Skip to main content
Confessions-of-a-reformed-email-junky

 

Confessions-of-a-reformed-email-junky

I have a confession to make. I was an email volume junkie. Some would have even called me a spammer. I wasn’t purposely doing email wrong. I was doing what I thought all the key performance metrics were telling me to do.

And the thing is, it worked. That is, until it didn’t. Here is my story.

It all started innocently enough. 

I was working as a marketing executive at a b2b company aiming to go into hyper-growth mode. Hyper-growth mode means ratcheting up revenue by nailing down what works and what doesn’t. If it doesn’t work, can you fix it? Or should you cut it? And if it does work, how can you turbocharge it?

During this push for growth, email really stood out as a top performer in terms of conversions to sales and revenue per sale. 

I cut my teeth in revenue marketing. I’m all about click-to-close, not just clicks for the sake of clicks. I need to see ROI.

I had built multi-channel marketing programs at other organizations and each one involved the same channels, but in each program the channels were all weighted differently.

To say email’s ROI is unmatched is an understatement, so its performance at this particular company drew this revenue marketer like a moth to flame. Kind of like the old movie line from Bugs Life: “I can’t help it! It’s so beautiful!”

I already knew from experience at this company that we acquired one solid inquiry for every 3,500 emails sent. So, naturally I concluded the answer to turbocharging our email program was to amass as many addresses as quickly as possible and send a lot of email.

I did all the stuff you aren’t supposed to do.

It worked, as in really worked—for a little while. Essentially, we floored it, built up some serious speed and then blew our engine.

I was all about the revenue. Email was delivering the highest revenue and I was, as yet, unable to see the consequences of our ‘turning up the volume.’

Then two bad things started to happen simultaneously. Our bounce rate jumped from five percent to closing in on double digits, which is bad in and of itself. But more importantly, that 3,500-emails-per-inquiry number I could previously bank on jumped to 5,000, then to 8,000 and then to 16,000.

And it happened really fast.

Not surprisingly, our email reputation started to suffer and we got blocklisted a few times.

I was an email novice who knew just enough to be dangerous. I knew about subject lines. I knew about white space. I knew about links. I knew how to hit the “send” button. Boy, did I know how to hit “send.” And I knew that our bounce rate was going up because our database was deteriorating. 

I thought all I needed was a way to identify ‘invalid’ email addresses to pull them from my lists to get my bounce rate to drop back down.

I ended up partnering with a Webbula competitor who presented themselves as an email-list-hygiene company, but they were really only a verification service. I didn’t know what I know now, so I went with them.

The verification company didn’t cost as much as competitors like Webbula, but the move allowed me to say to higher ups: “Here is how I’m fixing this problem.” Unfortunately, I was comparing apples to oranges.

Email verification helped to a degree. I was able to identify which email addresses were valid and which were not. The downside was our email reputation wasn’t getting any better. 

And then, we got blocklisted a couple more times. I just could not figure out what was going on.

Turns out our CEO knew Webbula CEO Vince Cersosimo and introduced me to him. Vince was able to educate me that, yes, email verification is a good thing, but ‘valid’ email addresses can still include dangerous records such as spam traps, honey pots, bots, and spam complainers.

When I pulled the trigger with Webbula, I was able to see not only what were valid and invalid addresses, I was also able to see which addresses were “valid” but weren’t doing me any good, or were even active threats to my program.

In addition to leveraging Webbula’s hygiene services, we scaled our volume way back, became more focused with our messaging and our email reputation started coming back.

As my time at that company started winding down, I was still in contact with Vince and we decided I should come work for Webbula.

The advantage I bring to Webbula is I have been in our clients’ and prospects’ shoes. Like me, they know something’s broken and needs to be fixed but they’re not sure exactly what they need. Like me, they line up a list of service-provider options and tend to go with the lower-cost option. 

And, like me, they find the lower-cost option is not a complete solution. 

That’s when they reach out to Webbula. When they get here, I am often able to overcome their objections because I had every single one of them. The most rewarding part of my job is weening clients off their email-volume addiction and helping them get their email marketing program performing at its peak. 

Maybe I should start a support group.

 

David Lewis

David Lewis is Vice President of Sales for Webbula.