Nobody wants to hear you're having email Problems because your content is not Good right yeah but I feel like a lot of Times that is it right Google just Understands that this is a promotional Email and I think that area of the whole Game is so nuanced but people who Understand what's going to land you in Promotion versus not are the ones that Are masters of email copy [Music] Hi everyone and welcome to another Episode of the high level Spotlight Sessions where we showcase awesome Marketers doing awesome marketing today I'm excited to be joined by Matt Ratliff He's the Creator and founder of funnel Techie an elite email Academy in Addition to being a an extremely Well-rounded technical person I would Say he works alongside his wife Grace in Their home in East Tennessee where they Provide email deliverability services to Businesses and agencies alike correct Matt that is correct Well thanks for having me this is this Is awesome I'm assuming it's gonna be a good Conversation I love geeking out with Folks and uh from what I understand your Level your ability to geek out is at a Higher level than most you spent years As a networking engineer is that right Yeah so that's my bread and butter I
Came from a networking background so Designing networks literally all across The U.S across the globe and that's That's my Foundation Very cool so I could see how that lends Itself nicely to email and helping folks With deliverability type of issues Because email is in that layer of the Internet that none of us understand Well yeah well not to mention early my Career I used to develop a Linux email Servers so I used to build those for Mom And Pops and that grew and then Eventually that led into Microsoft Exchange boxes back in the day where you Would have to build your own pre On-premise type setups so that's a That's really where a lot of that Knowledge came from Why is email so confusing like I've been Doing this for I don't know Over a decade Coming up on Two And I barely understand Like MX records okay MX records make Email work yeah Yeah well you know we can get super Technical so let's let's start the very High level portion of it you've um email Can be very difficult but whenever You're in an ESP Doesn't matter if you're with you know Mel gun send grid post Market doesn't Matter they're going to tell you exactly What to kind of put in as far as your
DNS records even if from like in we're Good organizational domain perspective Like funnelticky.com that's an Organizational domain it's the root Level if you were to put that in Google G Suite or Office 365 they're going to Tell you exactly which records to put in So MX records are basically if I were to Send you an email to your domain well I Would have to find your MX record so That I know exactly where that envelope Is going so it's really you know Creating a path through the internet to Know exactly where that needs to land And so that's one aspect and of course You know SPF records dkim or domain Authentication and the whole dmarc stuff Right we can get we can get super deep With this but yeah Yeah definitely I mean I think You kind of covered I guess what I would Say is where I feel like a lot of people Stumble in the very beginning which is Typically When you use high level and you're going To go set up email for someone let's say A client or your own agency sub account You hop into your domain registrar and You navigate to the DNS and you're like Wait a minute It's telling me to enter MX records but There are already MX records in here yes Right and they're typically at the root And what we're going to do are sub
Domain so talk to us about the Difference between the two so there's um So something to keep in mind whenever You're kind of building your email Foundation your organizational domain is Your root domain so that's going to Typically live like I just mentioned in A Google G Suite office 365. now when You get into a business aspect you've Got transactional based email flows you Know if someone comes into your world Makes a purchase of a product or service That you have that next email is very Critical that that it gets sent and that The client receives it so that's going To be transactional in nature so Typically that should be on its own Subdomain so in my world that would be T.funneltechie.com so it's transactional And you're going to have the highest Deliverability among that because Everyone's going to open those emails Because it's expected now for marketing Or promotional emails that also needs to Be on its own email flow which would Account for a new sub domain and Typically it doesn't matter the Subdomain name you just have to identify That it's for this particular purpose so Again going back to that same example M.funneltechie.com is typically what I Use so m stands for marketing just Something super simple so I think just That clarification is not something that
Everyone knows about and so it's super It's super critical and then that also Comes down to kind of like your domain Reputation so let's say for example if You've combined transactional with Marketing that's okay to a degree But at some point as you continue to Grow eventually you're going to have a Lot of people that are going to begin You know hitting the spam complaint Button right marking your messages as Spam that could eventually hurt the Transactional stands that you're mixing In with that so that's that's a piece to Be very mindful of And we can talk about some things that I Hope that high level will go toward as a Mechanism to kind of get around it and There's already something that I do Currently for that piece but we can get Into that in just a moment I was going To say are you actually using two Sub-accounts for your business because One is just two sub-accounts so Applications and the others marketing Yep exactly so two two uh locations so One dedicated for transactional so that Location will have all my front end Funnels my websites uh where you could Go make a purchase of my products my Services and so that's the transactional And then I've got um if you've ever used Integromat which is now called make and Use ads it's a very simple automation
Which anytime that someone comes in Through my transactional will Automatically be synced to my marketing Sub domain it's very clean very easy and So that's how how I do it that's Interesting so I could see you saying at Some point well oh maybe even at like The workflow level being able to choose Which sending subdomain is going to Operate yeah and I would imagine you Know not that it would not be Um I'm sure there's some complexity on The high level side to do it but like in A within a workflow Um seems like there's room enough for us To kind of choose which is the intended Purpose and so if we had that built-in Functionality that is almost a game Changer for so many people Interesting yeah well definitely pass This interview along to the to the email Team Um thank you for their consideration but That's interesting so that kind of makes Sense to me one question I I always like To ask because I always forget the Answer to it If You my real emails on my root domain Right Chase Chase buckner.com let's say I set up ascending subdomain and it's Like M.chasebooking.com and I go do a bunch Of really sleazy cold Outreach spam on
That subdomain yep can I harm the the uh The scores the the Trust or whatever of my root domain or Is it that only happens the other way Around the root can harm the subs that's Um there's a little bit of data to show That that can happen it depends on the Severity of it like if it if um I think that there's more data to dig Into but I think that there is some Causation of that happening but it has To be at a very high level you know the Kind of the way that I teach some of This to a lot of my clients a lot of the Agency clients that I've got is that you Know they got a generic root domain and They're creating uh unique subdomains For each of their clients that are Onboarding and so that kind of fits in Kind of what you mentioned just now we Wouldn't want to use some sort of Production root domain that would affect The route we want to stay away from that Typically but from what I've seen that Doesn't impact the route to a degree but I would imagine the more data that we Had on that the the more I would know For a fact but I don't see a lot of that But I think once we reach a certain Threshold I'm sure that does come into Play That sounds about what I recall and I Think the reverse is true that if you Were to go spam on your root domain no
Matter what subject to bleed up it's Going to bleed up yeah so as a best Practice let's um cover this real quick Because I think Brand new high-level user might go Hopefully not set up their MX records For their root domain Let's say they set up one sending Subdomain and it's m dot Chasebuckner.com Okay the kind of lazy path is to then Just use that for all of my sub accounts Yes so basically all of my clients mail Is going out through the same sub domain Which is a bad idea right it is a bad Idea and I can explain it the reason That's a bad idea especially if you're Using Mel gun melgun has established These acceptable use policies so I think It's five percent for balances uh 1.4 Percent for unsubscribes and then 0.08 Percent For spam complaint rates so if any point Let's say hypothetically speaking you've Got 50 sub-accounts and everything's Been going great until this last 50th Client has been unported and that's the Bad Apple and they buy a cold email list And then all of a sudden you you see all Of these warnings coming from Mel gun And then what happens is that that Single subdomain that's being used among All 50 of your clients if it reaches any Of those acceptable use policies
Milligun will instantly shut off that Domain and so it affects all 50 of your Sub accounts so that's why that happens So let's talk about that a little bit More so I'll call that tier one so That's tier one it's the easiest the Quickest tier two would be if you have a Sophisticated automation which I have Built and make which is very cool Um for anyone that's coming on board you Would use a generic sending domain but Then create a unique subdomain for every Client coming on board and that's a Model that I've deployed a lot of and That works quite well so in that same Scenario it's only going to affect that One account but so are you saying that You're you're automating a new subdomain Off of your agency domain yeah as long As it's a generic one yes so whatever The organizational generic email sending Domain that you've established yeah Exactly let me paint that picture uh a Little more clear if I can okay my Company is chasebuckner.com but I'm Going into SAS mode So I'm going to get Chasebuckner.net to do my transactional Email And then every client I get I'm Automatically spinning up a Client Name.chasebuckner.net essentially So that they're all sending on their own
Siled subdomain so if that 50th Bad Apple comes on board he's only going to Flame out his specific subdomain the Rest of my clients their mail continues To deliver exactly and plus with that Model you get isolated email stats per Client so if a client ever comes to the Agency owner says hey man my my emails Are going to spam can you help me out Well let's take a look And to do that I'm assuming you you have To use something like cloudflare where You can API create subdomains right Exactly so cloud cloudflare is that Prerequisite Cool yep it works really well the the Other thing is that people aren't quite Privy to it but Um you you can't quite create Certificates with melgun using their API System so cloudflare has also that Ability to create the certificate Certificates to fill that gap which is a Requirement for TLS And certificate has to do with a dkim or One of those type of Records you know When whenever you're um whenever you Were inside of Mill gun do you remember Um the cname tracking link that you have To put in So in order for that to be coded Correctly in order for you to be able to Track it correctly there is a Certificate that has to be generated for
It so for whatever reason melgon the web Schema that plays into that aspect they Always set it to http And so if you if you leave it set to That that's going to cause the broken Link scenario which then is going to Have a negative impact on your domain's Reputation so it's critical that Everyone is aware of that piece and make Sure that everyone turns into https so That a certificate can be generated and So that anytime that you embed a link in Your email sends the contact that clicks On it doesn't see a broken link it goes Straight to the site that it's supposed To and it's trackable but going back to The automation Um Cloudflare can actually create that Certificate for that function that's Cool yeah I feel like I should jump in At this point and say a lot of what We're talking about is why we launched Lead connector to make a lot of this More easy to manage so that you know you Don't have to deal with this yourself But there's always going to be the power Users that want full control and with Full control you can typically usually Go even deeper right exactly You know Stellar top of Industry sort of Deliverability type of rates and so I'm Assuming you're going to say T3 is Sending domain specific to the client
Exactly custom full custom domains yep That's kind of where everyone needs to Get to and even if you're the agency Owner and let's say for for example if You're taking the privilege I guess of Creating those custom domains for the Clients that you can still do that still Give them kind of their isolated stats So yeah you can certainly do that as Well It could be in the eight of the Subaccount owner's own account or under The agencies but yeah Right and that just requires Us getting access to our clients DNS Exactly which is Um not a lot of agencies want to do that Because you know there's a two-factor Authentication getting credentials you Know it takes a little bit longer so a Lot of agencies tend to want to keep it In under their own umbrella just because It's quicker And is it this is an interesting Conversation is it I can't remember Can you select Google business profile Right like if you're my client I could Send you instructions to share access to That with my Google Business agency Account or whatever can you do that with Cloudflare Google domains where you can Just share access so you don't have to Like send me your logins yeah you can Delegate access
Um and it works really well yeah so That's an easy method that's what that's What I basically tell my clients to do That's the easiest way now if you want To take it one step further which I used To do because I wanted to really get Embedded with my clients for the long Term because have them actually Point Their name servers where I want it to my Cloudflare so that I had control of the DNS talk to explain the difference of What I just described so you're saying You're wanting the client to point their Domain to your DNS their name servers to My cloudflare is what I would do yep so Basically what yeah so basically what You're saying is that since they've done That within their own registrar now you Can take that root domain added in your Cloudflare account And then you've got complete control Over it but of course you would have to Go into cloudflare add the domain and Then give them the name servers so that They can put it in the registrar yeah Right and I always thought it was Interesting because on the one hand it Was great because it prevented them Being able to stumble in there and mess Something up exactly on the flip side Anytime anything needed to happen in the Domain they had to come to me right so There's plus and minuses with that but Most businesses
Have no problem with it because they're So confused by it and they're like oh That's great like I can just pass it to You but I always thought that was Interesting that there is there must be A difference between a registrar and a DNS and the NS record is what determines Where that lives right yeah the name Server yes you can register a domain you Know quite well anywhere you can even do It inside of cloudflare if you wanted to So that becomes the registrar but the Typically the registrar always has name Servers that you can become a part of But if you can if you can If you've got the ability to move to Cloudflare on a name server perspective That's just going to be better overall Not just for email but also for your Website Cool so let's dig into deliverability Right the goal of all of this is that When we send an email our the end user Sees it right it lands in their inbox And that they open it read it And don't take a negative action right Don't flag this spam Um So in order for that to happen how many Steps how many things have to happen Before that Well there's there's a few things so Let's let's start the very beginning so Let's go from the perspective of
Creating a mill gun subdomain so Instantly you create that Mel gun Subdomain mail gun is going to make you A part of the shared pool of ips which They give you two of and you don't know What pool of ips you're in okay that's The first thing the reason I say it like That is because Um it could be so those shared out pages Are going to be shared by a ton of other Folks you don't know if there's any bad Apples there so in order to get some Data out of it the very first thing Would be to maybe send some test emails Out to some G Gmail inboxes maybe Outlook and Yahoo just to kind of see Where things land so it's possible that Maybe one of those inbox providers the History that they have on that sending IP maybe it's not favorable and so first First of all we need to check the Reputation if we can Um so that's one thing and then also you Know it could be on a significant block List and not every block list is the Same you know there's only a handful of Ones to pay attention to but it's things Like that so I tell folks that the IP is Is what Reigns King in the very Beginning that's how you're going to get Into the world of uh Landing in the Inbox so we need to check that first And then can you explain so because and I'm only asking this question because I
Know that you know all this stuff okay IP addresses I feel like are very Confusing to folks right so myself Included right I Envision it as like This box and it can hold x amount of Sending domains Okay so what happens is that um these These uh esps email service providers They've allocated they've purchased a Block of ips and so just imagine kind of In a data center all of these servers Right it's and sitting in a cluster and So they take the gauntlet of you know Sending out of email so any one of those Could be assigned a particular IP that Melgan has given you for this domain That you've created so what happens is That whenever you click the send button From ghl that initiates a call over to Mel gun and then melgon being the SMTP Envelope sender will then initiate the Send so they're sending the envelope the Actual email and so that it's coming out Of a server someplace which then there Has to be an IP address that gets Associated with it And so that's how that works so it's uh It's all virtualized but that's that IP Lives within melgon and not from your Own workstation some people come to me And say uh says can I use a VPN to get a Different IP well no it doesn't work That way it's all coming from Mel gun so Mel gun is the is the provider for that
Piece Yeah and I always thought that was Just interesting it's like There can't it can't just all happen Through a domain there's like this Bigger level called an IP address and Yeah and it can only hold x amount of Domains and and then you'd have to go to Another IP Um to to a degree so Um if for example if we're talking about Kind of the whole reputational thing too Um you know I don't know how many IPS Melgan would own it's um it's thousands Upon thousands so you can go look at um Uh their ranges that they've got through Inet or um I forget the entity now Anyway so anyway you can look that up And they're going to have a ton of them So anytime that you need to rotate those IPS out for any given reason then of Course they'll be able to as long as you Prove that it's been added to some block List but yeah everything on the internet Has to have a public IP to be routable Right so you brought up a good point so If you if you do find out that right out Of the gate your mail's not making it Where you want it to go You can go back to mail gun or to us and And we can go to mail if you're on lead Connector and request to be shifted to a Different IP address and and Most of the time there's no problem that
They do that right okay yeah exactly um But definitively like if if you go and Use some system like male genius or mail Tester I'm not a big fan of those Systems just because a lot of the times They're the data that they give you is Is wrong especially from a Um a block list perspective in some Situations like even some of the SPF Data they give you back it's not always Correct so just be mindful of it Um so which ones do you like to use to To find out if your IP is on a block List so I I'd like to use Cisco Talos so Um if you send yourself an email address Just establish a Gmail account send Yourself an email and then within that And I can even show you in a minute if You want to you can go to the more Button and look at the SPF record line And that's going to show you the sending IP of that particular email then you can Use that and go to Cisco Talos Which is a part of the dashboard that I'll show you too it leads out to that And shows you kind of the reputational Status that it sees as a whole but at The very bottom it's also going to show You the most significant block lists That are out there and that's going to Be spam cop it's going to be abuse at Spam house or Haas however you pronounce It and then the fourth one would be Barracuda but Barracuda is typically
Used in corporate environments in Cisco And Barracuda they're competitors so They're not going to list Barracuda but Those are primarily the ones to to Definitely be aware of so if you're on Any of those lists then definitely work With Mulligan to get it delisted And when you talk about more rotated When you talk about reputation what is The score is it like 1 to 100 is it like A through F what are the levels this is All this is all governed by the actual Inbox providers so it's going to be Different there's not a secret sauce for Any one of them Um just know the pillars of what to look For is you know this the the IP is what Reigns King and that holds a very large Portion of whether or not you're going To get into the inbox or not the second Piece is your domain reputation Google Is trying to move more into domain Reputation data more than IP but they're Not quite there yet you know it would be Great when one day we can solely just Rely on domain reputation only that Would be awesome because then you know Microsoft with Outlook and MSN and Hotmail they're sticklers for the IP so Um if if the IP if they've recorded some Bad history on this given IP that you're Sending email on guess what you're never Going to get into the inbox so um and That makes sense right because it's not
Fair right have nothing that's not fair The person that was just sharing on the Shared IP block yeah especially if You're just starting out creating you've Just created your business and you want To you know start acquiring the list and You're on a set of shared IPS Um you don't have any government so over That so that's going to be problematic To some degree however I have noticed Though that Mel gum within the last six Months has done a better job of keeping Up to date with how their IPs are viewed Globally and so I've seen a drastic Change and I hope that continues so That's a positive for most folks that Are using Mel gun That's great now You also learned that wait a minute I Can buy a dedicated IP address but I Have been told that that actually can be A bad idea unless you're sending a Certain amount of high like a certain High volume of email yeah what are your Thoughts on that yeah so the reason that Can well let's talk about the reason it Can be good It gets you out of the whole mess of Sharing an IP with someone else you know So if you've got complete control over Your sins In your audience your contact list is Very receptive to your emails then you Stand a better chance at Landing in the
Inbox every single time the reason The reason that it can be bad is because Um most esps email service providers do Have kind of a an audit they have to go Through to in order to give you a Dedicated so Mel gun has a set of 100 000 emails per month so if you meet that Threshold then okay that's going to be Great Um and then from that perspective there Should be enough volume that you're that You're sending emails on into each of The major inbox providers to kind of get A good reputation built up however let's Say that Um you're only sending maybe 20 000 Emails per month and you happen to have A dedicated IP you know if you're able To get that great Um but if that's happening you're gonna You're gonna do more harm than good Because if you don't have a real real Good email Cadence you're not sending Regularly then that could reset the IP Score that an inbox provider has seen From your IEP so at some point they're Gonna it's gonna meet a a threshold a Dead timer and it's going to reset the Score and now you're starting over again To rebuild that reputation so you must Keep that reputation up by sending more And more emails so that's why Mulligan Says a hundred thousand emails per month In order to get a dedicated so in those
Instances that's that's why wow that's Interesting and kind of weird I guess They consider when they see the drop in Activity that this IP address is Changing hands then therefore we need to Reset the the grading system I don't Know why they do it that way to be Honest but um I don't know even what That timeline is because it's always Shifting I I try my best to dig deep Into this kind of stuff to try to pull That data out but it's it's very Difficult so I don't know what that Threshold is or even the true reason why It's done Um but yeah that's that's something to Be mindful of so if you're going to go That route of a dedicated IP Um be a high volume sender first of all If you can I've gotten some clients Where it made sense even at a 60k volume To get a dedicated and working with Mel Gun support I'm able to do it but it Doesn't always happen and you've got to Do your due diligence to understand Exactly where they're sending their Emails to most of to make sure that's a That's a good fit you can imagine if You've got you know most maybe 90 Percent of your emails are going to Gmail users but the other 10 might be Going to Microsoft well that may not be Enough to fit into Microsoft schools So just be aware of those types of
Things got it interesting Okay so we've Got our sending subdomain set up we know We're on a good IP What happens from here that determines Whether or not my emails are actually I Mean there's deliverability and then There's delivered right these are Different terms so walk us through what The steps totally totally different Terms so delivered just simply means so If you're in a mail gun you look at the Stats or even from high levels campaign Stats right it shows you the percentage Or the number of emails being delivered All that means is that the inbox Provider Gmail Outlook Yahoo has Accepted the email and it landed Someplace you don't know where it landed It could have landed in junk or spam you Don't you don't really know so Deliverability just and that's just a Loose term meaning that it landed in the Inbox and that's what we want So whenever you're like using these Third-party systems that claim to say Yeah your deliverability is this number You know all that they're doing is using Seed lists these are in boxes that they Use all the time to send you know tests Into those are decent tools but you know Google especially is cracking down on These types of entities so just be aware With those things and take it with a Grain of salt because it's not always
Clear-cut either Um but yeah that's that's another Component of it so do they Esp's the the Googles the microsofts of The world do they not send back exactly Where it landed Exactly they they do not they're not Going to do that they're not going to Tell you no they do not do that you the Only the only true way to know is you Know when I um when I teach kind of the This game of understanding kind of where You're going is that you want to do your Own testing you know have some Gmail Inboxes of your own Outlook in boxes and Yahoo and inboxes you create a brand new Email campaign before you blast it to Your audience send it to that test Account for that you've created yourself And kind of see where things have landed And that is just as good as any other Platform out there that you would use in A third-party fashion but that way it Would kind of tell you kind of what's Happening and from there you can say Well if it landed in promotions that's Good it's not spam it's actually the Inbox is just a sorted version of the Inbox but they've identified that it's Promotional in nature and that tends to Come back down to the copy whether it be The subject line copy or the body copy So if that happens adjust the subject Line first send another series of emails
See where it lands if nothing happens Then more than likely it's within the Body copy make changes there and see Where it lands and typically you've You've found the problem Hmm that's cool so I like that I I could Imagine having a smart list in high Level that are the email accounts that I Have access to I send to that first go See where it landed Um you mentioned the promotions tab I Thought that was really interesting Because I feel like Nobody wants to hear you're having email Problems because your content is not Good right but I feel like a lot of Times that is it right Google just Understands that this is a promotional Email and I think that area of the whole Game is so nuanced but people who Understand what's going to land you in Promotion versus not are the ones that Are masters of email copy I would say uh It's a pretty fine line right of landing On one side of the promotion or not It is yeah and it could just be um just A couple of words even Um or it could be maybe a certain Pattern within the footer or even on That same note Um going back to this whole footer Section you know a lot of people like to Use a signature in the bottom of their Emails that's okay guys but I've seen
That in a lot of situations that does Tend to flip something in in a direction That you don't want it to go there's a Particular pattern within that body that Message within the footer that contains Your you know your business logo your Your telephone number your social media Links something that these providers Don't like and that will cause your Emails to go to spam so that's another Thing that I see a lot of that people Aren't quite privy to so yeah so there's There's a lot to look into Um yeah that's interesting yeah we Typically we do that a lot when we're Split testing emails we'll always test One version that's just text only no Image doesn't look very pretty versus The really stylized newsletter style Email it's always interesting to see how Drastically different the results are Yeah it is yeah yeah and a lot of people You know they they get really caught up In thinking well if I use the term Unsubscribe so you know if you're Sending a promotional material you know You gotta you got to Um uh adhere to the rules of can spam Right so you must include an away or a Opt-out form of some sort or a way to Opt out so you can come up with whatever That is but typically a lot of folks are Just very used to including an Unsubscribe link and folks have gotten
In in their mind thinking that the word Unsubscribe is automatically going to be A negative impact on your deliverability And that is not so that is not the case I promise you so make it the other way Right it will increase your Deliverability won't it if the carriers See that you're you're adhering by the Rules you can so yeah Um so first of all you want people to be Able to unsubscribe very easily that's What it comes down to if they can't if There's you know too much bottleneck if If there's too many steps for people to Take They're just going to make it easier on Themselves and they're just going to say Right click and Mark a Spam so we want To make it super easy for folks to Unsubscribe and that that is a key so Stepping through like kind of these Preferences and things like that I'm not A big fan of Um people have good success with it I Don't like it because it's um it's too Much for people to have to think through So I want to click unsubscribe if you Can is beneficial So that's interesting let me let me ask You what you think of what I prefer to Do because I've this is super Interesting right so we launched lead Connector email And one of the first requests that one
Of the top requests that we got right Away was We need to unsubscribe in the header Because that is going to improve Deliverability the list unsubscribe yep Are saying it should be in the header Where you can just unsubscribe right From the top I never liked that because I feel like it's like a nuclear Unsubscribe where it's like everything Versus I like to create smart lists and Trigger links so at the bottom of my Emails there's always two options the First is don't want to receive whatever The cat like marketing emails from us Anymore unsubscribe here and then below That'll say don't want to receive Anything from us ever again unsubscribe Here because oftentimes I relate to that Where it's like I don't want your Promotions but I do want you to be able To email me if something's like really Important and my account is broken or Something like that versus when you put It in the header it's automatically All Or Nothing Yeah exactly so if you use the list Unsubscribe header which you know LC can Implement or if you're on your own Mailgun account you just have to include The unsubscribe tracking that's inside Of the domain settings area you can do That Um I would prefer to handle that
Unsubscribe feature and just build it Through high level instead I don't Really care about the list on subscribe Header even though male genius will say That it helps your deliverability it it Doesn't really matter as long as people Have an easy way to unsubscribe that's The key component and that's all that Matters that makes me feel better Because I always thought I felt like There was this trade-off and I don't Know which way provides more benefit Yeah no as long as people can easily Unsubscribe that's all that's required And that's all that's needed yeah cool Okay cool so What are we have we missed anything Along the way I think we have right so We talked about the sending subdomain We're making sure IPS clean we talked About the messaging that's gonna Determine certain things but then there Are also other records that always Confuse the heck out of me that play a Big part in this right well let's before We talk about that let's talk about Domain reputation so we've spoken about About IP so now domain reputation how do You know that well there's there's tons Of feedback loops out there I'll call Them feedback loops but GPT Google Postmaster tools that's a real easy Feedback loop system to become a part of All you do whatever you've got
Set in melgun you know the the sub Domain that you've got created go and Add Um go and add that to subdomain or even The root domain and then add any number Of Subs after the fact into Google Postmaster As long as Google has seen 100 emails From your domain within the past 24 Hours they will give you data the other Prerequisite is that your Demi has to be Authenticated and if you've set up SPF And dkim then you're authenticated so That's always a given but as long as you Meet the threshold that Google needs to See then they're going to give you data For that for that pinpoint for that day So you can go there and look at the way They see your IP that you're sending From they will give you their your Domain reputational data they can even Show you Spam level of what they're detecting of How their user base is taken to your Messaging you've got an ID on that you Can see delivery errors in case maybe The IP that you're using if it's being Deferred meaning that for that 24 hour Period Um Google has received too many emails Within a 24-hour period and now they're Going to defer it or if your reputation Is so bad that they won't accept it I've Seen that lately so you can get that
Really useful information out of those Systems with GPT it's free With Microsoft and Yahoo it's free as Well but the prerequisite there is that You must have a dedicated IEP in order To get into that system But wait so how does that work do they Give you an email address that you need To add to your all your lists or like How do they see all these emails comes Talking about GPT yeah yeah so um well So you're you've put in the the email Sending domain that you're that you're Wanting to grab data for so whenever Google accepts your email from that Sending domain they've recorded it and So they mean so whenever Gmail across All of its users sees mail from that Exactly uh okay yep and so um but that's Very useful and so if you see maybe your Domain reputation is sitting at high it Will always begin high and so Google Gets a sense of how they're user base Their you know Gmail users are taken to Your messaging then it's going to Fluctuate so high medium low and bad are The four categories for both IP and the Domain reputation so ideally we always Want to stay high as best as possible But if we start to deviate from that we Can use the other other tools that are Built in the GPT to figure out what's Happening and those components are the Things that I love to teach and you know
The ins and outs of all of this I I geek Out on all of this stuff and enjoy Teaching it's really interesting it's Sort of like a Ethical privacy conundrum right it's It's basically Google saying if you've Got nothing to hide show us everything And we'll reward you for that but if we Don't if you don't show us everything we Might assume you've got something to Hide To a degree now they're not going to Show you any information outside of what You're already using so you know they're Not going to show you the contacts that You're you know sending messages to or Who's marking your messages as spanned I Mean you'll see that kind of stuff in The ESP but not with Google postmaster But it's it's definitely useful though From an IP and a domain reputation Standpoint I would imagine there's you know some Levers on the back end of Google that They pull when they're like oh they They're in GPT they're they've got Nothing to hide we've seen good signals From what's coming from them let's Prioritize that and do you remember Those people were not on gbt because we Don't really know what they're doing I've not seen that that's a that's a Good thought I've not seen any data that Speaks to either side of that coin so
Yeah I don't think it matters enough Yeah there there's some like if you read Forms and stuff about with Microsoft There's a lot of stuff that says if You're part of sndr um with Microsoft Um you can they sort of prioritize you In a sense but I'd be very surprised if That's kind of what they're doing I mean I'm sure they're Microsoft has been Around a long time so maybe they're Still using some of the old tactics but Um I don't I don't think that's true I've just not seen any data that says if That's the case okay fair enough yeah Google may not be doing any evil okay You never know okay so so that sounds Like an interesting thing if if I'm a um A legitimate business I'm communicating With my customers I'm running a Newsletter all that kind of stuff it Sounds like I should probably register With GPT because why not Definitely yeah definitely like the First thing you did when you build an Email domain um get into GPT you've got To you've got to know how you stand Okay cool yeah all right so from there Are we ready to talk about The Crazy Ones yet because I feel like This is always where my mind starts to Melt yeah so you mentioned records right So yeah so I assume that's kind of where Your mind melts maybe well so SPF and Dkim so dkim is the domain
Authentication so those are two inherent Pieces that you've got to have through Mail gun Um so you put those pieces in and you Get your domain verified that's it now That's easy because you're you're given Those pieces Um dmarc is that extra piece that they Don't tell you to do but it's it's best Practice to do it doesn't mean that You're gonna it does not increase your Deliverability it just it's almost like Taking the lid and putting it on the jar That's full of your security mechanisms You're just you know putting the cap on It and now everything is Totally Secure With dmarc so the way it works is that It protects you from any malicious Activity so if I wanted to spoof your Chasebutner.com domain or whatever You've got I could I could do it if you Don't have a dmarc policy it would be Quite easy to do it but depending on how You've got things coded from an SPF Level like you know at the very end You've got kind of this tilde awl the Tilde is a soft fail mechanism so I can Get around that it doesn't matter So if I claim to to be sending email and It doesn't match kind of the why SPF is Saying to the inbox provider of what Should be there then they're going to Say Well they're just going to Market But they're going to allow the email to
Come on through Dkim doesn't protect you in that manner It protects the actual envelope send so You send an email to someone the the Path between you and them as as long as Nothing's been changed in transmission Of that message then dkim is going to Come back and be valid but if Something's been altered in that Transition then we know that something's Altered and now dkim is going to fail And the message will not go anywhere it Just it goes into Dev null goes into a Black hole Dmarc is simply going to protect you From a domain level standpoint so by the Time that that spoofed message reaches The end point then what's going to Happen is that the inbox provider is Going to look at your SPF record it's Going to check that domain compare it to Oh you've got a dmarc policy published Well is the policy set to non-quarantine Or reject if it's set to reject that's What it should be As long as you know what you're doing There's a lot of things that go into That so don't don't just willy-nilly do It but as long as everything is matching Then everything's great but if it Doesn't then then that message is just Not going to go anywhere which is what You want to happen if your message if Your email has been spoofed
So it protects you from that mechanism And protects your domain and it's not Going to cause any degradation in your Reputation so that's that's how that is Is set up But it doesn't inherently improve Deliverability just because you have it Right yep and I have heard and Seen occasionally where you can really Shoot yourself in the foot with that oh Yes yeah you can yeah because the reason I'm glad you said that is because Dmart goes hand in hand with either the SPF record or dkim so it must have a Domain match so dmarc is derived from Your your header from field so like when You're inside of high level you're Coding your from email line so if you Put you know Chase at chasebuckner.com That is what's going to be used to Extract the dmarc record from so that's Where that gets pulled so if you don't Have something in alignment there or if You have it set to reject then if you're Sending that email through kind of a an Intermediary like another subdomain Through milgun and there's not a match If it's outside of that organizational Domain then it's going to fail so in That situation that policy needs to be Set to none if that's how you're going To do it but if the organizational Domains match on both ends then you Typically are okay
Does that make sense So it's like As a Layman it's cool and high level Because you can go and it's like sending From what name what email and you can Put whatever you want and you're like I Could put whatever I want and it sends And it shows up that way right dmarc Would throw a wrench in that It's yeah yeah and I see a lot of Agencies where where clients um they're Under an agency where you know they're Sending email through the generic agency Sending domain through mail gun but they Don't have a domain of their own yet and They choose Gmail and so right now you Can get by with using you know putting That Azure from email line and that Message will be sent and it will be Successfully sent and it'll go someplace The reason that's the case is because Gmail has not created a dmarc reject Policy if you go and dig it's actually There but it's set To None however if You look um I think the same is the is True of Outlook but if you look at Yahoo Email addresses then they've got it set To reject so you can't you can't send it In that fashion And that Shoots you in the foot right away if You're trying to use one sending Subdomain on your agency domain for all Of your clients they immediately then
Can't go send mail from at Theirdomain.com in high level well you Can as long as that client doesn't have A restrictive dmarc policy set up for Their root domain and typically a lot of People don't know to do it anyway so for The mass majority of people everyone's Going to be okay unless you get some Some folks that think oh I need a dmarc Reject policy I'm just going to put it On there well just be very careful with It gotcha yeah okay Cool yeah that's sort of my Golden Rule Is like when it comes to dmarc I'm not Gonna do anything unless I'm doing it With an expert because from you know Everything I've learned it can go very Wrong if you're not really careful about The specifics of the record that you're Setting up so exactly I would talk to Somebody like Matt if you are interested In taking that Final step I would consider it when We're talking about DNS records in email Thank you so Have we have we covered everything there Are we ready to get it to the more Exciting stuff like what you've built in This dashboard and all yeah let's I Think so yeah I think enough of the tech Stuff let's get into the fun stuff Let's do it so talk to me about it you Went and built a dashboard that because Why you weren't getting enough data back
And you you needed more or you made it Easier to read or what was the thought Process there I'm a data junkie and so I Noticed that with a lot of my clients That I was helping with you know Troubleshooting email deliverability Problems it was very frustrating with You know some folks where you know They're under an agency but maybe the Agency owner has their mailgun account In their own account so I don't have Access to the agency level mail gun Account I need that data so um there's a Lot of red tape you know I had a working Note it took forever to kind of get Everything that I needed and so I was Like you know can I can I do something Around this um to to give folks that Data already inherently under their Their location account Well that's when I thought well I can Take advantage of this and and build it And so that's why I decided to come out With my own dashboard and the way this Works it's actually built for Mel Gunn I've got it available for centigrid and Postmark all in the same price Model so You once you buy this solution if you Did then you would get access to all Three of those dashboards and any others That I decided to come out with in the Future but it was primarily built for That frustration with Mill gun users Because we the more data that we have
More easily accessible the better and we Can derive at a solution much more Quicker and so that's kind of the what Happened with this idea with the Dashboard so I'd love to show you Yeah definitely uh let's see here so This one is in one of my um my Playground accounts so this one right Here so basically it lives in inside of Your location so it has an agency owner This is not available for just you know Standard sub-account owners uh this is Uh this is from an agency level so Agency level or agency owners are the Ones that would want to purchase this so You grab a license and you can use it For any number of sub-accounts there's No limitation to it which is the cool Thing So you can grant everyone under your Agency access to this tool so basically What's going to happen it's going to Show you the the domain that you're Sending from at the very top it's going To show your contact Trends so it's Going to show you the number of contacts That you've got how many contacts added And how many contacts have been Unsubscribed with the date selector here Depending on what you have selected So that's the first thing the next thing It's going to show you is that there's Another filter over here we I had to Separate these two out just because
There's no inherent date filter with Extracting contacts from high level so We we had to implement the state Function in two separate formats here But this date filter is specific to the Email metrics that we're going to get Into next and so this is going to Default to the previous 30 days And so again this is built for this one That we're looking at is Mel gun we're Going to see how many messages have been Sent out how many were maybe of those Number of emails how many folks have Responded back this is what we get has Posted via routes that's whenever melgun Receives an email from the outside Coming in how many were actually dropped And then the percentage of how many were Suppressed in case you're ever curious As to what any of these are you can Hover over these tooltip items to kind Of give you that information Then we got you know different people Like to see things in different ways so There's this interactive graph by Default it's showing you everything in Red which is delivered but if you wanted To see something else you can unselect The delivered and you can see how many Items have been suppressed filled or Posted you know you can kind of get rid Of all of these so it's very interactive So for high volume senders this is this Is really cool and a lot of people like
That for that fact And then my eyes always go over to these Spinners because this is where you get a Lot of the real good information rather Quickly so you're looking at the Delivered percentage so we always want This to be at or above 97 percent and I Give you that information down here kind Of in a paragraph to kind of give you What to aim for And the colors inside of these Spinners Are Dynamic meaning that if you've got If everything is good then it's going to Show in green however if it's red that Means that you need to focus on it and See what you can do to kind of improve It so we got in a standard open event And clicked event present presented Share the bounces spam complaints Unsubscribes and your reply reply rate Which you know inherently mail gun does Not give you that percentage but I'm Able to calculate and kind of give that To you through the posted via routes Function And then at the very bottom uh not that I've got anything here but Just like in melga and you've got the Suppressions table well this is being Pulled directly out of melgun for your Domain specifically and it's going to Show your bounces your complaints your Unsubscribes and if you have any white Lists
And then you might have noticed this Section so notice that we you know we Spoke about the two IPS that are given To your account whenever you build it Initially or even if you have a Dedicated IP whatever the case may be It's going to show you the exact IEPs That are a part of your account you can Manually go into Mel gun and scope Through all of the logs and read through It all and finally figure it out but I Give this to you instantly and then you Can always go to Cisco Talos so what's Going to happen here is that it's going To take you to Cisco Talos And it's going to give you A representation based upon the way Cisco Tallow sees it now Cisco Talos is An aggregator of data so they're not an Inbox provider but they've got endpoints All over the globe so they've got a Pretty good idea of how things stand but Just keep in mind it's not you know Directly from an inbox provider that's Why you would want to go with GPT so the Reputation of that IP is good from what It sees we don't have any significant Level of spam which is ideally what we Want we want this to always see none and Then those block lists the most relevant Ones are spemcop abusat and spam house There's two different versions of this And then the last one being Barracuda But Barracuda is not on here because
They're Cisco and Barracuda are Competitors but if yeah if you're listed On any of these lists then you will have Problems reaching the inbox so work with Mel gun let them know what's going on And they will rotate the IPS out so That's that's very critical Um and then click tracking so I teach People how to use UTM parameters so if You want to track how many times a link Was clicked within a campaign you can Build a UTM framework which is in my Course within my membership portal you Can see what the campaign name is the URL that was clicked and then how many Clicks uh were out of that campaign So this is all really relevant Information it's very crucial to to have Those holistic stats for your email sins And again this is for folks who want to Run their own mail gun right because a Lot of these stats are if you're in lead Connector or baked in yeah exactly so um This is for your own mail gun account so Let's say that you're the agency owner And you've got a sub-account that wants To use their own Milligan account well You can still use this in that fashion It's very easy I show you everything to Do so you can still do that if you're Using LC email I'm trying to work with Robin and Sean with giving me access to Pull those stats in so we've not we've Not ironed those details out yet but
That's still on the on the Playbook so We're hoping that we can to manage to Get that out and make that a part of the Dashboard as well but right now this is Just for Standalone Mel gun syn grid and Postmark Which I can show you syngrid the data is Going to look very similar but depending On the the API there's data different Data in different platforms so this Looks really similar but there's going To be a lot more data that you can Extract or a little less data that you Can extract depending on the platform But holistically it's going to be kind Of the same game so that's with syngrid And then this of course would be with Postmark Cool yeah So write in the high level application Looks great thank you so let me ask you Of all the folks that you help when People come to you and say I've got a Problem Yep The majority of them have a problem at What level Well a lot of them they come to me and Say well I get them kind of all over the Spectrum a lot of folks where their high Volume senders they're sending you know Close to a million emails or maybe more A month those are true high volume Senders and they're using high level or
Even some other application but um so That kind of depends with those guys They just want to make sure that Everything is set up correctly should They get a dedicated IP for the number Of cents that they're sending you know If they're if they're at a million or More then they should definitely have a Dedicated but in a lot of cases you know Sometimes they don't always and so they Want to go through the proper channels Of getting all of that solidified and Making sure the reputation continues on After these changes are inherently made Um so with with those folks you know There's strategically there's a Strategic warm-up process that you would Want to go through more on the lines of Warming up the dedicated IP more than The domain because the IP is what rains King the very beginning so we want to Make sure that is solidified But then others are you know coming to Me and they're you know maybe they're Maxing out at maybe you know 2500 emails A month but their emails aren't Landing So it's kind of all over the Spectrum But what I do is I go in and do a Complete audit I look at their Infrastructure first I go and look at Their campaigns Um the the copy that's in their Campaigns I figure out what's going on I Make any corrections where I can and I
Give them a strategy that they can use Going forward to you know continue with Their Um their email deliverability to make it Go in the right direction so there's Always a strategy involved as well which I give folks information to Cool got it and that makes sense you're Saying it's not just people that have Problems oftentimes attach people who Are doing pretty good and they just want To make sure they're not leaving Anything on the table exactly exactly Email is super important a lot lots to Know about super important especially For folks who are doing it in larger you Know numbers for sure I could see Wanting to just say let's just get a Second opinion here and make sure that We are you know just not missing any Low-hanging fruit with something that Could be taken care of with like a you Know a small tweak from somebody like Matt who knows what they're doing so Matt this has been great your dashboard Looks awesome If people are having problems or if they Do want to get an audit just to make Sure that they're not leaving anything On the table where should they head Yeah the best way to get in touch with Me just go to funneltechie.com schedule That's F-u-n-n-e-l-t-e-c-h-i-e.com slash
Schedule and that's my calendar just Book an appointment and we'll kind of Just talk it through just so that I know The kind of the lay of the land and I'll Point you I've got packages so I'll Point you to the right package that's Best for you Very cool that sounds great and it's Cool to hear that you work with helping People warm up Dedicated IPS because I feel like that's Always been this mysterious thing of People really unsure whether or not they Should get one and if they do get one What do they do from there so yeah um That sounds like an interest Service as Well well Matt I could geek out this on this forever We've already hit an hour so I'm gonna Let you go but thank you so much for Coming on to uh share all this these Tips and tricks for us yeah thanks for Having me it's been been the last Thank you guys for watching we'll see in The next one [Music]