Are you thrown off by the new trend of email deployment and what it means? Rest assured, we've got you covered.

Email deployment is a new term that encompasses the multiple aspects of building an effective email strategy and sending it to a specific list of targeted emails. In fact, It's a crucial aspect for email marketing experts and cold outreach lead generation to master. The good news is, we've sent tens of millions of emails in our career and we're here to help you figure it out.

Here are the main components of email deployment we will cover in our guide:

1. Email Strategy and Planning
2. Content Creation
3. List Management
4. Personalization and Segmentation
5. Email Automation & Drip Campaigns
6. Testing and Optimization
7. Compliance
8. Delivery and Deliverability
9. Analytics and Reporting

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1- Email Deployment Strategy Planning: don't you dare skip this

Before you even think about sending any emails, a clear strategy needs to be established. Your email deployment strategy can be broken down into three parts: Goals, Audience, and Messaging.

Goal: What's our objective with this campaign?‍

Are we trying to generate more leads into our acquisition pipeline? Create brand awareness and make people relate more to our brand? Keep our customers engaged with the value of our product or service and ensure they stay or come back? Get feedback from our customers? The list of possibilities is endless.

Audience: Who are we talking to?

Maybe it's a new Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) we are trying to attract to sign up for a demo. Maybe it's a specific segment of our customer base that we built a new feature for and want to let them know it's finally live. That needs to be clear from the start. Use the data you have about your customers to segment your audience properly.

Messaging: How should we communicate with that audience?

What is it really that we want to communicate? What is our brand tone? How do we relate with our customers and convey our company culture? What resonates with that audience? Your message is uber important. Attention is so limited and people get bombarded with emails daily (350B+ to be almost exact). Remind yourself that this email will be highly leveraged: hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people will see it. Every word counts.

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2- Content Creation: every word count

A big part of email deployment is content creation. Start with a short draft of the email copy. This will be a wireframe for your content. Then decide if if that is best suited for slick looking HTML graphic design or simple a plain text email.

HTML emails:

Are usually best suited to incorporate visual elements. New features, notification emails, new product, product updates. Information packed with visual support to communicate the message.

Feel free to be creative and add interactive assets. However, It’s important to optimize your email code, optimize image size, test different emails clients and consider light/dark mode.

For example, here’s our latest Welcome Email we took an enormous amount of time to design. Was it worth it? Totally. This is the first email our customers receive from us and we wanted to make that experience delightful.

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Plain text emails:

Plain text emails are great for a lot of things. Their simple nature makes them much less likely to be caught in a spam filter. They also feel more personal to your users. You can make them a lot more personalized and use them to engage a conversation.

They are typically a lot better for any type of lead generation efforts like inbound, outbound. One thing we believe is really important is to keep them authentic. Let the DNA of your brand and your personality transcend through your email copy.

Here’s a good example of our friend Jatin at Speedy Brand, a cutting edge Ai Powered SEO platform.

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A few comments about why this copy is so good and of the only cold email I have replied to in the last months:

• Use of lowercase title: Very hacker-like. It speaks to me directly.
• Subject line: Mentioning YC in their subject definitely grabs my attention as social proof.
• Personalization: They've done their research and they know we just raised a round.
• Show their results to grab my attention: Graphic image.
• Call to action (CTA): No link in there, just engaging conversation by having me reply. Also, it's much better to avoid spam traps.

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3-Delivery and Deliverability: get it right from the start

Email delivery and email deliverability are similar terms, but they refer to two different areas of email deployment. It can be a bit tricky to distinguish between them at first, so bear with me.

It’s important to get your email deliverability right from the beginning of your email deployment efforts. Messing up your email deliverability can take a long time and a lot of resources to recover.

First things first, let’s make the distinction between Email Delivery and Email Deliverability.

Email Delivery

This refers to having your emails accepted by the recipient's server. It includes the delivery rate and bounce rate (both hard and soft bounces). However, it doesn't distinguish whether your emails are landing in the inbox, promotions tab, or in spam.

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Email Deliverability

This is where things get interesting. Email deliverability is about ensuring your emails don't land in spam. Long story short, we'd rather have your emails land in the primary inbox, than in promotion, social tabs or even worse, the spam folder.

Having great email deliverability puts your emails back in the primary tab.

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What affects your email deliverability?

Email Deliverability is closely tied to your domain security, authentication compliance, and reputation. In a nutshell, the more secure your domain is and the better its reputation, the higher the chances of your email landing in the recipient's inbox (and not spam).

Think of it like showing up to a high-end event. If you look suspicious and aren't dressed appropriately (security) and your reputation is poor (domain and IP reputation), chances are much lower you’ll make it in.

Getting Your Email Deliverability Right from the Start

Implementing the correct email deliverability practices at the beginning of your email deployment effort is crucial. It's never too late, but it's always beneficial to establish a solid foundation when starting to send from a new domain.

If you have a domain that is already sending, it's time to conduct an audit to ensure you have the basics right.

Authorized Senders List (SPF Records):

This tells the Internet who is allowed to send emails on your behalf.

SPF is an email authentication method designed to prevent sender address forgery. It allows domains to specify authorized mail servers in their DNS records. This helps email receivers verify if incoming emails are from listed servers, thereby reducing spam and phishing.

Here’s a complete guide on SPF records from our resources center.

Authenticated Email Signature (DKIM Records):

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is an email authentication method that helps prevent email spoofing. It works by attaching a digital signature, linked to a domain's DNS records, to email headers. Recipients can verify this signature using the domain's public key to ensure the email hasn't been altered and confirm its legitimacy, thereby enhancing email security and trust.

Here’s our DKIM checker tool.

Defended Domain (DMARC Records):

A DMARC record is a DNS feature that protects email domains from unauthorized use, such as spoofing, by instructing how to handle emails that fail SPF and DKIM checks. It also provides feedback to domain owners on their emails, assisting in identifying security issues.

Here’s our DMARC checker tool.

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Brand Display and Verified Checkmark (BIMI Record):

The new kid on the block: proof of brand ownership, logo in the inbox, and verified checkmark. This is a very interesting new addition adopted by Google and Apple last year. That way, your users can trust that your email is really coming from you.

And finally, here our BIMI checker tool.

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IP Reputation:

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Each email you send is transmitted through an IP address. Every third-party service you use to send email uses its own IP addresses to dispatch your email. If those IP addresses don't have a good reputation, your deliverability will be negatively affected.

That's why it's important to monitor the reputation of all the IP addresses being used to send your emails and ensure they are not impacting your deliverability negatively. A bad IP address will significantly increase your chances of ending up in spam.

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Domain Reputation:

Your domain reputation is akin to your personal reputation— it reflects the history of your email interactions.

This includes data points such as the number of times your emails have been flagged as spam, your IP reputation, the success rate of your email authentication, your encryption success rate, and so on.

Optimizing these authentication protocols is crucial for your email deliverability and, consequently, the success of your email deployment.

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Interlude:

Feeling that’s a lot already? Us too, that's why we are building Palisade.

We wanted to ensure that Marketers and Sales Teams didn't have to worry about their email deliverability, along with the complicated configuration and monitoring that comes with it.

Here's the Palisade Email Deliverability Score to help you assess your email deliverability and

figure out what improvements you could make.

To try our tool, click here.

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4- List Management: Just be a nice human

List management best practices are often overlooked in email deployment, a big mistake that can be costly. To me, having poor email list management practices inside a company is the equivalent of running a restaurant with bad hygiene practices. Your customers will notice, and it will harm your reputation.

Opt-in

The way you gather emails significantly influences your subscriber list. Using deceptive methods to get emails and sending unsolicited messages can lead to recipients marking you as spam. Use an opt-in form that explicitly informs users they'll be receiving content from you. Clarity is crucial.

Unsubscribe

Ensure unsubscribing is straightforward. Don't obscure the link in your email template. If people can't unsubscribe, they may mark your email as spam, damaging your sender’s reputation.

Google and Yahoo now require an 'Unsubscribe' button in the email header to promote good practices - as seen in our friend Jason Cohen's ASmartBear newsletter.

One click unsubscribe

This is the best method for avoiding your emails going to SPAM.

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List Cleaning - Deprecated Emails

It's necessary to use third-party tools to remove emails that have been deactivated or accounts that have been banned.

Deprecated emails create hard bounces, and hard bounces are really bad for your reputation.

Have a Sunset Policy

Consider reaching out to subscribers who haven't opened an email in six months to gauge their interest. Unopened emails risk being marked as spam, affecting your sender's reputation and your brand's last impression. Always approach with kindness, allowing them to gracefully part ways if they choose. It’s better to have a list of 20k very engaged subscribers than a list of 40k subscribers who don’t really care.

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5- Personalization and Segmentation in the Age of AI

This could certainly be an entire guide in itself. I started sending marketing emails 15 years ago and let me tell you, "Oh, times have changed." There are now so many ways to gather interesting data about your customers and personalize your messages. You know those {{ }} brackets you often see in your email sending platform? That’s what they are for.

Add your customer's name, product, company domain, the last item they bought, interesting data about their usage, a promo that would fit them well, etc… Anything that makes them feel this email was designed for them, based on their preferences.

Go a step further: personalize your content for them with AI. For example, you could have AI write their company logo on a whiteboard. Or you can ask AI to generate an entire paragraph that will explain why this product upgrade is good for them based on their real usage data.

Here’s an example of us and our devoted Taylor sending AI-modified pictures of him holding a whiteboard with our leads' company names on it:

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This is all possible and easily achievable nowadays. What a time to be alive.

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6- Email Tools, Automation, and Drip Campaigns

Email deployment can be amplified and improved with the use of the right email automation and drip tools. Have you ever wondered how a sales rep is sending you four follow-up emails after you have never responded to him even once? How is this guy so persistent? He or she is probably using Drip Campaign software. Drip Campaign software allows you to conduct an "If this, then that" type of email campaign. For example:

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If no reply after 4 emails, emails again with this hail mary template → template with cute cat photo inside. Choosing the right email sending software can be challenging. At Palisade, we are big fans of the Beehiiv and recommend it to creators and marketers all the time. Their features and pricing are just superior.

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7- Testing and Optimization: aka not pulling the trigger too fast

Testing is crucial and one of the most tedious task in email deployment.

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Over the years, I've realized it's nearly impossible to avoid sending test emails to yourself multiple times to ensure they work properly. But don't worry, it's part of the process. Here are the steps you should follow to test your emails before sending them:

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Personalization Check:

• Are the variables in your email content populating correctly?
• Do you have a default value that can work in your content if the variable isn't populated?

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Spam Triggers:

• Are there any spam-triggering words in your copy, such as "free", "special offer", "guaranteed", "limited", or "act now"?

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Optimization:

• Are assets like images and gifs optimized and loading quickly? To ensure they are as light as possible, we recommend compressing each image separately using an image compressor, regardless of your design software.
• We suggest keeping the total weight of your email under 500kb.

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Responsiveness for Desktop and Mobile:

• Test your emails by sending them to your personal account and checking how they look on both your laptop and phone. Make sure they adapt well to different screen sizes.

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HTML Email Client Testing:

• There's a plethora of email clients and versions out there, each interpreting the code rendering your email differently. Moreover, different versions of the same client may interpret the code of your emails differently.

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Light/Dark Mode:

• This is an important factor to consider. Many people set their email clients to dark mode at night. Have you considered how your font colors, images, and logo design will look in that mode?

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8- Compliance: respect the rules

Ensuring compliance with email regulations such as GDPR, CAN-SPAM, or other local laws is crucial. You need to comply to the regulations of the countries you are sending emails to. This includes getting proper consent to send emails and providing a clear way for recipients to opt-out of future communications. The internet is a fast moving space and we understand it can be tricky to follow up with all the latest regulations. That why our vision is to automate email deployment.

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9-Analytics and Reporting: What you don't measure don't improve.

Tracking and understanding key metrics of your campaigns is paramount. Luckily, most modern software provide detailed analytics on your campaign performance. Here’s a breakdown of all the important key metrics and how to interpret them:

‍Delivery Rate: Measures the percentage of emails that reach the recipient's server, excluding bounced emails. This is quite bad if your rate is not around 99%+. Please keep it tidy.

Soft/Hard Bounce: Indicates emails that permanently failed to deliver due to invalid addresses or non-existent domains. If this one is > 0.1%, we recommend running your list through

Open Rate: Tracks the percentage of recipients who open the email, reflecting the effectiveness of the subject line. If your email doesn’t get at least 25%+ in open rates, something should feel off. Can you optimize subject line? Are you sending too many emails and boring of your audience? Are your emails going to spam?

Click Rate: Measures the percentage of recipients who click on links within the email, assessing content engagement. If your click rate is under 5%, you might want to consider asking your users if your call to action is compelling to them.

Spam Rate: The number of your emails users are flagging as spam. If that number is anywhere above 0.05%, be very careful. A spam rate over 0.1% could trigger Google compliance to the email senders guidelines violation and get your account banned.

Deliverability Score: Your deliverability Score is a combination of all the KPIs mentioned above. Any score under 70 should be fixed and improved.

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Email Deployment: A Big Topic Worth Diving Into.

We get it. That was a lot of information and a lot to learn. We have spent the last 15 years digesting and integrating these practices and we can assure you the ROI is worth the effort.

So much depends on your emails: revenues, user satisfaction, communication with your internal teams, and communication with external actors. All of it is intertwined with having a great email deployment strategy.

If you are looking for help, sign-up or email us directly at hello@palisade.email

Sam, CEO and Co-Founder

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