, try sending them friend referral offers to keep them engaged and further build your email list. As good practice, remember to systematically remove dormant subscribers. You may choose to give them a final reminder, but if they’re not interested, don’t hang on for the sake of numbers – it will give you inaccurate figures and pull down your CTR and open rates.

Perfect your opt-in offer

What you want is a subscriber’s email address, but in return, you need to offer them something. This isn’t just about including a ‘subscribe’ email popup on your landing page. An effective approach can be to offer a new-subscriber discount on a purchase, exclusive content, early booking to events – whatever works for your brand.

Start segmenting

Essentially segmentation is what it says on the tin: dividing your subscribers into groups based on common characteristics. The criteria is defined by your brand’s needs, and effective segmentation will lay the foundation for personalization down the track. Start with the basics, like age, gender and geography, but over time make sure you take your segmentation beyond this. What do they like to do on weekends? Do they drive or get public transport to work? The deeper you go, the more relevant you’ll be able to make your content.

2. What should I check before sending?

HTML template

There are several key things to check in your HTML formatting – check all your links are there, check none are broken and that all sharing buttons are working. Also do a sight check for image distortion or any design formatting that’s gone rogue. Consider including a web-based version, so if anyone does have trouble viewing your email, it’s not an instant delete.

Content

All the design in the world doesn’t make up for sub-par content. In fact, design should enhance already strong content, not carry something that’s just so-so. It also can’t compensate for blatant mistakes: so, proofread!

Deliverability

We know that sometimes emails end up in junk folders – it’s for this reason that we talk about email deliverability, sometimes also called inbox placement. There are tools available on most of the popular email sending platforms, which monitor your email deliverability and give you a score based on the quality of your content, your reputation as a sender and authentications. Handily, these kinds of tools also give you tips to improve.

3. I’ve sent out my campaign. Now, how can I improve my email CTR?

Structure

It’s important to have good content, but it’s equally important that your content is on show in the best way possible. Make your emails skim-able, but engaging. Judge where to put detail, and use headings and bullet points cleverly: lead your readers to follow your links.

Subject line

Your subject line matters. It needs to communicate what your email contains as well as why your recipient is going to get value from it. It can be tricky to toe the line between clear and interesting, without overpromising, but the best-performing emails do it well. You could also try asking a quippy question. For example: ‘Long day? We have three before-bed products that can help’.

And lastly, test your email subject lines! Most email marketing tools will allow you to split test your emails – in other words, send two versions out and compare which subject line results in more opens, more click-throughs and less unsubscribes. You’ll get better and better at knowing what resonates with your audience as a result.

Personalization

Email personalization is something that started and never stopped, and the reason for that is that it works. Why? Personalized marketing stands out more and personalized emails are more likely to generate click-throughs. Once you have your list segmentation set up (as discussed earlier), it’s easy to tweak messaging for your different groups and make sure you’re catching their eyes. Personalized emails will definitely increase your chances to get a higher conversion rate.

Preview text

An oft overlooked feature, the preview text (sometimes referred to as pre-header text) plays a key part in getting your email opened. After seeing the subject line and the sender, this is the next thing your email recipient sees. It should support your subject line (not repeat it) and is also a good way to include some additional keywords, a call to action or expand on personalization.

Timing

Recent data suggests sending one email a week achieves the highest CTR on average. This is also the most popular approach – with 49% of the businesses analysed in this report opting for one newsletter a week. Once you’ve been tracking trends on your own emails, start looking for the times of day when the CTR is high compared to open rates, rather than necessarily when both are high (this will separate your active customers from idle readers).

Design

Your email campaigns shouldn’t feel separate from your other marketing collateral, so try to keep any visual elements unique and on-brand. For inspiration, look at which trends are cropping up in email marketing campaigns. It’s also become a must-have to consider accessibility so, as discussed earlier, make sure your email template is responsive for different devices as well as for both plain text formatting and HTML.

CTA placement

Your calls to action are where you’re going to drive your CTR and ultimately convert your audience – whether the aim is for achieving specific social media KPIs, such as number of followers, getting in touch with your brand, or buying something. These should be visible, intriguing, and clearly communicate what the reader is going to get by clicking. Again, try different approaches and compare which seem to yield better results – over time, you’ll know exactly what works. You can track all of your advertising efforts with a tool like Voluum and later on see what generates more revenue.

Conclusion

And that’s it. We know, there’s plenty to consider when it comes to perfecting your email CTR game. But if you plan it well, keep track of your findings, and keep on with incremental improvements, you’ll start to see results.

Thank you for reading this article! Read more about email click through rate in Mailtrap blog!

How to Implement DMARC Records

nataliiapolomkina — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 13:10:37 +0000

DMARC is one of the key methods for protecting your emails from spoofing. Yet, only half of Fortune 500 companies have implemented it so far. Is it because the setup is difficult? Absolutely not. Setting up DMARC is really easy and won’t take more than 15 minutes. Learn how to do it with our guide.

DMARC, DKIM, and SPF – The Basics

We’ve covered extensively various authentication methods on our blog. Let’s quickly revamp the most important details about each.

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is used to let the receiving servers know which IP addresses are allowed to send emails on your behalf. When an email is received, a quick verification is run. If an unrecognized IP was used, an email is likely to be discarded. Read a lot more about it in our SPF article.

DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Email), on the other hand, is a digital signature that’s attached to outgoing emails. It features the headers and/or body of a message, encrypted with an individual key. The receiving server can then recreate these values and quickly detect if anything was changed en route. If that was the case, a message is also likely to never arrive in the receiver’s inbox. We have it covered too in our DKIM article. Here’s how to set one up.

Finally, DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance) works on top of the two other methods (at least one of them needs to be set up for DMARC to work). On top of DKIM/SPF, DMARC will perform an alignment test to add another layer of security. Finally, it will instruct a receiving server on what to do if either of the checks fail. More about this below, but if you’re anxious to learn a lot more about this technology, we recommend our ‘What is DMARC’ article as a good source of knowledge.

How to Implement DMARC Records

Once you know the structure of DMARC, setting it up is as easy as adding several lines of text to your DNS Records. If you, however, want to make sure it really works from the get-go, we suggest running a few additional checks. Otherwise, you may accidentally instruct the servers to get rid of your perfectly legitimate emails.

The whole process comes down to the following steps:

Validating if SPF/DKIM are set up and domains aligned
Generating a DMARC record and specifying its settings
Adding it to your domain’s DNS

Let’s talk about each of these steps in more detail.

Verify if DKIM and/or SPF are set up properly

As mentioned earlier, having either of them is compulsory for DMARC to work. But having one that returns negative results for legitimate emails will also do no good. The DMARC test will fail automatically if SPF or DKIM fails.

In the respective articles mentioned above, we’ve mentioned various tools for validating either method. Check them out before you proceed further.

Check domain alignment

DMARC forces receive servers to perform a domain alignment test on top of the traditional SPF/DKIM validations. That’s why it’s imperative to have everything in place to avoid unpleasant surprises.

If you have only SPF set up (don’t forget to avoid multiple SPF records), check if the following two match:

‘Envelope from’ address – the address emails are sent from
‘Return-path’ address – the address emails will be directed to if a recipient responds to an email

If you rely only on DKIM, check if the following two match:

‘Envelope from’ address – the address emails are sent from
‘d’ tag of your DKIM record

If you use both methods (and rightly so!), perform both checks, of course.

Ideally, all the domains or subdomains should precisely match. In a DMARC record, you’ll be able to choose a more relaxed method, aptly named ‘relaxed.’ This way, emails sent from e.g. mailtrap.io would be aligned with those sent from mailtrap.io/blog (or any other mailtrap.io subdomain).

Choose an email account for receiving DKIM records

A great thing about DMARC is that, when set up, your server starts sending you daily reports of how your emails performed (separate aggregate and forensic reports). This way, you can quickly spot any abnormalities and improve your performance with the use of data. It is pretty handy especially if you set up DMARC for the first time and want to know if you did it right.

You can pick virtually any email address here. It may even be better to use a different one than the “return-path,” as your inbox is likely to become flooded with these reports.

Keep in mind that reports are sent in a raw, hard to read format. You may want to use tools like Dmarcian or MXToolbox to get the most out of the data.

Choose how to treat emails that fail a DMARC check

DMARC gives you the power to influence how your emails are treated if they fail a check. There are three possible scenarios:

Reject – emails are discarded and won’t be delivered (hard bounce)
Quarantine – emails will be sent to a spam folder, likely never to be retrieved by the recipient
None – even if a check fails, nothing will be done

The ‘none’ option isn’t as useless as it might sound at first. Although it won’t prevent you from spoofing if other methods fail, it’s great in the first days of using DMARC. You can set it up and have your emails delivered as usual, but at the same time keep receiving reports on DMARC performance. When you’re confident that legitimate emails go through, you can change the DMARC settings to different ones.

Please be aware that the rules you pick here are only suggestions sent to receiving servers and by no means do they guarantee the desired action will be taken. If DMARC fails, emails can still be delivered even if you ordered them to land in spam. Also, the other way around.

You’ll be able to add your pick in the next step.

Generate DMARC record

Now, let’s finally generate a DMARC record. Dmarc.org recommends a number of resources for this task. While they differ a bit in terms of user experience, each will generate a correct DMARC for you assuming all the previous steps have worked out.

There are several tags you need to use in a record and a number of optional ones. Once again, refer to the DMARC article we mentioned earlier for the details. Note that the ‘p’ tag (as in ‘policy’) will be a direct representation of the previous step.

An example of the DMARC record will look as follows:

v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:piotr@mailtrap.io,mailto:ann@mailtrap.io;
ruf=mailto:steve@mailtrap.io; fo=1;

This rule indicates that emails that fail a DMARC check should be rejected. Aggregate reports should be sent to me and my colleague Ann while Steve from another team should handle forensics reports.

Add DMARC record to your domain’s DNS

Once you have your record, you can go ahead and add it as a DNS Record. You may be able to do it on your own or, in some cases, with the help of your hosting provider.

In the domain registrar, you need to add the newly-created DMARC as a TXT record. We won’t go through any details here as the process differs for each provider. If you did everything correctly, though, you should receive your first reports within the next 24 hours.

Wrapping up

As you can see, the process of adding a DMARC record is far from difficult. We hope you found it useful but always welcome any feedback – let us know your thoughts at contact@mailtrap.io.

Before you send any large volume of emails, be sure to check out Mailtrap. It’s a tool for testing emails before they’re sent to real users. You can preview them, get tips on how to improve them, and monitor if the right emails are sent to the right people. You can try Mailtrap for free.

Thank you for reading this article! Follow Mailtrap blog if you want to read more about how to set dmarc record!

How to Implement DMARC Records

nataliiapolomkina — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 13:10:37 +0000

DMARC, DKIM, and SPF – The Basics

We’ve covered extensively various authentication methods on our blog. Let’s quickly revamp the most important details about each.

How to Implement DMARC Records

The whole process comes down to the following steps:

Validating if SPF/DKIM are set up and domains aligned
Generating a DMARC record and specifying its settings
Adding it to your domain’s DNS

Let’s talk about each of these steps in more detail.

Verify if DKIM and/or SPF are set up properly

In the respective articles mentioned above, we’ve mentioned various tools for validating either method. Check them out before you proceed further.

Check domain alignment

If you have only SPF set up (don’t forget to avoid multiple SPF records), check if the following two match:

‘Envelope from’ address – the address emails are sent from
‘Return-path’ address – the address emails will be directed to if a recipient responds to an email

If you rely only on DKIM, check if the following two match:

‘Envelope from’ address – the address emails are sent from
‘d’ tag of your DKIM record

If you use both methods (and rightly so!), perform both checks, of course.

Choose an email account for receiving DKIM records

You can pick virtually any email address here. It may even be better to use a different one than the “return-path,” as your inbox is likely to become flooded with these reports.

Keep in mind that reports are sent in a raw, hard to read format. You may want to use tools like Dmarcian or MXToolbox to get the most out of the data.

Choose how to treat emails that fail a DMARC check

DMARC gives you the power to influence how your emails are treated if they fail a check. There are three possible scenarios:

Reject – emails are discarded and won’t be delivered (hard bounce)
Quarantine – emails will be sent to a spam folder, likely never to be retrieved by the recipient
None – even if a check fails, nothing will be done

You’ll be able to add your pick in the next step.

Generate DMARC record

An example of the DMARC record will look as follows:

v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:piotr@mailtrap.io,mailto:ann@mailtrap.io;
ruf=mailto:steve@mailtrap.io; fo=1;

This rule indicates that emails that fail a DMARC check should be rejected. Aggregate reports should be sent to me and my colleague Ann while Steve from another team should handle forensics reports.

Add DMARC record to your domain’s DNS

Once you have your record, you can go ahead and add it as a DNS Record. You may be able to do it on your own or, in some cases, with the help of your hosting provider.

Wrapping up

As you can see, the process of adding a DMARC record is far from difficult. We hope you found it useful but always welcome any feedback – let us know your thoughts at contact@mailtrap.io.

Thank you for reading this article! Follow Mailtrap blog if you want to read more about how to set dmarc record!

What is Email Marketing: In-Depth Guide

nataliiapolomkina — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 19:57:31 +0000

Would you believe that the first mass email marketing campaign was sent in 1978? Yes, 54 years ago, Gary Thuerk, the man dubbed the Father of Spam, sent a few hundred emails and got the ball rolling for commercial email. Since then, this has become one of the most effective and popular tools in marketing.

But with great power comes great confusion.

Many of you reading this article probably find yourself in a situation where you have an email marketing list with tons of subscribers but no idea what type of marketing emails to send them or even what options you have.

To help clear up this confusion and leverage the great benefits of email marketing, we’ll go on a deep dive into all the ins and outs of this direct marketing method.

So, let’s dive in!

What is email marketing?

In layman’s terms, email marketing is a digital marketing method that uses a combination of email as a communication channel and promotional or informational content to advertise old and new products/services to past customers, existing customers, and potential customers. It’s also an irreplaceable asset in situations where a company needs to share a general message related to a controversy, market/industry event, and similar.

What is an email marketing campaign?
The phrase “email marketing campaign” gets thrown around quite a lot, but many don’t know the true definition behind it, which, simply put, is “a sequence of individual email messages (although it can be a one-off send, too) sent over a period of time to multiple recipients”.

A campaign has to be well-timed and well-planned, so it arrives at the best moment and delivers valuable content and/or relevant offers (more on that in the best practices section). And in the case of campaigns consisting of a series of emails, staying consistent with the design and messaging is also very important.

5 examples of companies with great email marketing campaigns
Whether an email marketing campaign will be seen as great largely depends on who is sending it, its target audience, and its purpose. In other words, a campaign that works great for one business might work terribly for another.

Still, some businesses execute their campaigns so well that showing them at least as examples is a must. And that is exactly what we are going to do now!

Bonobos
Bonobos, a menswear retailer, nails simple emails that still engage the audience. How? With clear call-to-action buttons (CTAs)!

Its emails have a clean structure as well as a simple copy that comes with a dash of playfulness, as seen in the example below:

What’s more, Bonobos tailors (no pun intended) its emails for and only for its audience – young male professionals – which makes them pretty effective.

BuzzFeed
This one probably doesn’t come as a surprise because what would a marketing article be without mentioning the company that has mastered the craft, BuzzFeed?

In its email marketing campaigns, BuzzFeed puts a lot of focus on the email subject lines and preview texts, which is pretty obvious looking at this inbox.

The subject lines and preview texts it uses are textbook examples of engaging, and this approach also transfers to the content within their emails.

Usually, a BuzzFeed email will consist of eye-catching images, engaging headings and descriptions, as well as CTAs. The goal of such emails is essentially to gain the attention of the reader while making them want to visit the BuzzFeed website for the full content.

Another aspect of email marketing that BuzzFeed made a smart decision on is subscriptions, where it allows people to choose which campaigns they want to subscribe to while informing them of the type of content and frequency of the campaign emails. Talk about personalization!

Uber
Simple is the best word to describe Uber’s email marketing campaigns (and its service :)).

Uber’s emails, in most cases, come with a custom design, short yet engaging text highlighting Uber benefits, and a strong CTA.

The headings and CTAs used are very straight-to-the point which is great for people just skimming the content.

What’s more, the emails are highly relevant to the recipient as they are meant to serve as notifications about a new extension of the service or promotion.

From the two examples above, you can see the consistency in Uber’s emails when it comes to style – a style that is also used in their mobile app design. This is worth noting, as maintaining consistency across campaign emails as well as marketing channels is a great practice.

Airbnb
Airbnb uses its emails to encourage recipients to interact and take action while maintaining a friendly and inviting tone by featuring some of the best homes Airbnb has to offer.

The company is also very clever with using the data that website visitors provide it with. So, for instance, if you used Airbnb to look for accommodation in a specific city but didn’t complete the booking, the next email you receive from them will most likely be related to the destination and the Airbnbs located there.

Netflix
Taking an approach similar to Airbnb’s, Netflix uses a subscriber’s watch history to create emails featuring shows/movies the subscriber is/might be interested in.

In terms of design, Netflix takes advantage of the visuals related to the content you can stream on its website and sticks to its signature black and red colorway, thus giving recipients the sense as if they are scrolling through the streaming platform.

But it’s worth pointing out that you won’t find a lot of copy in Netflix’s emails, as it relies on letting the visuals communicate – a smart way to get recipients to visit the Netflix website and learn more.

Advantages of email marketing

You’ve read the definitions and seen the examples, but you’re still not sold on the idea of doing email marketing or putting more focus on it than usual? In that case, reading the list of advantages below might help you make a decision.

It’s cost-effective
Compared to other forms of marketing, the cost of email marketing is much lower. How so? Well, a basic email marketing campaign can be created with just an email template, some copy, and images (original or stock). Plus, the whole creation process can be completed by one person if they happen to be a decent copywriter who knows their way around email marketing software tools.

So, if you’re tight on budget but still want to market your business, then email could just be your best and cheapest bet.

It allows for personalization
Personalized messages are something that can’t be used in all types of marketing, but in email marketing, they are almost a standard.

With personalization, your audience gets messages containing targeted content instead of something generic and not very engaging. And in case you are unfamiliar with what personalized emails look like, it can be something as minor as including the recipient’s name in the email greeting or as thorough as including details from the recipient’s interaction with your website (search history, purchased products/services, and so on) in the subject line, preview texts, copy, and visuals.

It can drive sales
Email marketing campaigns that feature your products/services, offers, and promotions can influence the purchasing decisions of the recipients and, thus, your sales. On top of that, if you are using personalization, you can send emails to people who abandoned their shopping cart, encouraging them to come back and finalize the purchase.

All in all, if used correctly, email marketing can be very effective at every stage of the sales funnel, so make sure to start building your database of old and new customers as well as prospects in time.

Its success is easily measurable
Measuring the success of campaigns is quite easy in email marketing, thanks to the built-in analytics provided by most email marketing platforms. Through these analytics, you can see the open rate, bounce rate, conversion rate, number of unsubscriptions that occurred after the email was delivered, number of clicks the links/CTAs within an email received, and much more.

Having this type of information at hand will enable you to see where you went wrong in your campaigns and also to test different variations of the same campaign to see which performs better.

It has a high ROI
According to Oberlo, email marketing has the highest return on investment (ROI) among marketing channels- $40 for every dollar spent.

Add to that the fact that email marketing revenue is projected to hit 11 billion by the end of 2023, and you can clear any doubts about whether a good email marketing strategy will make you money.

It generates traffic for your website
Great content and offers on your website aren’t very effective if the website has no visitors. With email marketing, you can significantly increase how much traffic a website receives by sending emails containing links to fresh as well as evergreen content and new offers.

Of course, it’s a must to format these emails well and include enticing CTAs. This way, the recipients will be encouraged to actually visit your website and not just stick to reading the email.

Note: It’s important to highlight that the above holds true for businesses that have a pretty large email subscriber list. However, for the majority of businesses that don’t, garnering website traffic through email marketing won’t come as easily, and they will first have to work on building their email subscriber lists with the help of their website and using other means.

It allows you to reach an already-engaged audience
Unlike other marketing channels, the messages sent through email marketing are (in most cases) welcomed by the recipients as they have willingly entered their email address into a signup form and thus subscribed to a business’s email contact list.

In other words, with email marketing, businesses target people who have expressed interest in their products/services – an approach that results in more campaign effectiveness and higher conversion rates.

Also, as many businesses segment their email lists and send different messages to different segments, they end up delivering relevant content to an already-engaged audience and thus build rapport as well as trust.

Disadvantages of email marketing

Quite an impressive list of benefits we covered above, right? Well, now that you are aware of them, you should also be aware of the disadvantages that come with email marketing. And those disadvantages include:

Dealing with high competition
Due to its massive popularity, email marketing is a highly competitive field, with businesses often fighting to reach and engage the same people. And even if they are not your direct competitors, big businesses with recognizable domains that have mastered the art of email marketing will likely end up in the same inboxes as you, making your emails almost unnoticeable unless you find ways to stand out.

Adhering to spam laws
Spam laws are, without a doubt, a necessity, but they can also be somewhat of an annoyance when it comes to adhering to them in terms of email marketing.

Most parts of the world have imposed strict spam laws that are not entirely the same, meaning you have to be aware of all of them in all the countries your email subscribers reside in; otherwise, you might find yourself unknowingly breaking a few and getting banned or fined heavily.

Getting sent to the spam folder
Although the word spam refers to all irrelevant or unsolicited messages sent over the internet, it is mostly associated with email nowadays.

Your marketing emails could end up being marked as spam for a few reasons, the two most common being:

Sending emails very frequently or not sending emails that are relevant
Triggering spam filters used by email clients

So, when sending out your emails, keep in mind that if you raise any red flags with recipients or email clients, chances are high that they’ll see you as nothing more than a spammer.

Having to adjust your email design to different screen sizes and email clients
Subscribers of your email list are definitely not all going to be users of the same device or the same email client, meaning that your email design might end up being displayed and rendered in all kinds of ways.

Unfortunately, unresponsiveness and poor rendering are not only an eyesore; they also have a poor effect on clickthrough rate (CTR), conversion rate, and other email marketing success factors.

Burning out your email subscriber list
Launching email campaigns that are not well-thought-out one after the other could cost you one of your most valuable assets – your email subscriber list.

How? Well, as one would assume, poor email marketing campaigns will irritate the recipients. And since these recipients have a readily available unsubscribe button in each email, as it’s a requirement in most countries, many might choose to simply click the button.

Over time, as more unsubscriptions happen, your email subscriber list could shrink significantly, causing the hard work you put into building it to go to waste and your emails to reach a much smaller audience.

Dealing with size issues
When using email, you are limited in the amount of information you can include in one message due to imposed size limits. Also, even if you are within the allowed size limit, your email could take a very long time to load if you include a lot of images or attachments.

This slow loading time could lead to frustration and overall disinterest in your emails by recipients.

Most important email marketing success factors

If you are a newbie or this article is your introduction to email marketing, by now, you might have the sense that terms like ROI, CTR, conversion rate, and open rate are something you should be well familiar with. And you would be completely right!

These email marketing success factors are something you need to closely monitor to see how well your campaign and email marketing strategy, in general, are performing. And now, we’ll go over what each represents, how to calculate it, as well as satisfactory values you can use as goals to achieve.

Most popular email marketing types

Marketing emails come in all shapes and sizes. Unfortunately, due to being too focused on crafting the right messaging, picking the optimal sending time, and so on, many marketers aren’t even aware of all the different types of email marketing campaigns out there or at what stage of the customer journey they should be used. This could lead to a lack of variety in your email communication which is key to engaging your audience and motivating them to take a specific action.

To avoid that, we’ll quickly run through the most popular email marketing types.

Newsletters

Marketers use email newsletters to deliver company and/or industry news, offers, tips, and essentially any type of content the recipients will find valuable. Newsletters are sent out on a regular basis to people who have subscribed to receive this type of communication, thus keeping them up-to-date with the company and industry.

Frequency: For most businesses, the frequency of sending newsletters should be monthly or once every two-three weeks. This, of course, depends on the business’s target audience, the goal of the newsletter, and the content included in it. But, as a rule of thumb, the amount of time that passes between two email newsletters should be enough for you to create new valuable content and collect interesting additions such as links to webinars and events, company milestones, etc.

Welcome emails

The purpose of a welcome email is quite simple – to thank the new subscriber for signing up, give your business an introduction, and let the subscriber know how often they should expect to hear from you.

You can think of welcome emails as an opportunity to make a good first impression and start building your relationship with a subscriber.

Within welcome emails, in most cases, some company and/or product/service information is provided, as well as links to related social media pages and helpful resources such as faqs, onboarding materials, or case studies. On top of that, this type of email might also include a special offer or discount code as a sign of appreciation.

Frequency: Not applicable

Re-engagement emails

If you have inactive subscribers, re-engagement emails can help you remind them of your business and the value it provides for them.

These emails can include things like special offers, discounts, coupons, exclusive content, and similar. And in some cases, an email asking the subscribers to update their email preferences can also be sent as a re-engagement email.

To spot inactive subscribers, you should use engagement metrics such as click rate, open rate, etc.

Frequency: The time span between re-engagement emails should be around 4-8 weeks, which is just enough time for the recipient to not quite remember the last re-engagement email you sent.

If you send a couple of these emails back to back, or very soon, one after the other, you might irritate the recipient, causing them to unsubscribe.

Cart abandonment emails

If you’ve ever shopped online, chances are you’ve received an abandoned cart email. This kind of email is triggered by an uncompleted purchase process in an eCommerce store, and its goal is to remind the customer about the item(s) they left in the cart and give them a little nudge to complete the transaction.

Good abandoned cart emails are not pushy and should do the reminding in a friendly way.

Frequency: Abandoned cart emails can be sent more than once for a single purchase process, and the recommendation is to send the first email within 24 to 48 hours of the cart abandonment.

The following abandoned cart emails can be sent every 3 to 5 days through a drip campaign for as long as you deem necessary or until the transaction is finalized/the item(s) are out of stock.

Transactional emails
Although they aren’t technically marketing emails, mentioning transactional emails is important as they are part of an overall email marketing strategy and complement marketing emails.

Transactional emails fall under the category of confirmation emails and are sent after a customer/user completes a certain transaction – password change, sign up, order, etc.

These are personalized and automated emails that usually contain a confirmation of the completed action, some information related to it as well as details such as the customer’s/user’s name, account information, and similar.

Within an email marketing strategy, transactional emails can be used to:

Upsell or cross-sell
Build brand awareness
Collect feedback
Nurture relationships

Frequency: Not applicable

Product update emails

Product update emails are very effective at informing customers/users about product changes such as new features, removed features, bug fixes, integrations, enhancements, pricing, and basically anything that will affect product usage.

Depending on the amount of detail provided in the email by the company sending it, the email could contain either just a simple copy explaining the changes or be as detailed as to include images, demos, and links to product landing pages, support articles, and other relevant things.

Frequency: Not applicable

Post-purchase emails

Post-purchase emails are considered both transactional and marketing emails as they are triggered by a specific action taken by a customer but also provide an opportunity to engage with customers and encourage further action.

Through them, customers receive all the necessary post-purchase information, such as delivery and shipping details, product usage guides, and so on. This is when they take the form of transactional emails.

But post-purchase emails can also deliver upsell or cross-sell offers, links/forms for feedback submission, and more when used as marketing emails.

All in all, post-purchase emails serve as a great way to help build a relationship with the customer as well as customer loyalty and keep them updated on the status of their purchase.

Frequency: The first post-purchase email should be sent right after the completed purchase. Additional emails of the same type should be sent over the following days or weeks.

Seasonal emails

Seasonal emails can include all (usually) promotional emails that are sent and themed according to specific upcoming events or times of the year.

The goal of these emails is to engage the subscriber list, boost sales, and strengthen brand awareness.

Within seasonal emails, you will most often find holiday greeting messages, discounts, deals, and season-themed product recommendations.

Frequency: Not applicable

Steps for launching an email marketing campaign?

Considering how effective email marketing campaigns can be, it should come as no surprise that launching them is a multiple-step process. To familiarize you with all of the steps, we’ll now go through each one and explain what it entails.

1. Set clear goals/objectives
Earlier in the article, we introduced you to different email marketing campaign types, which are all intended to achieve a specific goal. With that said, to create a successful email marketing campaign and use the right type at the right time, you need to set goals you want to accomplish and make them clear.

These goals will help you stay on course when creating copies, CTAs, etc., and will also serve as a benchmark for measuring campaign success.

2. Define your target audience and segment them
To create relevant messages, you need to get to know your audience so you can tailor messages to its different segments.

When trying to determine who your audience is, you have to take into consideration a number of factors such as email list subscriber location, age, gender, occupation, purchase history, email engagement rate, and so on. Most importantly, you have to get to the bottom of why each subscriber decided to give you their email address and what they expect to gain from that.

Once you have all the necessary information, use it to divide your audience into appropriate segments, to which you can then send highly-targeted emails they are more likely to engage with.

3. Pick an email marketing platform
To run an email marketing campaign, you will need an email marketing platform (also referred to as an email marketing tool or email marketing service) that will enable you to reach your audience and achieve the goals you set. The platform of your choice should also provide you with marketing automation and insights into how effective your campaign is.

The additional aspects to keep in mind when making your email marketing platform pick are the features and functionalities it comes with, which need to support your business needs, ease of use, and scalability.

So, before deciding on one platform, mark down your feature requirements, budget, as well as the size of your audience, and then test out any free email marketing platforms that might be a good fit and those that offer a free trial.

4. Create the content/copies
Creating email content is maybe the step where most of your focus should be, as content is what speaks to the recipient and what will encourage them to follow through with a desired action.

In the content creation process, you will have to take care of the subject line, preview text, and email copy for each segment of your audience.

As a general rule, keep the email copy original, in line with your brand’s voice, informative and short.

Also, whenever possible, personalize the content for each recipient.

Lastly, if appropriate, add some humor to make your email stand out.

5. Schedule and launch
Once you have all the elements of your campaign ready, you’re just one step away from launching it!

The last step is to pick a sending schedule. This is very important as having a sending schedule allows recipients to know when they can expect to hear from you, adding a dash of consistency to your campaign.

But do keep in mind that this schedule shouldn’t be something that exists only in your head. Instead, it should be implemented using the email marketing platform you decide to go for, which usually comes with a built-in scheduling feature.

6. Monitor results
Campaign results are what is going to tell you how your audience is responding and whether you are close to reaching your goals. They will also help you do data-driven email marketing, learn from your past campaigns, and build more effective future ones.

Again, results should be directly available within the email marketing platform you are using, and they should consist of all the email marketing metrics we covered earlier (open rate, CTR, conversion rate, ROI), as well as bounce rate and unsubscribe rate.

Of course, you can choose to pay attention to other metrics, too; just make sure they are actually helping you understand how close you are getting to your goals.

Finally, result measuring should be done as often as you deem necessary, but let once per month be the minimum.

7. Test and improve
Whether it’s because of the constantly evolving trends in the industry, some minor errors in the creation process, or something completely different, your email marketing campaigns will never be perfect. And that is completely fine!

To get as close as you can to perfection, you need to repeatedly test and improve your campaigns.

What should you test exactly? As many campaign elements as possible – design, layout, copy, subject lines, preview text, CTAs, sending schedule, target audience segmentation, etc.

And what is the best method for the testing? A/B tests!

These types of tests will allow you to test different versions of the same email and compare the results in terms of effectiveness which then enables you to make the necessary improvements in future emails and choose the most effective version. What’s more, running A/B tests will not hurt your budget, as sending emails is relatively inexpensive.

Start your email marketing journey on the right foot

In this article, we did our best to cover all of the questions a newbie email marketer might have. And although we didn’t go into too much depth, the information provided should provide you with a sufficient overview to enable you to kickstart your email marketing journey or at least serve as the basis for further research on how email marketing works or any of the subtopics mentioned.

Thank you for reading our Getting Started with Email Marketing guide, which was written by Dzenana Kajtaz for the Mailtrap Blog.

Good luck!

How to Stop Emails Going to Spam

nataliiapolomkina — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 17:36:09 +0000

Inbox placement rate (IPR) denotes emails that reached the recipient’s inbox rather than ending up in their spam or junk folder. Since 2015, the global IPR has grown from 79% to 85%. This means that only one in six commercial emails miss the target. Would you like to achieve this rate or even improve it for your marketing purposes? Below, you’ll find a comprehensive guide on how to stop your emails from going to spam.

My email got trapped in spam – what is wrong with it?

Let’s say your email campaign covered 1K recipients, and only 600 messages reached the target inboxes. The email was the same for all the recipients, but 400 of them filtered into spam by email service providers. So, whose fault was it? Both the sender and the recipient have a part to play here.

To reach the inbox, any email campaign has to comply with the requirements set by the recipient’s spam filters. These are a set of protocols that decide whether to let in an incoming message or not. So, it is just an obstacle you need to know how to pass through. And if you’re aware of its working principles, you’ll be able to handle it with ease.

How email filters work

The success of your email campaign is heavily reliant on filter technology. Filters not only block incoming messages but organize them as well. Today, many email service providers break down your messages by social, commercial, newsletters, and other categories. They leverage specific criteria to evaluate an incoming message and place it to the relevant folder.

Spam filters work in the same way and assign a spam score to the message. If the score meets a certain threshold, the email will be inboxed. Otherwise, you’ll find it in the spam folder. There is a long list of spam criteria, and it gets modified and adapted every day. The filtering practices are usually undisclosed, but we know that they include the following focus areas.

Types of spam filters

Content – check the content of an incoming message for spam trigger words, malicious attachments, refined HTML code, etc.
Header – check the header of an incoming message for infectious or falsified information.
Blacklist – check whether an incoming message has been sent from a sender not specified in the blacklist.
Rule-based or heuristic – check an incoming message according to user-defined criteria. These may include spam triggers for specific senders, words in the subject line, etc.
Permission – request approval from the recipient to accept an incoming message.
Challenge-response – request approval from the sender to send a message (by entering a password or another method of authorization).

Spam filters can differ by not only the criteria to be assessed but also how they are implemented. Here are the most common options:

Gateway – check an incoming message according to the criteria that the filter considers spammy based on the analysis of the incoming email. Usually, a gateway filter is implemented as a physical server to detect phishing, malware, viruses, and spam. Examples: Barracuda, SpamTitan, IronPort.
Hosted – check an incoming message after it was approved by the gateway spam filter. Hosted filters, also known as third-party, use content and reputation criteria to assign a spam score to the email. Examples: Cloudmark, Spambrella, MailCleaner.

What you need to make a spam-proof email

Combating spam looks pretty simple. But each type of email filter comprises many protocols or rules to be followed. For example, header filters are not limited to the information in the headers. They take into account the reputation of a sender’s domain and IP address, check email authentication policy, and so on. Nevertheless, there is no magic in dealing with spam filters, and we’ll teach you how to make your email campaign spam-proof.

Part 1 – Impeccable sender reputation

Domain reputation
Email filters will assess the reputation of your domain based on the following metrics:

Complaint rate – how many messages of all emails sent from your domain have been reported by recipients as spam (by percentage). This is the most critical value for your domain reputation and deliverability in general. A high complaint rate is a sign that your email marketing is unwanted – it either targets false recipients or delivers poor value. The optimum complaint rate is below 0.1%.
Inbox placement rate – how many messages of all emails sent from your domain have been inboxed (by percentage). This metric is more accurate than the delivery rate because it counts only inboxed emails. The optimum IPR is above 80%.
Spam placement rate – how many messages of all emails sent from your domain have been trapped in spam (by percentage). Your goal is to reduce this metric as much as possible. The optimum spam placement rate is below 10%.
Hard bounce rate – how many messages of all emails sent from your domain have been sent back due to an invalid or non-existent recipient address (by percentage). This metric is more valuable than a soft bounce rate that counts the rejected emails due to a short term issue (full mailbox, server down). The optimum hard bounce rate is below 2%.

Domain or email authentication
Authentication is another vital element of your domain reputation. It is a must-have thing for any legitimate sender to protect the domain against phishing and spoofing. Email authentication rests on three widely adopted standards:

SPF – validates whether an IP address is authorized to send emails from a particular domain
DKIM – authentication of emails using keys for signature-verification
DMARC – email authentication using SPF and DKIM standards

IP address reputation
Blacklist is a crucial metric for measuring the IP address reputation. You should not be listed in any blacklist from BRBL to Return Path. If for some reason you have been, make sure to launch a blacklist-removal process. The most challenging thing here is to find out the reason.

Apart from that, some email filters consider other metrics like complaints, spam trap hits, rejected messages, and so on. The type of IP address, dedicated or shared, is also important.

Dedicated – one sender is responsible for the IP address reputation
Shared – multiple senders are responsible for the IP address reputation Hence, it is advisable to opt for the dedicated option if your email campaign exceeds 500K emails every week.

A new IP address is like a brand new car – it needs a break-in period. Email service providers apply restricting measures to new addresses to combat spammers. As a result, if you send a high volume of emails right away, a significant batch may get to the spam folder. Hence, you should load your new IP address step by step. Once you show consistent traffic, your ESP will identify your IP address as legitimate, and the restriction will be off.

Tools to check the sender’s reputation

Sender Score by Return Path – a popular tool to assess sender reputation and find out how email service providers view an IP address.
IP Reputation Monitor by GlockApps – lets you check whether your IP has been blacklisted or not. Also, you can use the tool to delist your dedicated IP address.
Barracuda Reputation System – a tool to check your IP address and domain based on a real-time database of IP addresses with poor and good reports.
Email Reputation by Cisco’s Talos – check your reputation by three score ranking: Good, Neutral, and Poor. Neutral means that messages sent from the domain or IP address may still be filtered or blocked.

Part 2 – Polished email content

Some time ago, the content was the primary catch of spam email filters. They checked incoming messages for spam trigger keywords, blacklisted links, and other inappropriate elements. Today, the content check is of lower priority than the sender’s reputation, but content filters are still actionable.

Subject line

Avoid promotional keywords like buy/sale/discount in subject lines
Words typed with all capital letters are bad manners
Exclamation points are no-go
Focus on what may trigger the recipient’s interest like features or specs of the product/service you promote
Personalized subject lines can boost the open rate by 10% Pay particular attention to this element of your email campaign. With a weak subject line, you will still be able to pass spam filters. But a recipient can mark your email as spam which will impair your sender reputation.

Body text

Recipients tend to distrust in unreadable and grammatically poor text. Besides, content filters may put your email campaign to spam if the number of spelling errors in your body text is high enough. Therefore, make sure to check grammar and proofread your body text. Readability is also crucial for positive recipient engagement, so mind that too.

If you combine a plain text with an image in your email campaign, keep a balanced content ratio – 60% plain text and 40% image. The thing is that spam filters may catch an email if they cannot scan the text due to large images.

HTML

It is a regular practice for email marketers to send multi-part messages that contain both plain text and HTML. The latter lets you improve the engagement of your emails and make the content eye-catching. And here, you have to be cautious as well. An HTML section that has formatting errors or broken tags is a sure way to the spam box. Always check your HTML content before sending it.

Images

It was already mentioned that an embedded image should not exceed 40% of the total message body. Also, it might be useful to avoid heavy images at all. As an alternative, you can compress the image and link to it on your web server or any credible service. This will decrease the message size and accelerate the processing and loading of the email campaign.

Attachments

An attachment is a red flag for email filters. Solid email filters will put a commercial or transactional email with an attachment in spam right away. So, the best you can do is to provide a link to a particular file placed on your website or another credible location.

Media content

Abuse of media content in your email campaign increases the spamminess of your message. Besides, it reduces the recipient’s engagement. If there are some media your campaign can’t do without, add a link to it. Also, avoid dynamic scripts – spam filters won’t let them in.

Tools to check email content

In this blog post about email testing tools, you’ll find a comprehensive selection of email content previewers and checkers. Some services like Litmus or Email on Acid are full-fledged email preview tools. HTML Email Check or PutsMail focus on HTML content only. To check your subject line, you can opt for Email Subject Line Grader or Send Check It. Hemingwayapp is a perfect solution to validate your text readability.

Part 3 – Engaged recipient

If you want high-level deliverability, make sure your recipients are engaged. Intricate email filters do assess engagement, which comprises the following metrics:

open rate – how many recipients opened your emails
click rate – how many times a recipient clicked on the link in your email campaign
click-through rate – how many recipients clicked on at least one link in your email campaign
conversion rate – how many recipients completed the desired conversion goal It’s most likely that you’re using the same metrics to measure the effectiveness of your email campaign. But before this, you need to be sure that the email will hit the inbox. And here is what you should take care of.

Email formatting

An email should open correctly in most clients and devices. Use the preview testing tools to check this.
An email should load fast. Avoid large images and dynamic scripts.
Embedding forms are also a red flag for spam filters. It’s better to replace embedded forms with a link or a CTA button.
Make sure the message is free of broken links.
Do not abuse colors and fonts. Email filters consider irregular font colors and sizes, as well as invisible text. Even if a message with abused text design passes through spam filters, a recipient is likely to send it to the spam folder manually.

Email branding

Use your brand’s name in the “from” header. This reduces the spam complaints rate and increases the open rate. Also, it is a good practice to use a front person as an email campaign sender. In this case, add “from ” to the header to increase credibility. For example, Patrick Cosworth from Mailtrap.
You can brand other elements of your email campaign including subject lines, headers, and even links. This is good for building recognition and sorting the email by folders.
The design and content of your email campaign should be in line with your brand. Also, visual branding is best when it is consistent with the personas you’re aimed at.

Follow-ups

Follow-up is another way to earn the credibility of email service providers. When you follow up with your recipients, you show that you want to engage them. But the balance here is important. Massive email attacks within short periods are suspicious and can lead to the spam folder. Remind about yourself once a week or two (depending on your activity). Also, this contributes to the progress of your domain reputation.

Do not forget the unsubscribe link

If your email campaign lacks an unsubscribe button/link, that’s also a good way to end up in the spam folder. Email service providers identify bulk emails as spam if no opt-out option is available. This is legal due to the CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing) Act of 2003. So, if you think that you can improve the unsubscribe rate by omitting this button or link in your transactional emails, you’re making a mistake.

Test your email with a spam checker before sending

Let’s say you’ve carried out all the steps above and are ready to launch your campaign. Hold on a second, the last step remains. Pick an email spam checker and test your email. You’ve got many options to choose from including Mailtrap, Mail Tester, GlockApps, and so on. For some spam checkers, you need to send your email to a specified address, and then you get a report. You can view your message, learn how to improve it, find out the authentication and blacklist status, and see if any broken links are there.

Other tools can assess your email without sending it. Just paste all the content of your message including headers and you’ll see what is missing and how likely it is to be trapped by SpamAssassin. Once you’ve managed to reach the highest score, the email campaign can be launched. We hope your IPR won’t fall below 90%. Good luck!

Thank you for reading our guide on how to avoid email spam filters. It was initially published in the Mailtrap blog by Zakhar Yung.

BIMI: the New Word in Email Authentication

nataliiapolomkina — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 16:39:59 +0000

Here we go again. Just when you figured out what all these weird abbreviations (DKIM, SPF, DMARC) are, one more pops up on the horizon. Weren’t you safe enough already? Weren’t the spoofers, seeing your robust DNS records, quietly running away? Not all of them. The bad news is that you need to become familiar with the new kids on the block – BIMI records. Good news – we’ve got them covered for you. Read on!

What is a BIMI Record?

BIMI stands for Brand Indicator for Message Identification. It’s a new approach that aims to prevent spoofing attempts but also increases the credibility of email senders. When fully implemented, hackers will have a very hard time trying to impersonate brands in emails, and maybe in a lot of other places too.

A BIMI record is a DNS TXT record indicating what a brand’s logo is. When properly certified and authenticated, brands will be able to display their logo next to each message in an inbox, just like in the example below.

When it’s well adopted and more logos start popping up in inboxes, users will be able to quickly spot when something’s not right. They’ll also learn to recognize the brand they know and like, coming with obvious benefits for the companies. We will cover more about that later.

BIMI email authentication is developed as an open standard and it is possible that not only email clients will adopt it. Among the most likely candidates, messaging and social media apps are mentioned. Companies present there could also benefit from additional security. The platforms will probably be eager to get verified accounts on board. BIMI records could make a lot of difference.

Email Providers Supporting BIMI

As Google committed to the BIMI pilot in 2021, it became a major event in the email authentication industry. This means BIMI will now be supported by “two of the three biggest North American free mailbox providers,” writes Len Shneyder, vice president of industry relations for Twilio. The Authindicators Working Group has now brought together the most outstanding email tech providers: Google, Yahoo, Twilio, Comcast, Valimail, 250ok, and ReturnPath.

Verizon Media Group (Yahoo, AOL, Netscape), Gmail, and Fastmail are currently in the beta phase of supporting BIMI. Comcast and Seznam.cz are in their planning phase for the BIMI adoption, while Microsoft hasn’t announced its support for BIMI yet. The trending numbers in BIMI adoption tracked by BIMI Radar mean that BIMI will now be available to more than 2 billion inboxes worldwide.

What are the requirements to join the BIMI club?
For BIMI to work, several conditions need to be met:

The sender’s domain needs to be DMARC-authenticated, with either ‘reject’ or ‘quarantine’ policy set up
The domain’s owner needs to obtain the right certification
A good sending history needs to be built

Let’s discuss these conditions one-by-one.

Be DMARC-certified
We already discussed DMARC on our blog, but if you wish to read more about it, check out our DMARC Explained article, along with our tips on how to set up DMARC record.

Long story short, DMARC is an authentication method that works on top of SPF and/or DKIM.

SPF is used to specify which IP addresses are allowed to send emails on behalf of a given domain. DKIM, on the other hand, allows incoming servers to verify the headers and body of a message so that they look just like they did when they were leaving the sender’s inbox.

DMARC runs either check (or both) and performs a separate domain alignment test for the methods used. Finally, a policy assigned with DMARC can suggest an incoming server if emails that fail a test should be:

Reject -> discarded and not delivered to the recipient’s inbox
Quarantine -> sent to the spam folder
None -> treated as though no check was made (good for testing)

As we mentioned earlier, to qualify for BIMI, the policy needs to be set to either ‘quarantine’ or ‘reject’. Of course, the DMARC record needs to be properly configured.

DMARC doesn’t require both DKIM and SPF to be set up (though it’s a smart thing to do). For the BIMI record to have any effect, either of these methods should be in place, along with DMARC, of course. A check will be performed every time a message is due to be delivered, so it’s worth triple-checking if everything is intact.

Obtain a certification
To add an additional layer of security, bodies governing BIMI, referred to as Mark Verifying Authorities (MVA), will ask for additional proof of domain ownership. At this time, there are two certifying authorities issuing VMCs (Verified Mark Certificate) for BIMI: DigiCert and Entrust Datacard.

To get in, you’ll need to obtain an EV (Extended Validation) certificate and meet several additional requirements:

Prove the ownership or the right to use a registered trademark
Have this trademark registered in a competent jurisdiction
Make sure the logo from the BIMI record matches the trademark
Assure the owner of a trademark is also a registrant of a given domain name (alternative, those using a trademark under a license must be registered as licensees of a domain)

Only if all of these conditions are met, the MVA will proceed to issue a respective certification.

Keep in mind that you will require multiple VMCs in case you need to secure multiple domains. The same is true for multiple logos.

Maintain a good sending history
The last requirement is rather vague but is important to keep in mind. In order to qualify for BIMI, you’ll need to have a good sending reputation, both for your domain and IP address.

This means having a healthy, engaged list of subscribers. Of course, you should avoid email bounces and spam reports, but the fact that your emails are regularly opened by the recipients will also play a significant role.

You also will need to have a track record of sending a significant volume of emails. Smaller senders may also be granted access to BIMI at some point but for now, only bigger brands will have a shot.

How to create BIMI records?

Once you meet all the requirements and obtain respective certifications, you can go on and add a proper record to your Domain Name System (DNS).

Then, you’ll need to upload your logo, necessarily in SVG format to a public HTTPS address. It’s recommended that it’s square-shaped and transparent. You may also want to avoid any unnecessary text as the logo displayed will be really small, making reading nearly impossible.

Finally, you will add a TXT record for default._bimi.DomainAddress in the following format:

v=BIMI1; l=logoURL;

For example, for Mailtrap it could be:

v=BIMI1; l=https://www.mailtrap.io/logo123.svg;

(it’s not really a valid address but if you wish to use our logo, let us know!)

That’s all. If you’re approved into the program and everything was configured properly, you should see the first effects within a few days.

Where can BIMI authentication make a difference?

When talking about BIMI authentication and its impact, the first thing that comes up is email security. After all, that’s precisely what BIMI record was introduced for. We also can’t underestimate the marketing impact it can have on brands. Let’s talk about these two aspects.

Security impact
While DKIM and SPF help prevent spoofing, skillful fraudsters can bypass these measures, especially if only one of them is set up. DMARC is much more difficult, as domain alignment is also checked. Chances are someone will pass through.

That’s when BIMI comes in very handy. Most users don’t check the email addresses of the senders and email clients don’t display them right away. Instead, all users see is the display name of a sender, sometimes with company initials.

This can be easily spoofed. When a BIMI record is in place, a brand’s missing logo may raise a yellow flag for those used to seeing the branding displayed for each email.

Popularizing BIMI will also directly impact the adoption rate of DMARC. Even after several years since the release, most companies still don’t use this technology and, according to Agari’s research, only 8% of Fortune 500 companies have ‘reject’ or ‘quarantine’ policies in place. All the others are vulnerable to attacks, most of which can be easily prevented with the more sophisticated tools.

It’s in the best interest of both users and email service providers to drive the adoption of DMARC. BIMI has a chance to finally move the numbers in the right direction.

Now, BIMI Radar tracks the DMARC readiness and the adoption of BIMI with companies and organizations’ domains worldwide on a daily basis. It is interesting to note that Global BIMI readiness is around 1.9% at the moment. The highest numbers go for the Netherlands – 48.5%, with the UK standing at 38% and the US at 23.8% respectively. In general, European countries such as the Netherlands, Norway, and France lead the way in modern means of email authentication.

Marketing impact
A recent study Consumer Interaction with Visual Brands in Email conducted by Red Sift and Entrust revealed new patterns in consumer behavior with the brands that have incorporated BIMI into their email strategy and now display their logos in the inboxes.

The survey found that the inclusion of BIMI standards logo has affected consumer behavior drastically by:

increasing open rates by 21%, irrespective of brand strength or market share. Customers demonstrated higher responsiveness to the emails with the logo of the brand.
increasing average purchase chances by 34%. Purchase feasibility was directly influenced by the recognizable brand logos displayed in the inbox.
increasing brand recall by 18%, after a 5-second exposure. A good sign for strengthening brand strategy and communication.

As the survey proves, emails signed with logos build users’ trust, especially if the content that follows is valuable. Customers certainly feel safer opening emails from familiar sources.

BIMI will likely expand at some point to other forms of online communication. Those that participate will be able to continuously develop brand awareness and quickly gain recognition.

Since the BIMI logo for an email is fetched from a DNS every time a message is delivered, rebranding will also run smoother than it usually does. All it will take is updating an SVG file in the domain’s DNS and changes will be applied with the next email delivered.

Wrapping up

The early data on BIMI implementation presented in recent surveys reveals quite promising perspectives. The adoption of BIMI has already significantly influenced the companies’ email marketing strategies and brand communication as well as elevated consumers’ responsiveness and trust.

Although the global adoption of BIMI might not be going as fast as one could have expected, with only roughly a quarter of companies around the world displaying BIMI records readiness, it still seems to gently but persistently push email environments to the highest standards of security.

Chances are that a few years from now, we’ll be looking suspiciously at emails coming in without company logos. Or who knows, maybe a completely different approach will take over by then and change the way we think about email authentication.

Thank you for reading our guide on how BIMI authentication works, which was initially published on the Mailtrap blog.

PTR Records and Why They Matter for Emails

nataliiapolomkina — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 16:19:10 +0000

Sorted out authentications? Check. Built a domain reputation? Check. Avoided spam filters at all costs? Check. The list of things for improving deliverability goes on and on. Let’s add one more thing to the list then because PTR records can make a difference too. What are they about? How do you add them properly? Let’s see!

What are PTR Records?

PTR records (short for Pointer Records) are used to perform a Reverse DNS lookup.

As you probably know, DNS (Domain Name System) is sort of a phonebook for the Internet. It stores an enormous amount of information about millions of registered domains. To access its (virtual) pages, you need to perform a DNS lookup of a given domain.

This is typically done by browsers right after you type in an email address. With a DNS lookup, they can quickly understand that the /blog/ address actually represents the 3.215.223.38 IP address. This result is called an ‘A Record’.

A PTR Record is obtained in the opposite fashion. By performing a Reverse DNS lookup, a server can resolve an IP address to obtain a domain or a hostname.

Why PTR records are important?

An email travels across the servers (MTAs) on the way to the recipient’s email client. Before it’s delivered to an inbox, most email providers will enforce one simple test. They’ll run a DNS lookup simultaneously with a Reverse DNS lookup and will compare whether the results match. If they don’t or a PTR record simply doesn’t exist, an email is likely to be sent to spam or even discarded.

PTR Records are a defense used by servers against spammers, especially those using fraudulent domain names (let’s say, mailtrop.io). If the records are configured for mailtrap.ip, resolving an IP address with a PTR lookup (Reverse DNS lookup) won’t point to a real domain. This, as a result, will send up a red flag for an MTA and will likely lead to an email being discarded.

That’s why it’s important to have a PTR record added to your domain’s DNS if you use it to send mass emails.

PTR records are also important for marketers and for their analytical tools, such as Google Analytics. As a website owner, you can easily see which IP addresses visit your pages. The numbers themselves would be rather meaningless but thanks to Reverse DNS lookup you can see the hostnames or domains of visitors. And this can give you some valuable information.

Let’s now learn how to add a PTR record to a domain’s DNS.

How to set up PTR records?

Same as when you add a regular A record, the steps for adding a PTR record also very much depend on your hosting provider. For some, you should be able to add one in your admin panel. For others, you might need to reach out to the support team so they can set this up for you. We’ll assume you’re able to add PTR Records yourself.

To do so, you’ll first need to define a Reverse zone. By definition, a zone is a separate portion of a domain name space in DNS. A zone is directly related to the size of your IP network. Mailtrap’s IP (3.215.223.38) uses a traditional IPv4 protocol (using an X.X.X.X structure) so there are 255 IP addresses available – 3.215.223.1, 3.215.223.2 and so on until 3.215.223.255.

Since we need an address for the entire zone, we omit the last digit and reverse the order of numbers. The address of our PTR record would be 223.215.3.in-addr.arpa. If we were to create a PTR record only for one single address, we would use 38.223.215.3.in-addr.arpa.

What’s up with in-addr.arpa in each address? It’s a second-level domain suffix that’s added to all the addresses in IPv4. If you were to use a more common IP in the IPv6 system, a PTR Record’s address would end with ip6.arpa.

Add a PTR record following these rules. Then, check if there’s a match. Mailtrap.io should point to 3.215.223.38 (A record) while 38.223.215.3.in-addr.arpa should point to Mailtrap.io (PTR record). If this is the case for your domain’s DNS, you can say you’ve reached a Forward-confirmed reverse DNS (FCrDNS).

A PTR record should look like this:

Can I have multiple PTR records?

By definition, a PTR record can only point to one hostname. But what if you want to have multiple PTR records for a single IP address? This could work when you have several domains registered, each pointing to the same IP address (and displaying the same website when entering an address). To get the PTR records right, you’ll want to resolve this IP address for each of these domains – otherwise, you won’t have a match.

DNS doesn’t restrict the number of entries you can have but having multiple PTR records is not recommended. Software running mail servers often expect only a single entry for each IP address. When it retrieves it, it starts treating it as a canonical name for a given hostname. As a result, if multiple PTR records are defined for a single IP address, during a Reverse DNS lookup, a server may just pick one at random. And that one might not necessarily match the A record.

When adding MX records to DNS, you can specify their priority. No such feature is available for PTR records.

As a result, adding multiple PTR records for an individual IP doesn’t make you look any more credible in the virtual eyes of ISPs. Quite the opposite, in fact, it might result in a failed verification of A/PTR records and lower the chance of your email getting delivered.

I hope our guide on how to create PTR record was useful for you. The article was initially published in the Mailtrap blog.

Your Guide to Safe Emails: Create and Implement a DKIM Record

nataliiapolomkina — Thu, 24 Nov 2022 21:41:51 +0000

In the DKIM Explained blog post at the Mailtrap blog, we featured a doleful story of a product owner named Mark who missed a chance to sell his product to a prospect named Yvonne. Mark’s marketing emails reached Yvonne’s mailbox but ended up in a ‘spam’ folder. So, she has signed with another company. The reason was quite simple: Mark’s emails lacked a DKIM signature. Don’t make his mistake and set up your DKIM record with the help of this guide.

What is required for a DKIM signature?

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is a digital signature added to outbound emails. It looks like a random set of characters mostly unreadable to a human user. Recipients don’t see this unless they dig into the source code of the email. DKIM is meant for the recipient’s email server, which authenticates the sender based on it and, if everything seems to be fine, lets pass the email to the mailbox. Here is an example of a regular DKIM record:

DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=asuswebstorage.com; s=default; t=1572282571; bh=NFzBvJ/pEmf+yUHDd/Y7dYNH9pE+Bx6o95KcxhwFL78=; h=From:To:Subject:From; b=QwgINKqwcBu3GbeWm2Be81qXks6Pq9yMmDZl9C6mT8moXVBeokpEmDN+0RyZFiOmNH30kbe6HbS2lY3b1Pf726UH/V/0VAH0nigTuir4TWdN/IUePV+goQdEJ2+sDQ1fHlVjyyJCRwCiFiZpBIjhTBNN0vrgNJZ/gSLLOvq6k3s=

It consists of the following tags:

v=1 – the version (always equals to 1)
a= – a signing algorithm used for the creation of a DKIM record
c= – a canonicalization algorithm for the header and the body
d= – a domain where the DKIM is signed
s= – a DKIM selector
t= – a timestamp of when the email was signed
bh= – a hashed email body
h= – a list of headers
b= – a digital signature

To create the DKIM signature, you will have to specify only two tags of all the above: an authorized domain (d=) and a selector (s=).

Choose a domain

When validating DKIM signatures, the recipient’s mail server checks whether the domain included in the signature (d=) matches the domain included in the ‘From:‘ field of the email. You may use different domains for sending different types of emails, so make sure each is authorized.

*NB: If you’re using different domains for sending emails, you’ll need to have separate DKIM signatures for each domain. *

Pick a DKIM selector

A selector or a selector prefix is a name you need to specify to create the DKIM key. During the validation process, the server runs a DNS query according to the combination of the authorized domain (d=) and the selector (s=). This is required to fetch the public key.

Each selector is assigned to a separate private key. If you send different types of emails (marketing, transactional, etc.) from the same domain, it’s better to use separate keys for your convenience though you don’t have to. You’ll need to use different selectors to generate those. Pick any name for your selector.

Choose a public and private key generator

The domain and selector are the input data used to generate a key pair, which consists of the public and the private key. The public key is used in the DNS TXT record, whereas the private key is used for the sending MTA. Check our blog post, “What is an MTA?”, if you need to brush up on what that is.

The MTA uses the private key to hash headers (h=) and the body (bh=) of the outbound email. The private key is kept on the server and never leaves.

When an email with DKIM arrives, a receiving mail server makes a DNS query to get the public key. The server uses it to build its own hashes and then compares them with the ones received. If there’s a match, the email is let in.

You can generate these keys with one of the following tools:

DKIM Core – the selector is assigned automatically.
DKIM Generation Wizard by SocketLabs – allows you to assign a selector and generate 1024 and 2048 bit key pairs.
DKIM Wizard by SparkPost – allows you to assign a selector and generate 1024 and 2048 bit key pairs. Previously known as Port25.
DKIM Record Generator by Easy DMARC – allows you to assign a selector and lookup DKIM.
DKIM Wizard by Unlock The Inbox – allows you to assign a selector and generate 512, 768 (keys smaller than 1024 bits are subject to off-line attacks), 1024, and 2048 bit key pairs.
PuTTY – an installable tool for generating public-private key pairs on Windows and Linux.
ssh-keygen – an installable tool for generating public-private key pairs on Linux.

With some tools, you can generate 2048-bit domain keys. They are more secure than 1024-bit ones. But you can use them only if your DNS system supports them.

How do I create a DKIM record for my domain?

Now, the meat! Let’s go through the steps required to create a DKIM record online. As an example, we’ll use the domain ‘example.com’ and the selector ‘test-mail’.

Generate public and private keys

Generate your public and private key pair using a dedicated tool. We’re using DKIM Wizard by SparkPost, as follows:

After the click on Create Keys, we’ve got two keys: public and private.

Configure the DNS server with the public key

Create a DKIM TXT record using the domain, selector and the public key. The record will carry the name of the authorized domain attached with the selector prefix, as follows:

test-mail._domainkey.example.com

The DKIM entry starts with the k= tag. It stands for ‘Key type’. Sending and receiving servers must support the rsa key type, which indicates that an ASN.1 DER-encoded public key is being used in the p= tag. The p= tag further encodes the value using base64. Here is what we’ve got:

test-mail._domainkey.example.com IN TXT
“k=rsa\; p=MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQCehqKMB6znGXo/pC83mGObm8OWo4daBYBb9wqqDaflz7Mf9KW1oaUm9j7hQq7af7jh+DSw0tXWr4HbJrI50DW/QVHqYKlPX3hvYUohBxg//T0u0rK3OSJss3OrpkoRqd150ynYxwwLymsjIwODT7Gf9WZPcL86rdboSRm/ost4mwIDAQAB”

Add this DKIM entry to your domain’s DNS records. In most cases, you’ll have to wait 24-48 hours for the changes to take effect.

How to know which DNS hosting provider I have?

A DNS hosting service is commonly provided by a domain name registrar, but it’s not a must. You can find out which DNS provider you have using a dedicated online tool. For example, MXToolbox and its SuperTool. Let’s check out a DNS hosting provider for Mailtrap.

And that’s what we’ve got in response:

Save the private key to your MTA

Every mail transfer agent is different, and so are the ways to set up DKIM on them. On Exim, for example, you need to create a new file containing the private key and update the main configuration file. For Sendmail, Postfix, or another MTA that supports milters, you can use a tailored milter – OpenDKIM. Check the documentation of your MTA for more details. You can also read about the differences between Postfix, Sendmail, and Exim.

That’s it. Now you can send a test email from your domain. The flow for setting up DKIM might look a bit different for each provider, since they have their own procedures for creating DKIM records. Check out some of them.

Setting up DKIM records at popular email service providers

Gmail

Gmail users whose domains were provided by a G Suite domain host partner need to turn on DKIM signing only. All the rest (domain key generation and adding it to domain’s DNS records) are done by Gmail. Regular users will have to do this manually according to the official procedure.

Office 365

In this Microsoft official guide, you’ll discover how to create a DKIM record Office 365, how to configure DKIM for more than one domain, how to upgrade 1024-bit keys to 2048-bit DKIM encryption keys, and much more.

Amazon SES

To create a DKIM record on AWS, you have to accomplish five steps laid out in this documentation. You will also find a list of the most common DNS providers to update the DNS records for your domain at ease.

MailChimp

In MailChimps documentation, the emphasis is made on both DKIM and SPF records. The process includes two parties where you’ll need to complete tasks: MailChimp and your domain provider editor.

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor also provides a detailed “how to create DKIM record wizard”. You won’t have to generate a key pair using a third-party tool, since it’s available in-house. In the documentation, there is also a section about how to add DKIM records on popular DNS hosts.

To wrap up

DKIM is an advanced email authentication standard and every reputable email sender must implement it. Other options include Sender Policy Framework (SPF), which is a fundamental protection against email forgery. DMARC, in turn, leverages DKIM and/or SPF for more advanced checks on received emails. Handle your email security properly. This will let you enjoy the growing metrics of your email campaigns.

Thanks for reading our guide on how to generate DKIM Record for your domain. The article was initially published in the Mailtrap blog by Piotr Malek.

Difference Between Hard and Soft Bounce

nataliiapolomkina — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 18:16:13 +0000

“Your email failed to be delivered”. Again. Why? Even when you think you configured everything properly, there are various reasons why your email might bounce. Some might be really your fault but most of the time, it’s things out of your control that cause emails to come back in a matter of seconds. Let’s analyze each case one by one and talk about the difference between an email soft bounce and hard bounce.

Hard bounce vs soft bounce

Whenever your email bounces, you’ll receive an automatic email right away that will look something like this:

Oftentimes, an error message clearly indicates what the reason was for a bounce along with advice on how to fix it. Sometimes, though, the message is not so clear and you need to know how to interpret it.

In general, we differentiate two types of email bounces – soft and hard ones.

Hard bounce

A hard bounce is a permanent failure of email delivery. It indicates that there will be no further attempt to deliver a message and you need to find a different way to reach the recipient.

An email usually hard bounces when the email address you typed in doesn’t exist. Alternatively, a recipient’s ISP (Internet Service Provider) can just reject your email for numerous reasons.

Soft bounce

A soft bounce is a temporary failure of email delivery. Although an email failed to deliver this time, often a server will make further attempts a bit later. Sometimes all you need to do is wait.

An email bounces softly when the recipient’s mailbox is full, either side hits some limits or a message is deemed too large to be accepted.

Notifications related to an out-of-office or other autoresponders are also sometimes treated as soft bounces but they work a bit differently. More about those below.

Some emails bounce for some other reasons and the way clients communicate these errors is sometimes far from obvious. We’ll discuss those as well.

Causes of hard bounces

Hard bounces happen for many different reasons. Here are the most common ones in more detail:

The recipient does not exist

This error indicates that the email address you used doesn’t exist. A simple typo could cause it but maybe a nonexistent domain is the reason here. Or maybe someone doesn’t work at a given company anymore and their email address was removed – this would also cause a hard bounce.

When an email address you used doesn’t exist, you’ll often receive a 550 5.5.1 server error, as was the case above. If the reason behind rejection is unclear but you see these mysterious numbers, you can quickly connect the dots and react accordingly. We covered this error in more detail in another article on our blog.

If this is the reason for the bounce, double-check if you didn’t mistype your recipient’s address. Often times, however, there’s nothing you can do other than removing a recipient from the list. Keeping such contacts on your email list and having your emails bounce over and over again will only affect your deliverability. Negatively.

Your email was blocked by a server

Modern email servers reject tons of emails they suspect of being unwanted. And while they’re almost always right to do so, sometimes they get rid of perfectly legitimate t emails without a moment of hesitation.

The reasons for this can be many. Often, a lack of proper authentication plays a role so make sure you have SPF, DKIM as well as DMARC set up. Check also if you have PTR Records set up and if they match A record from your domain’s DNS.

To improve the experience of its users, ISPs also look at their past behavior when determining whether an email should be accepted or not. If you keep sending emails but recipients never care to open them, a server may finally reject them before they reach an inbox to save them the trouble. For that reason, it’s good to clear your mailing lists every now and manually remove inactive contacts.

If none of these helps and your emails still bounce, it’s worth seeking support. If you experience problems with a particular domain, reaching out to them directly might get you whitelisted for the future deliveries. Your ESP may be able to both advise and solve some problems on your behalf.

Mailbox is full

Each mailbox comes with a certain quota of data dedicated to outgoing and incoming emails. When the limit is reached, each new message will likely bounce once and for all. Some providers might give a delivery another try a few days later in which case this would fall into a soft bounce category.

But don’t hope for that. If you’re getting such alerts, try reaching the recipients some other way. Maybe they’re not even aware of this fact. In many cases, unfortunately, this might indicate an abandoned account so you’re better off searching for a different contact method anyway.

Challenge-response error

This error is of a bit different type than its predecessors on our list. Some people set up an additional firewall meant to authenticate senders. Sometimes email providers set those up by default too.

When you email such contact for the first time, you’ll get an automatic response. Usually, you’ll be asked to answer a question or perform some action to verify that you’re a legitimate sender. Once you do, your email will be delivered. If you, however, ignore this email and a few days pass, your email will bounce.

The only thing you can do to avoid it is to, well, complete the challenge. The good news is that in most cases once you prove you’re a homo sapiens, you won’t have to repeat this boring routine again.

Causes of soft bounces

Soft bounces also happen every now and then. Some are harmless, some indicate just temporary problems but many might foreshadow imminent hard bounces. Here are the most common motives behind soft bounces:

DNS Failure or other errors

DNS Failure is a common error caused by the receiving side. It indicates that there was some issue with Domain Name System and a message couldn’t be delivered at the time. Likely, a server was temporarily down or was misconfigured. If that was the case, a delivery will likely be retried over the next days and only if it fails multiple times, a hard bounce will occur.

Sometimes, this error might also appear if the domain you send to doesn’t exist. In such a case, there will be no future attempts and you’ll need to look for other ways to contact a recipient.

Any other errors can also occur during a transmission – for example, a connection may time out. In such a case, a server is likely to retry several times at a later time before it gives up.

A message is too large

Just as mailboxes have capacity limits, also individual messages are often subject to limitations. And while your outgoing servers might allow some messages with large attachments, it might not necessarily be true for ISPs.

If a message cannot be delivered due to its size, many ESPs will retry sending it over a specific time period – usually several days. If they still fail to deliver by that time, they’ll be permanently rejected.

A limit is reached

Some ISPs might also impose limits on the number of emails that can be received, to prevent flooding inboxes with spam. While it’s fairly rare for legitimate messages to be stopped like this, it might happen. In such cases, delivery will likely be retried several times, and only if none of the attempts succeed will the email bounce.

Autoresponder is triggered

Very often, sending to a large group of recipients will result in a wave of autoresponders hitting your inbox. This is especially true during the holiday season. Very often these messages are merely informing you that the recipient is currently out of the office and will get to your message a bit later. In such cases, the message has arrived in their inbox anyway so there’s nothing you have to do. It won’t hurt to follow-up a few days after they’re back, though, if you don’t hear from them until then.

It’s worth reading through such autoresponders, however. Sometimes they may inform you that a person you’re writing on moved on to a different company and no longer reads these messages. Companies tend to keep such mailboxes alive and leave instructions on who to contact instead. If that’s the case, make sure you update the contacts on your mailing list.

Wrapping up

We hope the difference between both types of bounces is more clear now. You should also have an idea on how to mitigate the risk of seeing them for your next campaign. If you’re interested in more tips on improving your emails, check out other articles on our blog. We talk about email sending, testing, and everything that revolves around email functionalities.

This article was initially written by Denys Velykozhon, Content Marketer at Mailtrap. Read more on email sending, testing, and everything that revolves around email functionalities in the Mailtrap blog.

Send and Receive Emails in C#

nataliiapolomkina — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 12:43:50 +0000

As one of Microsoft’s most successful programming languages, it’s safe to say that C# enjoys a lot of popularity and adoption among developers.

These same developers are behind the creation of everything from desktop and web applications to enterprise software and games, which often need to have an email-sending functionality for distributing email notifications to users.

So how do developers incorporate the email-sending functionality into their software and send emails with C#? We tackle this question in the text below, so if you’re interested, keep on reading!

How to send emails in C# with SMTP?

The most common way of sending emails from your C# application is by using a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server. But, as C# is not able to communicate with and instruct an SMTP host server on its own, you will need the .NET framework.

In case you are not on a first-name basis with .NET, it’s an open-source developer platform/framework also created by Microsoft. It is for building different types of applications (web, mobile, desktop, gaming, IoT, and more) and supports a range of languages, editors, and libraries.

What makes .NET so crucial in the email-sending process is the fact that it contains classes for sending emails to an SMTP server which then delivers them to recipients.

To start using .NET in your application, make sure that within it, you have the following two namespaces:

using System.Net; using System.Net.Mail;

Then, you can use your variation of the following code example below to send your first email using C#.

Note: Although the code below can be used, it is considered somewhat outdated as it uses the SmtpClient class of the System.Net.Mail namespace instead of the MailKit library one (covered later in the article), which is more suited to modern development standards. So, if you are interested in taking only the more modern coding approach, please skip to the next section of this article.

using System;

using System.Net;
using System.Net.Mail; 

namespace TestClient {
  class Program
  {
    public static void Main (string[] args)
    {
      MailAddress to = new MailAddress("ToAddress");
      MailAddress from = new MailAddress("FromAddress");

      MailMessage email = new MailMessage(from, to);
      email.Subject = "Testing out email sending";
      email.Body = "Hello all the way from the land of C#";

      SmtpClient smtp = new SmtpClient();
      smtp.Host = "smtp.server.address";
      smtp.Port = 25;
      smtp.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("smtp_username", "smtp_password");
      smtp.DeliveryMethod = SmtpDeliveryMethod.Network;
      smtp.EnableSsl = true;

      try
      {
        /* Send method called below is what will send off our email 
         * unless an exception is thrown.
         */ 
        smtp.Send(email);
      }
      catch (SmtpException ex)
      {
        Console.WriteLine(ex.ToString());
      }
    }
  }
}

If you paid close attention to the code above containing the MailMessage C# example (no worries if you didn’t; we’re not in a rush :)), you will notice the use of placeholders for things such as the from and to email addresses and, more importantly, the SMTP server details.

All of these are customized. So, for instance, if you want to send an email using Gmail SMTP server, you should replace smtp.server.address with smtp.gmail.com.

Our choice for an SMTP server falls on Mailtrap’s primarily because we enjoy how easy it is to find the necessary credentials and complete the setup.

We will talk more about Mailtrap as an email delivery platform a bit later, as it could be a great solution for both testing and sending your emails. But, for the time being, it’s great to keep in mind the practicality of its SMTP server for when it comes time to decide on one yourself. At the end of the day, it’s not the most practical to send email without SMTP server.

How to send emails in C# with MailKit?

MailKit is a cross-platform .NET mail-client library facilitating not only email sending but receiving as well.

Now, you might be thinking, “Wait, wait. Didn’t you just showcase how the email-sending process is done with no involvement of MailKit?” Yes, we did. And while the code above is valid and should work without an issue in most cases, the SmtpClient class used in it might cause a few hiccups.

Why? Well, according to Microsoft and their documentation, the SmtpClient class lacks support for many modern protocols and is thus not recommended for new development. Instead, the use of MailKit or a different email library and its classes is a better alternative.

To start using MailKit, you will first need to install it via NuGet.

This is done in the Package Manager Console of Visual Studio using the following command:

Install-Package MailKit

After the installation, you can start sending emails using this C# MailKit example code with customizations, of course:

using System;

using MailKit.Net.Smtp;
using MailKit;
using MimeKit;

namespace TestClient {
  class Program
  {
    public static void Main (string[] args)
    {
      var email = new MimeMessage();

      email.From.Add(new MailboxAddress("Sender Name", "sender@email.com"));
      email.To.Add(new MailboxAddress("Receiver Name", "receiver@email.com"));

      email.Subject = "Testing out email sending";
      email.Body = new TextPart(MimeKit.Text.TextFormat.Html) { 
        Text = "<b>Hello all the way from the land of C#</b>"
      };

      using (var smtp = new SmtpClient())
      {
        smtp.Connect("smtp.server.address", 587, false);

        // Note: only needed if the SMTP server requires authentication
        smtp.Authenticate("smtp_username", "smtp_password");

        smtp.Send(email);
        smtp.Disconnect(true);
      }
    }
  }
}

Yes, yes, we know what you spotted in the code, the SmtpClient class. No worries, this isn’t the same class from the System.Net.Mail namespace.

This is the SmtpClient class from MailKit.Net.Smtp, which is the Microsoft-approved alternative.

How to send emails in C# with Mailtrap Email API?

What you saw demonstrated above was the old-fashioned way of sending emails in C#. And while there is nothing wrong with it, it certainly isn’t as advanced and effortless as sending with third-party email services, which more often than not, provide automation features, analytics, and more.

When it comes to picking these types of services, you might want to consider Mailtrap Email API – the email-sending side of the Mailtrap email delivery platform and the optimal choice for those who want to have more control over their email deliverability.

After going through the secure and smooth setup, you can use Email API to send your emails and make them land in people’s inboxes instead of their spam folders.

Email API makes this possible by giving you tools to spot and fix early sending issues.

To be more specific, those who decide on using Email API as their third-party email service gain access to actionable analytics features, which include daily and weekly deliverability alerts, up to 60-day email logs, webhooks, and dashboards with critical alerts.

Among the listed features, what might be the most interesting are the color-coded critical alert dashboards which can be filtered by top mailbox providers, thus enabling you to dig deeper to improve your email performance.

Speed-wise, Email API can go up to ~10000 emails/second. And to make sure email sending goes as smoothly as possible, there are dedicated IPs, auto IP warmup, and suppression lists at your disposal.

To integrate Email API into your C# application, you will need a Mailtrap account (free plan available).

Once your account is active, the next step you need to complete is adding and verifying your domain – a process described in the video below.

Upon domain verification, you should be taken to the API and SMTP Integration page, where you can find the Email API integration code containing your API key and the other necessary details in a number of programming languages, including C#.

var client = new RestClient("https://send.api.mailtrap.io/api/send");
client.Timeout = -1;
var request = new RestRequest(Method.POST);
request.AddHeader("Authorization", "Bearer <YOUR_API_TOKEN>");
request.AddHeader("Content-Type", "application/json");
request.AddParameter("application/json", "{\"from\":{\"email\":\"mailtrap@mailtrap.io\",\"name\":\"Mailtrap Test\"},\"to\":[{\"email\":\"ToMailAddress\"}],\"subject\":\"You are awesome!\",\"text\":\"Congrats for sending test email with Mailtrap!\",\"category\":\"Integration Test\"}", ParameterType.RequestBody);
IRestResponse response = client.Execute(request);
Console.WriteLine(response.Content);

As Mailtrap also supports SMTP, you can simply take the credentials provided to you and use them in your project, app, or email-sending service to start sending with Email API.

How to send an HTML email in C#?

As HTML emails are far more eye-catching than plain text, sending them serves as a simple way to better engage your recipients, and now we’ll demonstrate how it’s done in C#.

Do keep in mind that we are going to stick with the MailKit route, as there is no reason not to follow Microsoft’s advice when it comes to their own framework.

So, to create an HTML email in C#, we will use the same code that was used in the “How to send emails in C# with MailKit” section of this article but with a few tweaks.

The most notable tweak will be at the part where we define the email message body.

For a plain text email, this is the message body code:

message.Body = new TextPart("plain")
{
  Text = @"Hey, Just wanted to say hi all the way from the land of C#. -- Code guy"
};

To now turn this message body into HTML, we’ll use the following code:

var bodyBuilder = new BodyBuilder();

bodyBuilder.HtmlBody = "<p>Hey,<br>Just wanted to say hi all the way from the land of C#.<br>-- Code guy</p>";

bodyBuilder.TextBody = "Hey,
Just wanted to say hi all the way from the land of C#.
-- Code guy"; 

message.Body = bodyBuilder.ToMessageBody();

Embedding an image

If you are thinking, “but what about images,” no worries, we’ve got you covered there as well and will now demonstrate how to send email with image in body.

Embedding an image into your custom HTML email body or HTML email template requires just a few additional lines of code, and it’s nothing more complicated than what we’ve done so far:

var bodyBuilder = new BodyBuilder();
bodyBuilder.TextBody = @"Hey, Just wanted to say hi all the way from the land of C#. -- Code guy";

var image = builder.LinkedResources.Add(@"C:\Users\CodeGuy\Documents\selfie.jpg");
image.ContentId = MimeUtils.GenerateMessageId();

bodyBuilder.HtmlBody = string.Format(@"<p>Hey,<br>Just wanted to say hi all the way from the land of C#.<br>-- Code guy</p><br>
<center><img src=""cid:{0}""></center>", image.ContentId);

message.Body = bodyBuilder.ToMessageBody();

In the code above, we used the LinkedResources property, which enables us to add a special type of attachment that is linked to from the HtmlBody property. In our case, that attachment is an image named selfie.jpg.

How to send email with attachment in C #?

While we are on the topic of attachments, let’s explain the simplest method of creating an email containing one in C#.

When using MailKit, that method involves the BodyBuilder class, which came in very handy in the creation of our HTML email.

In the code below, you can see how we added a PDF document named tutorial.pdf using the Attachments property of the BodyBuilder class:

var builder = new BodyBuilder();

// Set the plain-text version of the message text
builder.TextBody = @"Hey,
  Just wanted to say hi all the way from the land of C#. Also, here's a cool PDF tutorial for you!
  -- Code guy
";

// The part where we include the new attachment...
builder.Attachments.Add(@"C:\Users\CodeGuy\Documents\tutorial.pdf");

message.Body = builder.ToMessageBody();

How to send email to multiple recipients in C#?

Sending your email to multiple recipients in C# is pretty easy and involves the use of the InternetAddressList class and the AddRange method.

First, you will create an instance of the InternetAddressList class using an empty constructor, to which you then need to add all the recipients.

InternetAddressList list = new InternetAddressList();
list.Add(new MailboxAddress("First Receiver", "first@email.com"));
list.Add(new MailboxAddress("Second Receiver", "second@email.com"));
list.Add(new MailboxAddress("Third Receiver", "third@email.com"));

Next, you can move on to creating the MimeMessage class instance, adding the sender, and adding the list of recipients to the instance with the AddRange method.

var message = new MimeMessage();
message.From.Add(new MailboxAddress("Sender Name", "sender@email.com"));
message.To.AddRange(RecipientList);

Testing emails before sending them in C#: Why and how?
Sending is enabled in your C# app. Hooray! But don’t let this excitement rush you into sending emails to real recipients just yet.

Before proceeding with that, it’s essential you do some testing, and there are a couple of reasons why:

Your custom email or email template HTML/CSS might not look as good in other email clients as it does in yours.
Your email content might be a bit spammy.
The domain you intend on sending from might be present on blacklists.

These and other issues related to your emails can only be detected through adequate inspecting and debugging using equipped email testing tools.

Email Sandbox is the email testing side of the Mailtrap email delivery platform.

Email Sandbox is a tool geared toward devs, but it can also be used by anyone wanting to debug and inspect emails at staging. And since it comes with no risk of spamming real users during the process, unlike the manual route, it can also be considered a safe environment for email testing.

Email Sandbox has plenty of other benefits when compared to manual testing, such as the preservation of domain reputation due to using a virtual inbox as opposed to your personal one, automation of test flows and scenarios, and saving time during setup and usage.

Users of Email Sandbox have a range of features at their disposal, such as HTML/CSS analysis, email content spam score checking and previews, blacklist reports, insights into valuable tech info, and more available to them after integrating the testing tool into their C# app using a code snippet or the credentials of their virtual inbox.

For C# apps, the following code snippet is used:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Net.Mail;
using System.Net;

namespace ConsoleApplication
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var client = new SmtpClient("smtp.mailtrap.io", 2525)
            {
                Credentials = new NetworkCredential("username", "password"),
                EnableSsl = true
            };
            client.Send("from@example.com", "to@example.com", "Hello world", "testbody");
            Console.WriteLine("Sent");
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
}

Once you run the code, you can check your virtual inbox.

Your first test email should be there, and you are now able to inspect and debug it using Email Sandbox’s features.

How to receive emails in C#?

Although it’s not super common, you might need to enable your C# app to receive/retrieve emails from a POP3 or IMAP mail server. Luckily, MailKit is capable of doing exactly that.

Those of you looking to retrieve messages from a POP3 server should first make sure that you have the appropriate using directives at the top of your code file.

using System;
using MailKit.Net.Pop3;
using MailKit;
using MimeKit;

Then, you can use the following code snippet to connect to the server and get all the messages present on it using a for or foreach loop, whatever you prefer.

using (var client = new Pop3Client())
{
    client.Connect("pop.server.com", 110, false);
    client.Authenticate("pop_username", "pop_password");

    for (int i = 0; i < client.Count; i++)
     {
        var message = client.GetMessage(i);
        Console.WriteLine("Subject: {0}", message.Subject);
    }

    client.Disconnect(true);
}

For IMAP, the following using directives are needed.

using System;

using MailKit.Net.Imap;
using MailKit.Search;
using MailKit;
using MimeKit;

And the code for retrieving the messages from the IMAP server will be quite similar to the one used for POP3, just with a few differences here and there.

using (var client = new ImapClient())
{
    client.Connect("imap.server.com", 993, true);
    client.Authenticate("imap_username", "imap_password");

  var inbox = client.Inbox;
    inbox.Open(FolderAccess.ReadOnly);

    Console.WriteLine("Total messages: {0}", inbox.Count);
    Console.WriteLine("Recent messages: {0}", inbox.Recent);

    for (int i = 0; i < inbox.Count; i++)
  {
        var message = inbox.GetMessage(i);
        Console.WriteLine("Subject: {0}", message.Subject);
    }

    client.Disconnect(true);
}

As MailKit provides numerous options when it comes to messages on IMAP servers, we suggest you take a look at the available GitHub documentation.

Wrapping things up

So, that was all we had to cover in this sending with C# tutorial. From the old-fashioned method involving System.Net.Mail’s SmtpClient class which is not really recommended anymore to using MailKit and Mailtrap’s Email API which is now standard practice, we covered all the options for sending emails that might come in handy.

We also touched upon HTML emails, attachments, images, multiple recipients, and even how to retrieve emails with C# code. That being said, feel free to use this article as a handbook on all things regarding how to send email with C#.

Also, make sure to remember to never send emails without doing proper testing beforehand with tools such as Mailtrap Email Sandbox; otherwise, the spam folder might be the only place your emails reach regardless of how much time you spent tweaking the text or configuring your mail settings.

Interested in more C# content? Then you might want to check out our (ASP DotNet) ASP.NET send email and C# email validation articles. Or you can come back to our blog in a few weeks to read our soon-to-be-published sending with ASP.NET Core article.

Thanks for reading!

I hope you enjoyed our guide on sending emails in C Sharp, which was initially published in the Mailtrap blog.

Sending emails from Google Sheets

nataliiapolomkina — Sun, 30 Oct 2022 23:09:21 +0000

Google Sheets are great! Need to perform some advanced calculations? Store an enormous amount of data? Fetch from external services on a regular basis? They can do it all and a lot more too. Another useful but maybe not so well known feature is the ability to send emails from Google Sheets. How does it work? How do you set it up? Let’s see!

Why send emails from Google Sheets in the first place? A case study.

First of all, let’s clarify why you would even want to use Google Sheets to send emails in the first place. The idea itself may sound crazy at first, but there are tons of use cases behind it. Let’s illustrate it in an example.

As you may know, except for all our regular team members, we have a bunch of minions working for us day and night*. Our minions help us develop and maintain Mailtrap as the best platform for pre-production email testing. As everyone knows, minions like bananas. A lot.

*No, we don’t really hire minions, but it’s a great example anyway. Photo credit: hdqwalls.com

To motivate minions, we pay them in bananas – the exact amount depending on the complexity of the task and their performance. Since feeding an army of minions is a rather complex task, we’ve decided to ease the pain by implementing some automations. Each of our minions is added to the spreadsheet, listing its name, email address (even minions have those), and the accumulated amount of bananas.

Since we have more important things to do than handing out individual bananas to minions, we’ve set up a rule – each minion needs to accumulate 20 or more bananas before they can pick them up. Of course, they can wait longer, until they reach 50 for example, but, really, who would do that?

Since minions are not very good with spreadsheets, we need to email them when their banana count reaches 20 or more. For that, we’re going to need to build a script to send emails from Google Spreadsheets.

Sending emails from Google Sheets step by step

To get started, let’s open the Script Editor. Pick Tools from the menu at the top and then Script Editor. A new page will load.

Name it what you wish. Clear the window and insert the following JavaScript code:

function sendBananaCountEmails() {
  const sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
  const dataRange = sheet.getRange("A2:C6");
  const data = dataRange.getValues();

  data.forEach(function (rowData) {
    const recipient = rowData[0];
    const emailAddress = rowData[1];
    const bananasCount = rowData[2];

    if (bananasCount < 20) {
      return
    }

    const greeting = 'Dear ' + recipient + ',\n'
    const bananasCountMessage = 'You have ' + bananasCount + ' bananas accumulated.';
    const greatJobMessage = 'Great job! Come pick them up :)';

    const message = [greeting, bananasCountMessage, greatJobMessage].join('\n');
    const subject = 'Good news, you have some bananas waiting for you!';

    MailApp.sendEmail(emailAddress, subject, message);
  })
}

Save the script you’ve just created. If you’re ready to run it, pick the name from the list at the top (it will contain just one position in the beginning anyway) and hit the triangular ‘Run’ button.

Before you send a campaign, you’ll need to authorize Gmail to send emails on your behalf.

There’s a chance that the script you’ve just created will be considered as unverified by Google at first. If that happens, open ‘Advanced’ options and choose to proceed anyway.

If your script is correct, it will be executed immediately. Double-check that you added the correct email addresses to the spreadsheet (we haven’t ;-)). Otherwise, your emails will simply bounce.

Your email will be sent right away and, before you finish this sentence, it will properly land in the respective minion’s inboxes. Each will look something like this:

Let’s break down the code

To make it very clear what just happened, let’s explain the code in a bit more detail.

function sendBananaCountEmails() {
  const sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
  const dataRange = sheet.getRange("A2:C6");
  const data = dataRange.getValues();

In the first part of the code, we’re making sure that our data source is an active spreadsheet. If it’s not, we won’t be able to fetch data from it.

We also declare the range of data to be used with the script – in our case rows A-3 and columns 2 to 6.

data.forEach(function (rowData) {
    const recipient = rowData[0];
    const emailAddress = rowData[1];
    const bananasCount = rowData[2];

Then, we declare three variables, each corresponding to a different column of our spreadsheet.

if (bananasCount < 20) {
      return
    }

As you remember, we only wanted to send emails when a minion has accumulated 20 or more bananas. We specified this condition here.

const greeting = 'Dear ' + recipient + ',\n'
    const bananasCountMessage = 'You have ' + bananasCount + ' bananas accumulated.';
    const greatJobMessage = 'Great job! Come pick them up :)';

    const message = [greeting, bananasCountMessage, greatJobMessage].join('\n');
    const subject = 'Good news, you have some bananas waiting for you!';

Now, all we have to do is put the pieces together to form a message with a subject.

MailApp.sendEmail(emailAddress, subject, message);
  })
}

Finally, we tell Gmail to send emails on our behalf to all the records that meet the criteria.

Automating the process

The script we explained above won’t work without human help. Every time you want to launch a check, you’ll need to run the script manually. For some, it will be perfectly fine. For most, a bit more automation will be required.

We need to create a script for sending automatic emails from Google Spreadsheets. We’ll run it at regular intervals according to our needs.

If you want the minions to know right away when they reach or cross the threshold, daily checks will probably do the job. You can also opt for weekly, monthly or any other. Of course, you can just send emails to everyone in the spreadsheet regardless of their banana count. Or you could stay true to the initial criteria of >=20 bananas. Let’s see how both are done.

We’re going to implement two types of reports:

A daily report that’s only sent to minions that have accumulated 20 or more bananas.
A monthly report that’s sent to everyone involved.

Because of that, let’s follow the DRY principle and extract a common behavior into a common function. Let’s create a new script…

… and call it “forEachMinion“. It will look like this:

function forEachMinion(callback) {
  const sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
  const dataRange = sheet.getRange("A2:C6");
  const data = dataRange.getValues();

  data.forEach(function (rowData) {
    const recipient    = rowData[0];
    const emailAddress = rowData[1];
    const bananasCount = rowData[2];

    callback(recipient, emailAddress, bananasCount);
  })
}

We’ll use the function above for both reports – daily and monthly.

Now let’s create separate scripts for each report.

bananaDailyReport:

function bananaDailyReport() {
  forEachMinion(function(recipient, emailAddress, bananasCount) {
    if (bananasCount < 20) {
      return
    }

    const greeting = 'Dear ' + recipient + ',\n'
    const bananasCountMessage = 'You have ' + bananasCount + ' bananas accumulated.';
    const greatJobMessage = 'Great job! Come pick them up :)';

    const message = [greeting, bananasCountMessage, greatJobMessage].join('\n');
    const subject = 'Good news, you have some bananas waiting for you!';

    MailApp.sendEmail(emailAddress, subject, message);
  })
}

bananaMonthlyReport:

function bananaMonthlyReport() {
  forEachMinion(function(recipient, emailAddress, bananasCount) {
    const greeting = 'Dear ' + recipient + ',\n'
    const bananasCountMessage = 'You have ' + bananasCount + ' bananas on your account. Keep it going! Remember you can come pick them up once you reach 20 or more.';

    const message = [greeting, bananasCountMessage].join('\n');
    const subject = 'Here's your weekly banana summary!';

    MailApp.sendEmail(emailAddress, subject, message);
  })
}

You can run each of these scripts manually as we did before but that’s not the point, right?

Luckily, Google already implemented a simple tool for triggering reports. It’s aptly named Time-driven triggers, and we’ll use it today.

Let’s create another script, which will set up triggers responsible for calling our mailing functions. We’ll name it setupBananaCountEmailsSchedule.

function setupBananaCountEmailsSchedule() {
  ScriptApp.newTrigger('bananaDailyReport')
      .timeBased()
      .everyDays(1)
      .atHour(23)
      .create();

   ScriptApp.newTrigger('bananaMonthlyReport')
      .timeBased()
      .onMonthDay(30)
      .atHour(23)
      .create();
}

That would be all. But if at some point you decide to delete these triggers, you can use the following code:

function deleteBananaCountEmailSchedule() {
  const allTriggers = ScriptApp.getProjectTriggers();

  allTriggers.forEach(function(trigger) {
    if (['bananaDailyReport', 'bananaMonthlyReport'].indexOf(trigger.getHandlerFunction()) > -1) {
      ScriptApp.deleteTrigger(trigger);
    }
  })
}

You’ll still be able to trigger daily and monthly reports manually but nothing will be sent out automatically. Hopefully, the minions will continue working as usual. 😉

Other considerations

To make things simpler, an automated email script can fetch all the necessary details from a spreadsheet. It doesn’t look pretty but can be useful in some situations. For a specific example with a code, check out Google Developer pages.

We hope you found our guide to how to send email from google spreadsheet useful. It was initially published in the Mailtrap Blog. Until next time!