From spam folder to inbox in just 15 days—we made this happen!
At first, email marketing seems simple. You write an email, shoot it to a list of email contacts, and they should be able to recieve and read it.
However, a few months into the process, one realizes that things are more complex. ESPs fiercely protect their users and won’t let you inside their inboxes if they realize your emails are not useful or interesting for them.
As a result, they start pushing your emails to the spam folder, which means your message never reaches the intended recipient, jeopardizing whatever you’d put at stake on this campaign - more sales, webinar registrations, or course enrolments.
One of our clients, Fynd Academy, found themselves in a similar spot when they were about to launch their first-ever cohort-based learning program.
They wanted to inform the right people about it and get more enrolments for the course.
And the good news was they already had 30K+ email contacts of those who had taken similar workshops or applied for similar jobs.
No need to randomly shoot messages in the universe when you already have the addresses of people who’d be interested. Sounds great, right?
That’s what even they thought until they realized their emails were not performing as well as earlier.
So, they contacted Team Mailmodo, who first decided to diagnose the real problem. Here’s how they did it
Set up an internal test team.
Mailmodo created a segment of 15-20 email contacts comprising Fynd Academy’s internal team and started to send them email campaigns. Most people received these campaigns in their spam folder confirming their fear.
ESPs weren’t allowing Fynd Academy’s emails in the inboxes and they’d have to build their reputation all over again.
But the cohort was launching in just 1 month, and they’d completely relied on emails to get enrolments.
How would they make this a success if emails weren’t performing up to the mark?
However, they took this as a challenge and decided to (a) rebuild their domain reputation and win ESP’s trust again (b) and get course enrolments, too - with a little bit of help from Mailmodo, of course.
Here’s their strategy -
Step #1 Warming up to win trust
It’s exactly what it sounds like. No oversharing, slow buildup.
Instead of bombarding thousands of emails on the first day, Fynd Academy started small with only a few emails on Day 1 and gradually increased the volume by 1.5X daily until Day 15.
This tells the ESPs that you’re not desperately sending emails to random contacts. You know your goal and who to reach out to.
Fynd Academy also ensured they only sent emails to the 30K+ contacts who were their target audience and would be interested in these messages.
As these contacts already knew about Fynd Academy, they were more likely to engage and provide good signals to the ESPs.
Step #2 Sending only educational emails
Imagine meeting a random new guy in the party and they immediately try selling you their new product/service.
Bad strategy, right?
One needs to remember this philosophy while creating email campaigns as well. Mailmodo suggested the same to Fynd Academy.
In all of the warm-up emails during those 15 days, Fynd Academy reprupsoed their educational blogs into email campaigns and never once tried selling the cohort.
Result? People became genuinely interested in their emails, and their engagement started to grow with time.
Improved engagement signalled ESPs that this domain is trustworthy and their emails deserve to be in more inboxes.
Step#3 Using interactive emails to identify high-qualified leads
All of these 30K+ people were interested in the subject matter of the cohort but would they all join a cohort to upskill immediately?
Probably not.
And thus, sending all of them the ‘invitation to enroll’ may get lesser engagement and impact their carefully built reputation.
So, Mailmodo suggested Fynd Academy to include an interactive survey in their final email before the invitation email.
This email included a survey asking recipients if they were looking to upskill in the near future and would help them segment their final target list.
The best part? The recipient could submit their answers without leaving their inboxes as the email was interactive, built within 5 minutes using Mailmodo.
This friction-free process boosted survey response and Fynd Academy had a good list of qualified leads.
Quick tip: Want to check how the interactive survey worked? Read more details and see it in action here
Step#4 The final promotional email
The final email was the invitation to enrol in the cohort. It was sent only to the list that was made after the interactive survey.
It got 9X higher engagement and maximum enrolments for the cohort from this single campaign.
What you can learn from this
Improving email deliverbaility is a gradual process and it shouldn’t be rushed.
But don’t get disheartened if you suddenly see an increase in spam rate and have an urgent email gola to meet. Trust the process -
- Remove inactive subscribers.
- Send intentional, educational emails
- Re-warm your domain by reduce the email volume and gradually increasing it later.
Have a particular case or question in mind? Leave a comment here.
