Deliverability Archives

Maybe you can give me your input and advice:

If you have an email list, either for your own business or for a client’s list you manage, what software do you use to actually send the emails?

I’m asking because I myself am using a service I am not happy with, and I’m looking to switch.

Long-time readers know that I used to use ActiveCampaign for many years.

I switched last year, because ActiveCampaign had jabbed me for a long time with technical glitches, and then delivered a knockout right hook when they started punishing me (via a new pricing scheme) for sending daily emails as opposed to just weekly.

So last year, I switched to Kit.

Kit wasn’t perfect, but at first blush it seemed adequate. There was just one problem:

I noticed that dedicated readers, ones who had been on my list for years, and some of whom had paid me hundreds or thousands of dollars over the course of those years, were getting bounced off my list.

I’m sure it’s possible some of these people died, or had been put in jail, or simply got out of business, and their email accounts no longer work.

But the number of people getting bounced off my list has been worryingly large (197 over the past year, since I’ve switched to Kit). What’s worse, a large fraction of these (larger than for my entire list) are people with custom domain email addresses. And like I said, many are previous customers or dedicated readers.

To make me even more suspicious that something is rotten with Kit and bounces, I myself have been bounced off multiple Kit lists, multiple times, even though my own email address is working just fine.

A couple days ago, after my homebrewed system notified me that Kit had silently bounced another batch of 5 subscribers off my list, I contacted their help department as a last-ditch measure.

After some back and forth, Kit’s support team offered me a solution to my problem:

Turn on double-optin on all my optin forms. Their reasoning is that since I don’t have double optin enabled, “there is a huge chance that you have spam subscribers on your list which can negatively impact your email deliverability.”

For the record, my email deliverability seems to be fine, outside of the subscribers I can no longer send emails to because Kit has bounced them off my list.

In other words, Kit’s solution to my problem is no solution at all, at least to my mind.

So, as much as I am not thrilled with the prospect of switching email software again, I will do so.

But before I do, I’d like to find something that will prove adequate for a better period of time. Something that works well for sending daily emails… that has good deliverability… that is likely to be around in 3 or 5 years’ time because it’s backed by a serious business.

Can you help?

If you own or manage an email list, either for your own business or for a client, would you share with me what you use, and how happy or unhappy you are with it?

I normally ask people to reply directly to my emails with just an email of their own. But this time I’ve prepared a form to help me make sense of the replies. If that doesn’t turn you off, and if you would like to help me by sharing your own experiences, either good or bad, the link is below. Thanks in advance:

https://forms.gle/attAKcLJU48bb5eD7

Yesterday I noticed I hadn’t gotten any emails from Jacob Pegs in a while.

As you might know, Jacob runs an online business called Modern Maker, which consists of him, a set of headphones, and I guess an Internet connection.

And yet, as I write this, Jacob and his Modern Maker online business are rolling into the million-dollar revenue mark for 2024, with something like a 95%-98% profit margin.

Jacob asked me to coach him on email copywriting earlier this year, and so I did, and I got on his email list as part of that. But I haven’t been getting his emails lately. I checked. Nothing, since November 20.

I wrote to Jacob yesterday to see if he’s alive and to ask what’s up with the no emails. He replied a few minutes later:

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What that’s weird!

I’ve been emailing daily. Let me check that for you 😮 really appreciate you letting me know. WTF!

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It turned out I had been “bounced” off his list. “Bounced,” as far as I understand, is a special mystery status for when an email cannot be delivered, for reasons that are not listed inside services like ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign.

I’ve already been bounced a few times off other newsletters. I have a custom domain (bejakovic dot com), and the email address associated with that is more flaky than your typical gmail or yahoo email address. Sometimes, I noticed weeks or months later I had stopped getting emails from somebody.

This affects me the other way around also. Last week, I got an email from marketer Fred Beyer, who wrote:

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I haven’t gotten a single email from you, since Nov 13th.

But my personal email address is still getting your emails so I KNOW you’re still broadcasting.

I had NameCheap crap out on me and shut down my domain for a few days, did your ESP auto-scrub me because of the temporary bounce?

I have bought products from you, from both of my email addresses so I’m guessing it’s kinda important that I’m a proper part of your system to receive any updates and such.

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I checked inside ConvertKit. Sure enough, Fred had also been bounced off. I added him back — the only way was to go to my home page and sign him up by hand.

I checked the analytics for my email from last night. 4 bounced subscribers, compared to 3 unsubscribes. Now, I guess not all of those bounced subscribers will be permanently unsubscribed. But some will. Since September, I’ve had 67 subscribers permanently removed because of bounces, and these include long-term readers and customers.

What to do?

I already wrote a while back about “unwilling unsubscribes,” people who got unsubscribed in spite of swearing to me they never meant to do so.

That issue seems largely solved by a two-step unsubscribe process, which more and more email senders now provide.

But this bounced thing is both more tricky and more serious. For one, because it seems more common. For another, because it seems to disproportionately affect people with custom domains.

All that’s to say, I’m just bouncing this bounced problem at you, hoping you can bounce a solution or at least a suggestion back at me.

Is there some tech thing to be done?

Or is the only reliable way around this to have two or five ways to reach your customers and prospects? Email… plus Skool community… plus work phone number… plus SMS… plus bedroom GPS coordinates?

Please bounce back any information or suggestions you can give me. In turn I promise to collate the answers I get and share the most useful-sounding ones.