Why bad business decisions can hurt email deliverability

Most deliverability advice looks only at email list issues and how to design, send and manage your email campaigns. However, not all deliverability problems are solved by removing inactive subscribers and spam complainers, or tuning up your email coding to avoid triggering a spam filter.

Instead, seemingly unrelated business decisions can affect the wider application of your email program and undermine its deliverability. That was the case for a client who faced blocking until we expanded our review beyond email decision-making.   

The client, a SaaS company, enlisted my consultancy to review its email marketing program. It sent transactional and promotional messages to free-trial users and paying customers who had stopped using the service.

They were experiencing zero delivery to Gmail inboxes, and Gmail comprised 70% of their database. As a result, they were effectively blocked from reaching most of their customers.

I discovered two major problem areas: 

• Transactional emails that generated abnormally high spam complaints.
• Promotional emails sent to unengaged customers. 

The emails themselves did not have problems that would have triggered spam filters. Rather, business decisions driving the messaging were the culprits in both cases. 

While the company had been able to skate by in previous years, these high complaint rates caught up with them earlier this year. That’s when more stringent engagement rules went into effect at Gmail and Yahoo Mail and resulted in zero delivery at Gmail.

Dig deeper: Email deliverability: What you need to know

The trouble with transactional emails

As part of my deliverability review, I discovered unusually high spam complaints from the company’s transactional emails. This was unusual because these usually generate few, if any, complaints. Customers love them because they show their behavior. They help ensure they bought the right items. They also confirmed they used the right payment method and sent their purchases to the correct address. 

The problem wasn’t the emails. It was how the company managed messaging for its free trial service and for people who canceled their paid service. 

They offered every new customer a free trial and even used double opt-in to confirm the free trial to avoid misuse from scammers or hackers.

However, the email confirming the start of free trials — a transactional email, unlike the regular promotional messages — went out to all users before they confirmed their opt-ins to the trial service. We suspected the company’s affiliate partners were signing people up for trial services without their knowledge. 

To overcome this, we paused the confirmation emails, waiting until customers had opted in before sending them. This helped reduce complaints, but they were still well over Gmail’s complaint threshold. 

You can check out, but you can never leave

Looking at the company’s membership structure, we discovered customers could not close their accounts, even if they never converted from a free trial or they canceled a paid service. 

These customers were no longer interested in the company’s promotions. They either stopped opening and clicking on the promotional messages or hit the spam-complaint button.  

However, the company disregarded those clear inactivity signals and continued to send promotional and transactional emails, such as upgrades and nudges regarding inactivity. This was another business decision, leading to near-total blocking at its most important inbox provider.

You can see how these business decisions created an environment for deliverability disaster. Mistimed transactional emails caused high spam complaints from users who had never signed up for an account. Users could not cancel their accounts, and the company continued to message emotionally disengaged subscribers.  

This situation happened for several years but was not a significant problem. The high complaint rate didn’t keep the company’s emails out of Gmail inboxes. But then along came “Yahoogle,” which imposed a 0.3% spam complaint threshold, and suddenly the complaints and inactions became a stopper. 

3 ways to maintain or regain inbox access

The new deliverability rules at Gmail and Yahoo Mail surprised many email senders this year. If you’re also dealing with reduced inbox access, these three steps can help you detect and correct problems inside and outside of email.

1. Conduct a comprehensive audit of your marketing program

I did a deliverability review for this client, covering one aspect of the email program. It exposed problems such as volume spikes, lack of engagement, high complaints and Yahoogle violations. However, it did not examine issues beyond email like a full email audit. If we had been able to do the full audit, which reviews the entire customer journey, the issue would be resolved much earlier.

2. Review business decisions that have an impact on your email program

A deeper examination would have revealed the impact of not being able to cancel an account. This came to light in this case only because I kept digging away to find things that the focused deliverability review did not expose.

3.  Address deliverability problems when they arise 

This client’s email practices had several big red flags waving before the Yahoogle changes, including many spam complaints on transactional emails. Even though the company was not penalized, this kind of email is out of character. It should have warranted an investigation much sooner. Had that happened, the company might not have been blocked by its most important inbox provider. 

Poor deliverability affects revenue and engagement

That should be an obvious statement. If your business relies on inbox access for promotional and transactional emails, you must do everything possible to maintain that access. Understanding all the conditions and decisions that drive email messaging and working to solve problems when they arise will help you keep that path clear.

Dig deeper: Email deliverability vs. email warmup: Which can skyrocket your outreach efforts?

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