To improve your ActiveCampaign open rates (and I know you want that), and get better engagement with your emails, you need to understand a few quick things about deliverability.
Getting your ActiveCampaign emails safely to the inbox is trying to serve in a game of tennis, but with a big, energetic baddie up by the net trying to smack your tennis-balls away over the fence before they get to other side.
To win the game, we need to get to know the players – the important people involved – and what each of them gets up to in the great ActiveCampaign Deliverability game of Get to the Inbox.
Most of them are good guys – but there are a some bad guys who make this ActiveCampaign deliverability game a lot harder than it needs to be…
Read this, and you’ll know who to not get into a fight with on your way to the inbox, and who you need to keep onside to help your ActiveCampaign emails get seen.
Pssst… If you’re not ready for this bit, and need an overview first, take a look at our blog on what Deliverability is and why it matters for ActiveCampaign users.
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Kay Peacey explains the who’s who of ActiveCampaign Deliverability
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Player 1 in the ActiveCampaign Deliverability game is you
For every ActiveCampaign email that is sent, you (or someone in your organisation) are the creator.
You write the emails for ActiveCampaign to send on your behalf, to your Contacts.
You add links, images, subject lines, preheaders, sender information, and lovely thoughtful words to connect with your readers and persuade them to do something, learn something or feel something.
Your role in the ActiveCampaign Deliverability game is to consistently create great emails that people want to read, and instruct ActiveCampaign to send them to the right people at the right time.
And you definitely want to win this game, and get your precious emails to the inbox more reliably with ActiveCampaign, so those emails can do their job of growing your business and driving sales.
Player 2 in the ActiveCampaign Deliverability game: Your Contacts
There might be an awful lot of these – ActiveCampaign accounts can have anywhere from 10 Contacts all the way up to hundreds of thousands of Contacts.
The role of each Contact is to be the human who sees the email in their inbox, and chooses to open, read, and maybe even click a link, or reply.
And then to keep doing those things, as consistently as possible, whenever an email from you lands in their inbox.
We’ve got a whole lot of help on how to get your contacts playing the game on your team in our deliverability training course, inside the Essential ActiveCampaign
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Player 3 in the ActiveCampaign Deliverability game – it’s ActiveCampaign!
ActiveCampaign’s role is to take those emails you lovingly created, and to dispatch them towards the Contacts you chose, at the time you wanted it to send them off.
When it’s time to send, ActiveCampaign swings into action and dispatches your emails for you, headed towards that Contact inbox.
Think of it like a service that puts all the sender and receiver info on a ton of actual paper-and-envolope letters, and sticks them in the postal service on your behalf.
A bit like sending your kid to the post-box with all your party-invites, but a lot more reliable and less likely to spend all the stamp money on ice-creams at the corner -shop.
So whilst you’re in charge of what is in the email, and when it gets sent, and to whom it is sent, ActiveCampaign is the one that actually picks up that email and sends it on its way.
For more on sending the right thing at the right time to the right contacts, check out our blog series on ActiveCampaign basics here and then sing up for our free Accelerated ActiveCampaign training – it’s awesome. And free!
Get our FREE Accelerated ActiveCampaign training now
Player 4 in the ActiveCampaign Deliverability game – meet the Mailbox Providers
Mailbox Providers are the the tech-things like Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook – and the devices that they run on – like your phone’s mail app or your browser Gmail inbox. Some Mailbox Providers are public, some of them are free, many are corporate or busines-related. Some are great, and some not so great.
The role of the Mailbox Providers is to catch the emails that ActiveCampaign has dispatched to contacts who use their mailbox services, and check them over before handing them to the contact.
Here’s the really really important bit about what Mailbox Providers do in the ActiveCampaign deliverability game…
If a Mailbox Provider doesn’t like the look of an email, they won’t deliver it to the inbox
Think of the Mailbox Providers as the guardians of the inbox citadel.
Their job is critically important due to the overwhelming volumes of unwanted email being sent every single day. Without these guys batting away the unwanted emails, our email inboxes would be swamped and we would spend our days crying in a corner.
Mailbox Providers also do extras like providing filters and stars and VIP areas for inboxes. As consumers of emails, we love these services, even though we may take them for granted a lot.
Device providers and software systems have a role here too – they sometime offer contacts ways to hide their opens and clicks, or to disguise their email addresses – they’re on the same side as the Contacts for sure, but to be totally honest, they’ve made things a bit harder for team Sender.
Player 5 in the ActiveCampaign Deliverability game: the Skanky Spammers!
Spammers are the wet-sponge throwers, the pirates, the baddies who spoil it for everyone else by absolutely refusing to play by the rules in any way when it comes to email deliverability.
#skankyspammers
Baddies who do NOT play fair in the Get to the Inbox game
The Spammer move is to send millions and millions of unwanted, unwelcome emails, every day to every inbox, everywhere.
Spammers are the bad guys, and they will do anything to thwart you. Spammers will do anything to get their emails dispatched and delivered to inboxes.
They break every rule, and find whole new ways to cheat, lie and con their way into the inbox.
Your next step to win the Get to the Inbox game with ActiveCampaign
You and I are the good guys when it comes to sending emails – I know that, and you know that. (And let’s just take a moment to appreciate all the good-guys, because email is such a great way to connect and relate with humans all over the world).
But we are way outnumbered by #skankyspammers so we need to be extra-smart, play the game better, and work as a team with ActiveCampaign and the Mailbox providers, and our Contacts to make sure the spammers don’t win.
Now that you know who everyone is, and what their game-plan is, you’re already have a big advantage…
Advantage – Player 1 – the good-guy sender
Next, we need to serve up the match point…
ActiveCampaign is totally on our side – the next bit you need to know is how to get in ActiveCampaign’s good books, and stay there, so that they can help you win the Get to the Inbox game.
Get fast effective help with your ActiveCampaign deliverability
We have a stonkingly good course inside our ActiveCampaign Academy that will take you step by step through everything you need to know, and exactly what you need to do, to get better email engagement and deliverability with ActiveCampaign.
Here’s where to find out more about our deliverability training course – you can get it done in just one day if you dig in. Your emails will thank you for it as they wing their way safely to the inbox to meet their destiny. And the sooner you get started, the sooner your open rates will go up.
Academy membership comes with access to more courses to do ActiveCampaign the easy way, plus a lovely member community to walk alongside, and direct, regular access to Kay Peacey for live and real time with your resident ActiveCampaign expert.
Learn more about our ActiveCampaign Academy membership
Fast, effective training & support for ActiveCampaign users everywhere
