Audit
Optimization-focused Deliverability Audits for Email Success
Audit
With our tailored deliverability audit we can include as much or as little as required as every customers specific circumstance is different. Were able to take any or all of the services below and create a package to suit your specific needs. At the end of our report you will get a PDF report showing all of our findings and suggested next steps.
The audits are constantly being adapted with new and innovative techniques and procedures that we develop through deep experience of getting our clients emails to the inbox. It is preferable to complete an and to end audit to allow for the entire set of issues to be identified however we are happy to complete smaller gap analysis on your behalf or to engage one of our experts with your team on a flat hourly rate.
Phase 1 – Email Classification
We find that a lot of our customers find it difficult to identify the difference between the BAU, transactional and cold lead emails. Part of our service is to identify these and assist our customers to understand the differences. As part of this service and through the other phases we will help our customers to understand why its important to split the sending of these email types and what services are on offer and within their budget.
Phase 2 – Sending Technology Identification
We will identify whcih technologies, servers and services are involved in your email pipeline. This helps us to better understand how you perceive things are running and then find the gaps to identify where email may be coming from other sources which are causing deliverability penalties. We are then able to identify the likely yields of deliverability from each platform having years of experience of what is on offer and give professional and independant advice if these platforms are the best fit for your business or if something else may better fit your budget and desired results. We operate independantly of all platforms and have no affiliated relationship with any ESP therefor our advice is free from any bias unless you opt for any of our in house solutions.
Phase 3 – Domain Audit
(up to 5 on single day audit)
We will identify the domains which you are sending from and ensure that these are appropriately setup with each element of DNS (A, MX, SPF, DKIM, Dmarc and RDns) which is required or desireable for mail sending. Once we have identified the necessary records from your public DNS we can advise on where these should be ammended based on the findings of Phase 2 above. This ensures that all the technologies on your mail pipeline are within the scope of the other records and therefor listed and allowed to send mail on your behalf.
Phase 4 – List Cleaning
NOTE : (limited to 10k in a single one day audit)
One of the most common issues we find with sending mail is the quality of the lists being sent to and the hygeine of that list. Einsteins definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result and yet we find clients purchasing lists or using the same list for years on end and getting the same terrible results expecting these to improve. At the core of deliverability is the quality of the leads you have and whether these mailboxes can accept delivery. Large scale mail providers such as Microsoft or Google often disable old user accounts and if you send to large volumes of these email addresses you will find that this tips the spam / inbox scale firmly towards the spam folder on large campaigns. We are able to take your list and pass it through out custom list cleaning tool to identify the good from the bad. Our checks are very comprehensive and complete very quickly.
1 - Deduplication
Deduplicate ensuring that there are no duplicate emails.
2 - Syntax Validation
Check for invalid emails – We check for emails that are not syntax valid containing ampersands, etc.
3 - Domain Viability Check
We check that the domain names your emailing still exist and have email functions
4 - Technology Assessment
We check the technology in use on the domain you’re emailing (Office365, Gmail, etc)
5 - Anti-Spam Technology Review
We check the anti-spam technology in use (Mimecast, Cisco, etc)
6 - Mailbox Existence Verification
We check if the users mailbox still exists and is valid (Without sending it to the user)
7 - Catchall Configuration Check
We check if the domain is configured as a catchall which increases the risk of sending to it.
8 - Spam Trap and High-Risk Recipient Identification
We check if the recipient is a spam trap known to us or high risk to send to e.g a company that has the policy to report spam.
9 - Shared Mailbox Recognition
We identify if the user part of the email is a shared mailbox e.g info, admin, teacher, etc.
10 - Cross-Referencing Database History
We cross-reference our database of over 18m recipients to see if we can provide the first time we ingested this email giving you an idea of how long that email has existed.
11 - Client Interaction and Blacklist Monitoring
We check if any of our clients have successfully emailed this recipient and if this campaign was blacklisted showing a high probability of a spam button being pressed.
Phase 5 – Inbox Placement Testing
(Top 5 Providers)
Thats Deliverable has mail boxes strategically placed on each major mail provider. We are able to send mails from each of your sending technologies with some easily deliverable text. We then test to see if your mail was placed in the target inbox or if this was placed in the spam, junk or was completely underliverable. This helps you to understand in very simple terms if your mails are under a penalty from any particular provider or if the problem is more universal in most cases owing to the issues identified in Phase 1-4 above.
Phase 6 – IP, Domain Reputation and Blacklists
(300+ Checked)
We are able to check your domain, ip and sending technologies reputation against commonly used spam filters and blacklists. Many people have the incorrect assumption that only one part of the stack is important such as the IP address or the domain name and check only that element. In our case we have large lists of providers of these filtering services and we check your entire portfolio against these lists to find if you have been listed for a past campaign or if you have a technical error somewhere from Phase 1-5 which has caused a false positive listing.
Phase 7 – Working Practise Audit
We are able to interview your staff involved in your email list acquiring process, email writing process and email sending process to identify knowledge gaps. E-mail marketing and the road to the inbox is such a fast changing space that we often find people have not retrained as often as they should or kept up with new best practice measures to allow the best deliverability. We dont intend to make this a critical evaluation and are gentle in the lines of questioning. This exercise is conducted with a view to aligning you with the correct guides we can provide or to recommend the best training we have available.
Final Phase – Repair Report
Once we have completed our audit our expert team will craft a report which is easily digestable at executive level and becomes a bible at a technical level for the repairs which must be effected to increase deliverability. We are able to align our report with recomendations for best practice and from our own up to date industry knowledge of tools and services you may be able to utilise to get better results. In most cases we have conclusive findings of where the gaps and problems are which become easily actionable points for you to take away and do the repair work. We are also able to offer fixed pricing from this point forward for reparation work to be completed by one of our experts or for one of our experts to work exclusively with your team through the problems.
