Before you sign off for the weekend to prepare your Easter brunch, let’s take a peep at a riveting, bite-sized, piece of deliverability inspiration. Kohls took a leap when they sent one of their Easter email promotions with the subject line “Take 20% off + shop Easter egg-hunt-ready styles for the family”, as they sent it to a list with a volume of 13.3M. Not the norm, even for a large brand, this send volume was about 458% higher than Kohls average send volume all week (see chart below). When emailers dramatically increase their volume, deliverability is often sacrificed, but this was not the case here; the campaign only saw a 5 % spam rate, very much aligned with their average. I know what you’re thinking: How is Kohls able to achieve this sorcery? You may have had a spam rate higher than 5% while sending to a vastly smaller volume. How in the world is Kohls able to do this and you’re not? Kohls has email reputation. Kohls overall inbox rate of 95%, as reported in our platform, reflects their solid inbox reputation.
The stronger your email reputation, the more likely an ISP will deliver your emails to the inboxes of recipients on their network. Unfortunately, a poor inbox reputation can’t be fixed in time for Easter. You’ll need to do that over time. But it’s never too late to get started.
While there are many elements of an email program that impact deliverability, IP reputation is an importance piece. Your IP is the specific server you send from, and it can be dedicated or shared. If you have a dedicated IP address, you have it all to yourself. If you’re on a shared IP, it’s being used by multiple brands. Those other brands and yours are in this together; if the IPs have a good sender reputation, your reputation will reap the deliverability benefits too. However, if they perform some sort of email abuse and get blacklisted, your own deliverability will feel the consequences as well. Whether you choose a dedicated or shared IP depends on your email program. Higher volume senders, like Kohls in this case, want to be in control of their reputation by using a dedicated IP. If you’re an infrequent sender with a smaller volume, you can reap some of the benefits of being paired up with others on a shared IP. However, those on shared IP’s should remain vigilant of their deliverability due to the possibility of being impacted by other senders.
But don’t put all your eggs into one basket of course, while your IP sending strategy is greatly significant, you definitely want to align your entire email program with all of the sending best practices as well. For example, audience engagement is another relevant factor to a brand’s inbox performance. Kohls inactivity ratio is relatively low at 26% (the % of audience not having opened a Kohls email in the past 90 days).
Want more eggcellent inspiration? Stay tuned for our Deliverability Best Practices Guide coming soon!
| Latest Sent | Subject | Volume | Inbox | Spam | Read | Read + Delete | Deleted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4/18/19 | Take [REDACTED] 20% [REDACTED] off + shop Easter egg-hunt-ready styles for the family | 13.3M | 94.55% | 5.45% | 12.12% | 10.55% | 13.08% |
| 4/18/19 | When you have 30%, 20% or 15% off AND it's the Semi-Annual Shoe Event...? | 1.5M | 94.70% | 5.30% | 13.85% | 11.15% | 16.15% |
| 4/18/19 | When you have 30% off AND it's the Semi-Annual Shoe Event...??? | 1.1M | 94.51% | 5.49% | 18.36% | 11.86% | 15.25% |
| 4/18/19 | Step into spring in style ... it's the Semi-Annual Shoe Event! | 190K | 97.21% | 2.79% | 12.50% | 12.50% | 6.25% |
| 4/18/19 | Closet goals (+ savings) ? | 1.7M | 97.09% | 2.91% | 15.03% | 13.29% | 14.34% |
| 4/17/19 | Last chance: Extra 20% off + 50% Off Specials end tonight | 2.8M | 97.26% | 2.74% | 25.37% | 21.66% | 21.23% |
| 4/17/19 | Hurry! Final hours for 50% Off Specials. | 2.4M | 97.10% | 2.90% | 24.85% | 21.44% | 23.02% |
| 4/17/19 | ⏰ Last chance to stack your 30% off with 50% off Specials! | 1.3M | 97.87% | 2.13% | 26.33% | 20.09% | 20.55% |
