Jordan Raynor & Company

Updated September 27, 2021

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Onboarding & Data Access

System Access
Data Mapping and Structure Analysis

Technical Factors

~~Authentication~~
~~Spam Analysis~~
~~Domain Analysis~~
~~IP Address Health~~
~~DNS Settings~~
Technical Content Analysis
Inbox Placement Test

Engagement Best Practices

~~Analyze Engagement Data~~
~~Analyze Personalization Practices~~

Operations

~~Automations Audit~~
Data Management & Reporting Review
Un-Subscribe Process
Subscriber Process

Core Metrics

Email Optimization Index for Jordan Raynor & Company

Notes

Well done! You’ve got a healthy level of engagement but also plenty of opportunities for growth.
The technical side of your email deliverability is generally healthy but we’ve noted several improvements that could increase the effectiveness of the technical side of your emails for better deliverability, open rates, and inbox placements.
We think there is significant opportunity to increase your total number of highly engaged subscribers by implementing a few engagement best practices.
We’ve shared some best practices on improving the the type of data you are tracking on a regular basis related to your email list health.

Overall Open Rate

Engaged Subscribers Open Rate

Percentage of Audience with Low Engagement

Engaged audience growth percentage over past 30 days

Skip to Your High Priority Items:

AUTHENTICATION | SPAM | ENGAGEMENT | AUTOMATIONS | DATA

Technical Factors

Technical Factors Summary

Notes

Your technical factors are not currently a major inhibitor of email open rates but some improvements can be made.
Continue to monitor factors that can change easily (SPAM, IP Reputation, etc)
If your plans include aggressive list growth it can be important tighten up some of your technical factors, evaluate the importance of a static IP address, and ensure good systems are in place so your sender reputation and open rates do not dangerously decline with list growth.

All Technical Factors

Authentication

Background & Recommendations

SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) are technical standards that help protect against email domains being used for harmful activities.

They each present a different layer or method for internet service providers and email platforms to ensure an email address isn’t benign spoofed or used to send spam. These protocols verify that emails being sent are being done so from an authorized system.

It’s important that each of these protocols is correctly configured to match your domain and email platform so your messages are not mistaken for spam.

Proper DMARC settings also provide instructions to email providers on what to do if an email is sent without authentication on what to do with it (quarantine vs. reject). Typically quarantine is fine but if you are experiencing a very high rate of attempts to use your domain for spam it may be beneficially to set the DMARC instructions to Reject.

If there are high amounts of unauthenticated email it can mean your system is not properly configured, that people may be attempting to spoof your domain for sending spam messages, or that one of your systems that sends email with your domain isn’t properly configured.

Some number of DMARC failures is normal – sometimes when people forward your email from certain email tools such as Outlook it can record it as unauthenticated. Unless your number of unauthenticated emails is above 2% it’s nothing to worry about.

Authentication Reports

Notes:

Your domain is properly authenticated to send emails via your ESP but you can improve DKIM / DMARC setup for better control and security.
You have not properly authenticated your domain for Kajabi which is a major platform for sending emails.

Action Items:

Add DKIM validation for Mailchimp to your domain’s DNS settings.
Configure DMARC and track rejects / spam on a regular basis
Properly configure Kajabi to send emails fully mapped to your domain.
Identify other platforms that could be sending email on behalf of your domain (e.g. Shopify, customer support software, etc) and ensure proper SPF authentication.

Spam Analysis

Analysis Background & Recommendation

Google postmaster tools shows the number of email recipients who mark a message as spam within their platform.

This score should be as low as possible but scores over 2% are of concern and should be monitored.

If your list is well maintained, consistently communicated with, and you use best practices in your emails and are still experiencing high-spam rates there are a few areas we recommend evaluating.

1 – List Health – “Deadweight” subscribers that are not engaged and don’t open emails frequently are much more likely to mark messages as spam. Conducting regular list cleanups of non-engaged subscribers is important.

2 – Automations – You should do a careful evaluation of automations that are running within your ESP platform. If you have errant automations that are triggering too many messages or sending the wrong details to the wrong people it can significantly drive up the spam percentage.

Another factor with automations is that they are typically going to a smaller subset of your audience and not your full list. On a given day if you have an automation that sends a message to 100 people on a given day and 5 of them mark the message as spam your spam percentage will be 5% because the overall list size you sent the email to is small compared to a full-list send.

3 – Phishing or Spam Attacks – High spam percentages can be a warning symptom that someone is using your domain or systems to send SPAM messages without your knowledge.

We cover how-to-steps in detail for this elsewhere but it may be necessary to adjust your DMARC settings to “reject” any email without proper authentication which tells email providers to reject any email from your domain not coming from an authenticated source.

Another thing to check is all the systems that have permission to send via your domain in DNS settings and verify that there are no old ones no longer in use. We’ve experienced clients who have left certain email providers and gone to new ones but left the permissions for the old provider active which can leave them open for potential hijacking.

Also verify that your websites (particularly wordpress and other CMS platforms) are secure and not sending emails.

Website and software platforms sending emails on your behalf should ideally use a transactional email service for basic emails like password resets, etc.

Spam Analysis Reports

Is any authentication failure above 2%?

Notes:

Your SPAM rate is generally acceptable. On certain days it can spike above the 2% threshold but not to an alarming degree. Continue to monitor SPAM rate closely.

Action Items:

Continue to monitor closely.
Do a quick comparison if high spam complaint dates coincide with broad list sends.
Evaluate automations to ensure there are none sending unnecessary or incorrect messages that could be causing frustration.
Configure DMARC monitoring to quarantine or reject emails that aren’t coming from your domain to ensure your domain isn’t being used for phishing or SPAM.

Domain

Analysis Background & Recommendation

Email platforms and internet service providers use black lists of domains and IP addresses as a way to identify potential SPAM.

It can be normal for shared IP addresses to have some black listings. Thankfully most black lists allow you to submit a request to be removed.

If you are using dedicated IP addresses you should pay very close attention to this because all blacklistings are squarely within your purview to dispute or cause behavior that could impact black list status.

Shared IP addresses can be impacted by other people operating on the same IP.

Domain Analysis Reports

Notes:

Your domain is high authority – great job!

Action Items:

No action needed at this time other than continue to monitor health.

IP Address

Analysis Background & Recommendation

Email service providers act like security guards for email inboxes. They monitor traffic that is coming in for potential threats. The primary way they monitor this is by looking at the IP address emails are coming from.

If an IP address has lots of spam associated with it, high unsubscribe, low engagement, and a history of other negative factors they are more likely to classify the messages as spam or put them in quarantine.

If you have a dedicated IP address your sender reputation is solely based off of your list health.

If you are on a shared IP address then your reputation is mixed with other senders. If someone else on your shared IP is engaging in negative email behavior it reflects badly on everyone else on the same IP.

Most ESPs do their best to monitor this and keep everyone on an IP at an acceptable level. Shared IPs tend to have more of a medium IP health in general.

Dedicated IPs aren’t automatically better because you have to be able to take complete responsibility for monitoring and maintaining the health of your email list. Sometimes it makes more sense to outsource this to your ESP.

If you transition to a dedicated IP address it’s important to do so with proper processes that establishes the credibility of your new IP.

Does your email send from a dedicated or shared IP address?

Shared IP Address

IP Analysis Reports

Notes:

Your IP reputation is a high medium which is a fine place to be for a shared IP address for a list of this size. If you expect significant list growth or a significant downgrade in your shared IP address health it could be worth considering a transition to a dedicated IP.

Action Items:

Monitor IP address health on a weekly basis. If it degrades significantly submit support request to ESP.
Evaluate long term potential of a shared IP address based off of your email list growth potential.

DNS Settings

Background & Recommendation

Domain Name Server settings (DNS) are the instructions that connect your domain name to various services such as web hosting and email.

To send email properly systems need to be authenticated via your DNS settings.

Sometimes it can be surprising the number of services that need to be connected to send messages. For example your e-commerce platform may need permission to send receipts under your domain, your customer support software may need permission to send under your domain, corporate email, your website could send emails for lost passwords, etc.

As you look at your mail related DNS settings it’s important to evaluate it in two ways:

1) Are all the platforms that could possibly send email under your domain accounted for?

2) Are there any systems that you are NOT currently using to trigger emails? Sometimes it’s easy to leave permissions in-place

DNS Analysis Reports

Notes:

Your DNS settings are generally in order. We don’t see DNS permissions pointing to services not currently in use.
A big potential issue to watch out for is not regularly maintaining your DNS profile. As you give permissions to different platforms and then discontinue using them it can create security holes to leave those settings in place.

Action Items:

No actions needed.

Technical Content

Background & Recommendation

We leverage automated AI platforms to scan your emails for SPAM designation triggers.

Sometimes simple things like multiple exclamation marks in a row, “salesy” language, or certain key words are triggers for spam bots.

Additionally the type of links you include and the URLS within the email have an impact on this.

It’s not necessary to have a perfect SPAM score on content but it is a metric to monitor if there are issues.

Another content issue can be the links you use within your email platform. Most email platforms mask any links you place with their own link that allows them to track click through rates and then they forward people on to the address you intended them to go to. Some platforms allow you to mask these so all links are pointed directly at your domain.

This isn’t critical but having your link domains match your email sending domains can have a positive impact and should be one thing that is considered to improve open rates.

Are your internal links branded?

Technical Content Analysis Reports

Notes:

Our AI analysis of email content does not show excessive use of SPAM trigger words.
Watch out for things like all caps and lots of exclamation marks – theses don’t appear to be causing a big problem but they are triggers for some spam software.
Doing full mapping of domain so tracking links within emails match your top level domain.

Action Items:

Consider ensuring your ESP tracking links are branded (e.g. jordanraynor.com) vs. Mailchimp based links. This typically gives a small bump in deliverability, especially since your domain is high authority.
Request content analysis before significant campaigns / important launches to spot issues before they happen.

Placement Test

Background & Recommendation

Placement Test Results

Notes:

Placement test in progress…

Action Items:

Placement test in progress…

Engagement Factors

Overall Engagement Factors Score for Jordan Raynor & Company

Notes

Low open rates can create a vicious cycle where email providers de-prioritize emails based on overall list behavior. If a list has low engagement it will train email providers to de-prioritize messages which further worsens open rates.

To protect against this vicious cycle it’s critical to segment your audience so most of your emails are only going to the subscribers who are most engaged. This creates a positive feedback cycle that shows email providers your messages have high-engagement.

We recommend primarily sending messages only to those who have opened your emails within the past 120 days.

If you have low engagement it may be necessary to reduce your sends to a smaller time frame with only those who are most engaged.

Hot / Warm / Cold / Frozen Strategy

We recommend creating segments of your list made up of your most engaged audience members (Hot) who have interacted over the past 30 days, 90 Days (warm), and up to 120 days (cold). Those who end up in the cold category can be engaged with a re-activation sequence. If they still do not respond after a re-activation campaign we recommend being very sparing in how much communication these names receive.

Overall

Open Rate

Engaged Audience

Open Rate

Paid Customer

Open Rate

Full Analysis

Access your spreadsheet with full Engagement Factor Analysis

Access Your Data

All Engagement Factors

Engagement Best Practices

Analysis & Recommendations

It’s important that each of these protocols is correctly configured to match your domain and email platform so your messages are not mistaken for spam.

Engagement Images

Segmentation

Do you send at different frequencies to different engagement levels?

Yes

Are you primarily sending emails only to people with engagement in past 120 days?

Do you have a Hot / Warm / Cold segmentation practice in place?

Do you segment your audience by key customer types?

Yes

Frequency

How often do you send to your HOT segment?

n/a

How often do you send to your WARM segment?

n/a

How often do you send to your COLD segment?

n/a

Reactivation

Do you have a reactivation strategy?

Do you run retargeting ads as part of your reactivation strategy?

What % is successfully reactivated?

Notes:

Your overall engagement looks great. About 27% of your audience is highly engaged with your emails which is a healthy number.
There is still a lot of upside potential for increasing engagement on your list. Currently about 57% of your list RARELY engages. This means that 111,150 people rarely engage with your emails. If you deployed an effective re-activation strategy and were able move just 10% of your audience that is not-engaged back into an engaged status it would be like adding another 11,000 subscribers to your list (without acquisition costs!). If your highly engaged subscribers convert to paying customers at 5% you could add another 556 paying customers.
You already do a good job of applying various types of segmentation to your audience so you aren’t sending your whole list messages constantly but sending more engaged sub-sets of your list. To take these efforts to the next level we recommend applying a hot / warm / cold categorization to the leads in your list based on their engagement level and using this as a further filter to drive engagement. The majority of your messages should be going to Hot / Warm subscribers and a reactivation campaign should be applied to subscribers who are going cold.

Action Items:

Implement hot / warm / cold tracking methodology to list.
Implement a re-activation strategy to keep your hot list of contacts as big as possible.
Understand your engagement attrition (not just list unsubscribe attrition) and orient your goals to focus on your “hot” list growth as more important than overall list growth.

Personalization Best Practices

Analysis & Recommendation

Imagine a live sales meeting – an effective sales person is very adept at understanding the individual they are selling to, being in tune with their needs, personality, background, and interests. A great sales person uses all of this to tailor how and what they communicate. Great emails are the same way. They use data to personalize the experience of the recipients. Studies show that personalized emails have 2.5 times higher click-through rates, and are 6 times more likely to drive a conversion.

Personalizing emails with people’s names is a great start but the deeper you can go with segmenting your list based on interests, incorporating examples, testimonials, and solutions on an individual basis the more you will see conversions sky-rocket.

Personalization Images

Personalization

Is the subscriber name used in emails?

Yes

Are content blocks within emails regularly personalized?

Do you have different campaigns or automations for key customer types?

Yes

Notes:

You do a good job of segmenting email campaigns by product category and customer segment.
You could go deeper into this in a variety of ways. Some of the best areas to look at for personalization are:
- Case study examples that match recipient demographic.
- More specific product offerings.
- Emails based on customer interaction and behavior (abandon cart, interaction triggering a special sequence, etc)
Tie your website and email together – Use tracking technology on your site to trigger campaigns for known subscribers.
Use assessments or other value-adding ways of collecting information to enrich your customer data and further customize the email campaigns you send.

Action Items:

Identify highest payoff campaigns or emails for personalization and develop a plan for implementation.

Operations

Overall Operations Score for Jordan Raynor & Company

Notes

Your technical factors are not currently a major inhibitor of email open rates but some improvements can be made.
Continue to monitor factors that can change easily (SPAM, IP Reputation, etc)
If your plans include aggressive list growth it can be important tighten up some of your technical factors, evaluate the importance of a static IP address, and ensure good systems are in place so your sender reputation and open rates do not dangerously decline with list growth.

All Operations Factors

Automations

Background & Recommendations

Automations are powerful tools but just like anything they require some oversight. We’ve seen many clients have automations that end up “out of control” where they were improperly designed and a small set of their audience was getting bombarded by emails or the wrong content which can cause high-unsubscribes and spam complaints.

If you make wide use of automations it’s important to audit and evaluate them regularly to make sure they are all serving their intended purpose.

Automation Reports

Number of Automations

Are there automations that are unnecessary or causing an unusual number of unsubsor spam complaints?

Yes

Do you have clear documentation and visibility for the purpose of every automation?

Have you recently audited your automations to know if they are all necessary and performing as desired?

Notes:

You are making great use of automations but there are so many it can be a good idea to streamline your processes, remove old ones, and ensure there are none operating that should be inactive.

Action Items:

Audit to ensure all active automations are necessary.
Develop a spreadsheet that documents the purpose for each automation.
Create a policy for retiring unused automations on a regular basis.

Data Management

Background & Recommendation

If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it! Having good data management and visibility into the performance of your email list is critical. This can be a challenge because often times there are different systems involved and creating a consolidated view of the most important metrics often takes extra effort.

We love data but also value simplicity. Too much data, or information that is not also accompanied by insight into what to do about the data is not useful.

Often times real insight gets lost when looking at big top-line numbers like total list size and open rates. These are important of course but there are a couple of key types of data we think everyone using email marketing should pay attention to:

Engagement across hot / warm / cold segments of your list (total open rates, etc gets included in this but so often the total open rate number isn’t nearly as useful as understanding how each segment of your list is performing. You can spot negative trends far in advance if you have insight into the engagement metrics within different segments of your list and not just the list as a whole.
Revenue per subscriber across time (1 week / 1 month / 60 days / 90 days, etc). If you can understand how quickly you make an ROI on your list growth you can make much better investments and planning.

Data Analysis Reports

Leveraging Your Data

Are you able to easily identify paying / non-paying subscribers?

Are you able to easily segment subscribers based on purchase history?

Do you know your minimum positive list growth requirement?

Subscriber Insights

Do you know your subscriber LTV?

Your Subscriber LTV is:

Are you able to calculate your subscriber value at different intervals (1 week, 30 days, 90 days, etc)?

Yes

Your dashboard should track (at least): Open rates, Unsubs, CTR, Revenue per email / subscriber, Hot / Warm / Cold segment sizes.

Your Dashboard & Reporting Includes:

Open rates, Unsubs, Click through, Revenue per email / subscriber, and Hot / Warm / Cold segment sizes

Notes:

Your data management could be significantly streamlined and provide better insight into your email list health.
We recommend

Action Items:

Implement hot / warm /cold tracking methodology.
Develop weekly reporting cadence of key metrics.

Unsubscribe Process

Background & Recommendation

Having a clear unsubscribe process in each broadcast email is required by law. We recommend creating a preference center where instead of having a “nuclear” unsubscribe button that instantly gets someone off of all communication that you have a spot where people can easily choose whether they want zero communication from you or only certain types of communication. This can dramatically reduce total unsubscribe rates. To implement this does take a well structured list and tagging concept for your email list but it can pay dividends in not losing subscribers.

Unsubscribe Process

Do you provide a preference center?

Is there a global nuclear unsub in each email?

Notes:

Unsub process evaluation in progress…

Action Items:

Unsub process evaluation in progress…

Subscriber Process

Analysis & Recommendations

The moment when someone opts into your email list is magical. It’s clear that there is some sort of alignment with what you have and what your new subscriber wants. Maximizing the impact of this moment can be a tremendous opportunity for increasing conversion rates, creating a deeper connection, and onboarding them into your world.

Some subscriber best practices are:

Having an effective post-option thank you screen. This can be maximized numerous ways from having a short video, to immediately upselling them. Always give people what they were after when they opted in but you can provide so much more and increase your depth of relationship. Don’t waste the moment after they opted in to go deeper with your new subscriber.
An onboarding email sequence that quickly introduces your brand and helps people get familiarized quickly can be very effective. There is also opportunity in making these introductory emails interactive where you can request people take actions (click a link / visit a page) and log that interaction so you build out a more complete profile of your new subscribers interests.

Subscriber Process

Are you maximizing your post opt-in screen?

Notes:

We recommend implementing a post opt-in onboarding strategy with a thank you page that drives to the most relevant CTA for the part of the funnel where your subscriber opted in at.

Action Items:

Implement post subscription optimization plan.

Your Action List

Technical Factors

Authentication

Spam Analysis

Continue to monitor closely.
Do a quick comparison if high spam complaint dates coincide with broad list sends.
Evaluate automations to ensure there are none sending unnecessary or incorrect messages that could be causing frustration.
Configure DMARC monitoring to quarantine or reject emails that aren’t coming from your domain to ensure your domain isn’t being used for phishing or SPAM.

Domain Settings

IP address

DNS Settings

Technical Content

Placement

Engagement Factors

Engagement Best Practices

Personalization Best Practices

Operations

Automatiions

Data Management

Unsubscribe Process

Subscribe Process