Marketing to Millennials Posted on September 12, 2014June 3, 2016 by Jessica Lunk This past weekend, a few of us from Hatchbuck attended a local music festival, Loufest, filled with great music, local beer, delectable food, perfect weather, and a swarm of millennials. Festivals are sensory overload and an experience that lives on with the attendee. I’ll never forget the colors and friendly warmth of Coachella, the torrential down pour that always occurs during Lollapalooza, or 3 days on the beach. However, when you really get down to it, how is one festival any different than the next on the business end? If anyone tells you that the music industry is dead, they aren’t paying attention to these festivals popping up all over the country. Here are a few things that I believe small business can learn from these millennial playgrounds: Great Visual Content Millennials love pretty pictures. Instagram and Tumblr are for millennials which are both the social channels designed for visual content. Check out the full Millennials and Social Media infographic from Marketing Strategies. Instagram is an excellent channel to start with because users aren’t as guarded as they are on Facebook and it’s easier to create a successful strategy. Your visual content strategy will lead to your success on this social channel. Use Instagram to showcase and tell the story of your brand. Here are a couple examples of a few brands I follow on Instagram: Coca-Cola Coca-Cola is a great example because they are clever and creative while making it looks so easy. Not much else needs to be said since Coca-Cola is one of the most loved brands worldwide. Coolfire Studios Instagram is also great for B2B! Coolfire is a design agency in the St. Louis area so naturally they’re bursting at the seams with creativity. They use Instagram to highlight their company culture beautifully. Madewell This one is used for a lifestyle branding technique. Madewell uses their buyer personas to drill down to figure out how those girls live their daily lives from what the’re eating, reading, or doing; they have it figured out. If you’re feeling really up to the challenge, I would suggest checking out Vine. This channel is, in my opinion, where the pulse of millennial trends spur from. However, they don’t typically make it to Facebook unless in a Buzzfeed article. User Generated Content (UGC) You might as well call us millennial smart-phone-hands… and instead of griping about it, capitalize on it! Loufest did a great job encouraging attendees to submit their images to their hashtag which they then pull onto their website. They also used an Instagram campaign to build excitement in the days leading up to the festival. With the rise of easy photo editing and Instagram, anyone can become a photographer with professional looking images. By setting up a UGC component to your visual content strategy, you can increase your volume and share of voice without paying an arm and a leg with a professional photographer. Running social contests is your best bet for collecting UGC. Set up a relevant hashtag for your brand that can live on past the contest. If you have a brick and mortar, post that baby all over the place and encourage your customers to use it! There are so many social tools to track social hashtags and even plug-ins for your website to pull those images directly to your page. I’m a huge advocate for UGC because it takes much of the burden of creating visual content off of your shoulders. Plus, you create a legion of advocates without much work to maintain it and it’s an easy way to boost employee engagement and morale. Go Straight to the Source… If it’s appropriate for your small business, becoming a vendor at a local festival could be an awesome opportunity. Millennials get a lot of criticism but one thing they do surprisingly well is supporting small business. Corporate sponsors are very clearly there but on the grounds of a festival, local business and restaurants have so many opportunities to connecting with the festival audience. At Loufest alone, 19 restaurants made up the “Noshpit” and 15 small business “from the St. Louis creative community and beyond” in the Market Square. Festivals aren’t a new idea; every generation has had their fair share of outdoor music festivals. Shout outs to the Boomers… there’s a great visual content strategy there by putting a modern spin to your nostalgia; you guys knew what was up!
Marketing Campaign Lessons from the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge Posted on August 27, 2014June 1, 2016 by Jessica Lunk The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is the type of campaign marketers dream of – a viral, revenue-producing campaign that has everyone talking about your brand. While you may not come up with the next Ice Bucket Challenge, you can run with a few key takeaways to make sure your next marketing campaign is a success. Simplicity is Key. There is no secret formula for making something go viral – often it’s a perfect storm of creativity, influence and current events that boil down to the perfect recipe for an infectious campaign. But you have to start somewhere on your quest to reach more people with your message, so start with simplicity. The ALS challenge is super simple to understand and act upon, so that anyone, and everyone, can participate. Audit your next marketing or social media campaign for ease of use and eliminate any unnecessary steps that may hinder involvement. Influence is Everything. Former Boston College baseball captain, Pete Frates, is credited with helping the Ice Bucket Challenge go viral. Frates, who is battling ALS, participated in the challenge, and his connections in the sports world took it from there. Since then, global celebrities like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey have participated in the challenge, using their star power as a platform to reach millions of people with the campaign. Before you launch your marketing campaign, think about how you can rally the influencers in your network to participate so you can get the most leverage out of your campaign efforts. Innovation Beats Budget. ALS could have poured a lot more cash into a much less effective channel. Instead, with an innovative social campaign, they reached millions of people and received a ten-fold increase in donations. While you can’t always bet on a viral marketing campaign, you can refuse to meet the status quo. Track where you are spending your budget and the impact of that spend to highlight programs that are working and ones that aren’t. Think outside of the box to achieve the same results at a lower cost. For instance, could allocating spend away from a niche conference to a direct mail piece be more effective for reaching more prospects? Can capturing leads from a freebie-offer on your website be more effective than purchasing a cold list of contacts? You won’t know until you test, and taking a creative approach can pay off. Marketing Makes an Impact. Sometimes, especially when it’s difficult to track your marketing efforts, marketing can feel like fluff. But, between July 29 and Aug. 21, the ALS Association had received $41.8 million in donations, compared to just $2.1 million during the same time period last year. Brand awareness and relationship building have everything to do with the success of your company. You can have a great product, the best service or the most noble cause, but if no one knows or trusts your brand, they aren’t going to invest in you. Whether you’re a digital marketer, social media maven, or in the creative department, tracking your marketing efforts back to ROI can show just how valuable you are to the big picture. Maybe you won’t come up with the next “Harlem Shake” or “Ice Bucket Challenge,” but who knows, maybe you will. In the meantime, focus on simplifying your message, building relationships with influencers, out-innovating (instead of outspending) your competitors, and measuring marketing impact to grow your business.
Leadership, Customer Service, Small Business and Scalability Posted on August 15, 2014August 5, 2022 by Jessica Lunk Today, Jonathan, our CMO & CSO, was helping out a team member and made a follow-up call to an opportunity in our pipeline. It struck me that we are fortunate at BenchmarkONE to work with leaders who drive home the idea that true leaders don’t just lead, they serve. At BenchmarkONE, we know that our leaders are always willing to roll up their sleeves and pitch in so we can achieve the important objective we’re passionate about solving every day – helping small businesses to grow. It also brought up another truth: Scalability is everything if you want to grow. Jonathan is phenomenally passionate and knowledgeable about our product and our space. If he could speak to each and every small business that raised their hand to learn more about BenchmarkONE, he would. But that’s not realistic, and if that were our business model, we could never grow. Scalable Process As soon as he hung up, Jonathan put notes into BenchmarkONE and assigns the opportunity to one of our sales reps. They’ll follow up to walk the prospect through BenchmarkONE to make sure it’s the right fit and close the deal. Everyone, from the tippy-top of our company to each marketer, BDR and sales rep knows our process. So as we continue to add new team members and grow, the small businesses we touch can continue to get the same great customer service experience that they’ve come to expect. The beauty of small business is that we’re close to our customers. In early growth stages, we know each customer by name, and can memorize the details of their account. But if we want to grow, we have to let go, develop a process, train our employees, and let technology automate tasks so we can free up our time and use our brains and hearts to solve problems that matter. Scalable Culture Just the other day we grabbed lunch at one of our frequent lunch stops. The regular potato chips were out, so we asked the hourly paid employee behind the counter if there were any more plain chips. “No.” Well, that left us feeling disappointed. What are the odds of a sandwich shop running completely out of plain potato chips? Not very good. So when we spotted the owner we asked him if there were any more plain chips in the back. “Of course, here you go. They’re in your hand,” he said as he handed us the plain potato chips. There was a big disconnect between the level of service and the culture. The owner’s enthusiasm and passion for his deli were not being translated to his employees. It’s this breakdown in process and culture that inhibits growth. If you talk to anyone at BenchmarkONE, we are all on the same page. If you ask anyone here what our mission is, they’ll tell you in their own way that it’s to provide small businesses accessible sales and marketing tools so they can grow. That way, no matter who a customer or prospect speaks to, they get the same enthusiasm and the same message. With a scalable process and a scalable culture, your small business doesn’t have to worry if a customer gets a hold of the CEO or the newest employee. Everyone delivers, so you can maintain the level of service your customers love you for, while expanding your reach and growing your customer base.
The Hidden Superpowers of Small Biz Posted on August 7, 2014 by Jessica Lunk You may have read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Eat, Pray, Love, and if you haven’t, you probably know several people that have. But this story starts before Gilbert became a best-selling author. At first, Gilbert wrote for magazines. In an interview with Jesse Thorn, Gilbert talks about traveling the world alone as a young female journalist. The perception is that it’s dangerous for women to travel alone. However, Gilbert points out that she had an advantage – no one was afraid of her. With the advantage of not being feared, Gilbert had the opportunity to get stories that her male counterpart couldn’t get. While a strange man can seem threatening in some situations, people let Gilbert – a stranger to them – hold their babies and come into their homes during her travels. Being a bit vulnerable turned out to be a big advantage for a journalist trying to get the scoop. “I’m vulnerable because I am a woman,” Gilbert says, “but I have a superpower that is no one fears me.” Gilbert’s take on hidden superpowers actually got me thinking about the vulnerabilities-turned-superpowers that come along with being a small business. Small businesses can seem vulnerable because they have less capital, less employees, less time. But these vulnerable spots actually give small businesses some unique advantages. Small Biz Superpower: Fewer Employees While big corporations have big payrolls, more bodies in seats doesn’t always correlate with being more effective. Small businesses have plenty advantages by running lean: Employees are treated like real people. Small business employees aren’t being handed down directives from higher-ups they’ve never met. Everyone has a personal relationship with each other on some level. The ladder becomes the lattice. Small business structure is lateral, so everyone can bring ideas and opinions to the table. No one is stuck on a rung and there aren’t hard boundaries between departments and divisions. Instead, everyone can lend their greatest strengths to areas of the business that need them the most. The employee handbook is less of a book, and more of a guide. Small businesses don’t need a textbook of rules and regulations. Company culture – not corporate guidelines – dictates employee behavior. At Hatchbuck, we all know our core values: Be yourself, do the right thing, work hard – have fun, keep it simple, and make a difference. We don’t need a rule book to tell us how to be Hatchbuckers, we do it naturally because our values are ingrained in our culture. Running lean is running agile. Unfettered from corporate policies and bureaucracy, small businesses can adapt quickly to changes in the marketplace. They can turn on a dime to gain market share as technology evolves, or take a different approach when demand wanes. Phenomenal customer service is a natural reflex. Small businesses are closer to their customers. Everyone, from the CEO to the front desk admin, connects with customers in some way. They are more in touch with customer pain-points, can resolve individual issues quickly and have the flexibility to offer custom solutions and support. Small Biz Superpower: Fewer Resources Small businesses do more with less . While big businesses have the luxury of throwing money at things to see if it sticks, small businesses have to measure, tweak, test and repeat to make sure they are getting the most out of their investments. As a result, they are less wasteful and more innovative: Small is sustainable. Expenditures can’t get lost in bloated budgets. With less capital, small businesses only invest in resources that can move the needle, so there’s less waste. Plus, small businesses tend to be local, so employees aren’t commuting as far and more flexibility means that workers can telecommute. Impact is local. Fewer resources mean that small businesses stay local. Small businesses give back to their local community, they keep jobs local and contribute to local commerce, strengthening the overall economy of their region. Targeted niche. Small business have fewer offerings, so they have to be laser-focused on producing a better product or service, allowing them to be highly specialized. They’re the niche boutique in a world of cookie-cutter big box stores. Fewer employees and fewer resources aren’t disadvantages, but rather superpowers that help small businesses do great things, and do them better than their larger counterparts. How are you using your small business superpowers to do great things?
Cultivating Ripe Sales Leads: Lead Nurturing Strategies for Small Business Posted on July 31, 2014June 1, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Maybe you’ve over-watered a perfectly good tomato plant and watched it shrivel up and drown. Or maybe an overdose of fertilizer has burnt up your yard. Whether it’s water or plant food, too much of a good thing can be, well, bad. See, in nature (and in sales), there’s a fine line between nurturing and smothering. A little TLC can create a flourishing environment, while too much fuss can stifle growth. Not all of your sales leads are ripe enough to convert to customers right now – but someday, a lot of them will be ready to be harvested (according to Gleanster Research, that number is around 50%) Will your business be poised to reap the benefits? With a balanced lead nurturing strategy, you can. Lead nurturing engages contacts with relevant, personalized content over a period of time until they are ready to buy. By sending digestible nuggets of information that strike a chord with their needs, you’ll build credibility over time. But just like too much fertilizer will burn up a plant, dumping too much knowledge on your contacts can cause information overload, spurring potential leads to pull the plug on your relationship. The Old School Sales Process – A Lead Landfill In a lot of businesses, marketing acquires leads from sources like list rentals, pay-per-click campaigns, tradeshows and other sources, then tosses them right over the fence to sales. Sales picks out the choice leads to try to close. Though many leads will be well qualified to buy, a good portion of them might not be educated about the product or service, or the timing may not be right. Sales will be able to close some of these leads, but for the rest, it’s like scorching a delicate begonia in the sun – it’s too much of a pitch too soon in the buying journey. The leads that don’t close just become waste, and marketing starts from scratch to deliver a fresh batch of leads again. It’s an inefficient cycle that uses a lot of unnecessary energy: Leads that aren’t ready to buy get tossed Marketing is always starting from zero to generate the next batch of leads Sales experiences volatility as they churn up leads Modern Sales and Marketing – A Greener Approach In lead nurturing, marketing consistently cultivates new sales-ready leads, turning sales volatility into systematic, predictable revenue. Instead of tossing every lead over fence to sales, marketing acquires leads, then nurtures them with a series of touchpoints until the leads indicate that they are ready to make a purchase. There are lots of advantages to this evergreen approach: Forming Relationships: By connecting with leads over time, they get to know you. You earn their trust along the way and when it’s time to buy, your business is already on their short list. Optimizing the Sales Cycle: As you keep in touch with your contacts, you can educate them along the way. Instead of waiting for leads to discover their pain-points and search for your solution, you have the power to inform them, shortening the sales cycle. Reduces Waste: With lead nurturing, you aren’t burning up your lead list every month. Hot prospects are handed off to sales while marketing cultivates the next batch into sales ready leads. Encourages Growth: As you nurture contacts through email and social touchpoints, your list actually grows organically through peer-to-peer referrals and brand awareness. Lead Nurturing Strategies Leads need the right mix of attention and education to grow into hot prospects. Lead Scoring: The purpose of each touch point with a lead is to move them closer to the sale. As you email your contacts, make sure they can take an action to indicate their level of interest. Actions such as visiting a link, watching a video, or filling out a form impact lead score so that marketing can systematically determine when a lead is ripe to send to the sales team. Timing: How often you should connect with contacts depends on the length of your sales cycle and their level of interest in your brand. If your sales cycle is 6 months, it’s probably more appropriate to send an email every two weeks, rather than twice a week. Also, contacts who engage with your emails are telling you, “we want more!” and can be communicated to more often. Segmentation: Create unique nurturing campaigns that deliver content based on your leads’ unique interests to maximize your yield of sales-ready leads. Lead nurturing is all about showing your leads the proper care and attention they need to become ripe for sales.
Lead Nurturing Starts with Segmentation Posted on July 21, 2014June 1, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Even though it’s July, I can’t help but have the winter holidays on my mind. It’s not that I’m itching to sing Christmas carols, or can’t wait to shovel snow. It’s that I’d like a relaxing holiday that doesn’t involve navigating icy mall parking lots at the last minute, or ringing up staggering rush shipping charges. You see, it takes time to find the perfect gift for each special someone on your list. It would be much simpler if you could just buy 25 pairs of lipstick red Isotoners in a ladies size small and call it a day. But imagine the holiday woes. Your teenage nephew would scoff, and your kids would probably cry. Even your aunt might be hurt that you didn’t remember that her favorite color is lilac, not red. Let’s face it, most of your fuzzy glove gifts will find their way to the Goodwill bin or the trash. In gift-giving, and in marketing, there’s no one-size-fits all solution. Just like an ill-received gift, a generic email blast is going to end up in the trash. That’s where segmentation comes in. Organizing your prospects by their unique preferences helps you tailor your message to their needs. It’s kind of like getting your aunt the right size slippers in her favorite shade of purple. It shows you care, and shows you can be trusted. For prospects, sending messaging that fits them like a glove keeps them engaged with you until they are ready to buy. So how can you start segmenting your contacts? First, think about organizing contacts by status. This designates their place in the sales funnel, from a fresh new lead, to a promising prospect, to a hot opportunity, to a new customer who hopefully buys from you again. Then, to get even more targeted, segment your contacts into two or three buckets using their unique characteristics and interests. At Hatchbuck, we refer to these unique buckets as personas, a realistic portrayal of your ideal type of customer. But wait…what if you don’t really know what your contacts are interested in, or which of your solutions might fit them best? This is where marketing automation really shines. With marketing automation, you can dynamically tag contacts using forms, link actions, and webpage tracking. So instead of manually updating your contacts, their online actions automatically sort them into the right bucket, based on the pages they visit, the forms they fill out, and the links they click. With your contacts segmented by their status and interests, and tagged in your database, it’s easy to determine the type of messages that will fit like a glove.
Be a Door Opener: Lead Generation Basics for Small Business Posted on June 26, 2014November 21, 2016 by Jessica Lunk Do you hold the elevator door open, or frantically push the close button as you see others approach? As Hatchbuckers, we try to be door-openers – not door closers. You’re probably a door-opener, too. But when small business build websites, they don’t always think about opening their virtual door for leads that visit their site. You work hard to get the word out about your brand and to drive traffic to your website through: Social Media Online Ads Direct Mail Print Ads Blogging Networking Events So the next time you think about website optimization or redesign, ask yourself: How can we hold the door open for online leads? Letting web traffic bounce from your site and leave without a trace is like slamming the door shut on a window shopper. You’ll never know who they are, or what challenges your business could help them solve. If you don’t have a way to identify interested site visitors, you’re missing a big opportunity to generate new leads. Lead Generation Forms One mistake we see a lot of business websites make is an absence of lead generation forms. Lead generation forms invite prospects to learn more by offering something of value in exchange for a few contact details so that you can assist them down the line. For example, if you sell eco-friendly cleaning products, your best customer might be interested in eliminating toxins from their environment. You can offer a report, like “10 Shocking Toxic Chemicals Haunting Your Home.” When a visitor to your website downloads the report, two things happen to help your sales and marketing team: 1. Segmentation: You know what the lead is interested in. In this case, it’s creating a healthy environment for their family. 2. Identification: You have the lead’s contact details. Now you can reach out to them down the road with a related article on healthy homes, or with an offer to try your latest product line. Timing is Everything Do you have a catch-all “Contact Us” form on your site? While effective at attracting spammers, the generic contact form does little to generate new leads. Contact form submissions are usually well into the sales process, prepared with questions and looking to make a decision soon. Lead generation forms, on the other hand, capture prospects early in the buying process, during their online research phase. By interacting with them earlier, you gain more control of the whole sales process: 1. Education: You can educate them on the issue they face, making it less likely that they seek information elsewhere, like from your competitors. 2. Optimization: You can shorten the sales cycle. When your contact fills out a lead generation form, they essentially raise their hand and say, “Here’s my problem.” Now you’re equipped to help them reach a solution much faster. 3. Awareness: You’ve positioned your brand as the go-to expert. When the time comes to make a decision, they’ll deliberately reach out to you first. By offering resources that speak to the needs of your prospects, you open the door to better leads early in the sales cycle, giving you the opportunity to close business sooner and more often.
A Dad’s Life Posted on June 13, 2014June 16, 2016 by Jonathan Herrick As Father’s Day approaches, I can’t help but think of where we would be without the wisdom, support, and inspiration from our fathers. More than anyone other influence in our lives, at an early age dads shape the leadership DNA within us that enables us to mentor and grow our own families, businesses and communities. It’s really not until I became a dad myself, that I fully gained perspective on the sacrifices, life lessons, and the little things Dads do to mold and shape the lives of others around them. Check out this video and I think you will see what I mean: So on a more serious note, I thought I would reflect back on my own life growing up and share just 5 of the many life lessons that my Dad has passed on and how it has shaped me into the Dad and leader I am today: Being a dad means LEADING: When you wake up every day someone is following you (well, not in a creepy kind of way). In every situation you have a chance to LEAD and shape someone’s path for the better. “Being a dad and a leader is a gift and an honor, don’t take that responsible lightly” my dad would say. At times as a dad, an entrepreneur, or even a boss, people will follow you by what you do and not by what you say. Make your actions and your word count. Being a dad means LEARNING: My dad grew up knowing that education was a key to his success. As a youngster he would often take 5 buses and street cars to private school every day. He also worked multiple jobs to help pay for his schooling because he valued education so highly. Later he would carry his education through Washington University and to St Louis University and graduate at the top of his class. The pursuit of his dream to run his own business and to give back to the very community that he grew up in was a driving factor in his life. My Dad is now 80 and I am blown away at how well his mind works. His value of learning has been passed down to me and now to my kids. I work with my kids and also our team here at Hatchbuck every day to instill the value that Leaders are Learners, and stress the importance of fueling the mind. That’s exactly why we created the Hatchbuck Hub, a learning center to help small businesses expand their knowledgebase and grow. Being a dad means FAILING: I remember coming home from school one day as a middle-schooler and I had a C on my report card in science. My dad asked me: “Was that your best shot?” That’s all he had to say. In class I was so afraid of messing something up that I let the other classmates take the lead on the class projects. He knew my potential and he knew that my fear had crept in and had prevented me from doing my best. I learned another life lesson that day that has had immeasurable impact on way I lead my family and company: “It’s ok to miss shots in life, it’s not ok NOT to take them.” Do you remember what it was like to be a dad for the first time? Did you have all of the answers? Of course you didn’t. At least I didn’t, but that didn’t stop me from taking a shot at being the best dad that I could be. What if we had that same mindset in our businesses? What shots are we not taking that 20 years from now we would look back and regret? Being a dad means SERVING: Life is not about you. It’s simple, but it is a game changing principal. For most of my dad’s life he worked long hours running his business and my mom was an anchor for him. Always there to help him, support him, and at times get him through the toughest of days. After all, the balancing act of an entrepreneur running a business and a family is tough one, and family support is crucial. However, along the journey my mom’s health went south and my dad shifted into servant leadership mode. At the end of his career his days consisted of running the business and taking care of my mother and he was the epitome of a role model. His example of putting her first strengthened our family and grew their marriage unlike anything anyone had seen before. A week after my daughter was born my mother passed away and my dad, as I, was left with a bag full of bittersweet emotions. Amazingly he wakes up every day asking one simple question. Who can I serve today in some little way? I have seen firsthand his life transform before my eyes by his willingness to serve instead of being served and as a son I am so grateful he passed on the lesson of servant leadership. Being a dad means LEGACY: So this last year or so has been interesting. It brought about the birth of my new baby girl, what a joy and a blessing she has been. The passing of my beloved mother- a week to the day of the birth of my daughter, and a new journey with Hatchbuck (awesomesauce). It is a vivid reminder that our days are short, so make every one of them count. I have learned so much from my dad over the years but none as important as this: When you look back on your life all you have is your legacy – How you led, who you loved, and how you served others. Grandkid number 16 is on the way for my dad, he is super excited to continue pouring in his love and leadership gifts and I am stoked to have my son meet the man who made me a better man, dad, and purpose driven leader. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there and to you, Dad: Thank you and I love you…. So how has your dad made an impact on your life or in your small business? Share your story!
How to Stay In the Inbox and Out of the Spam Folder Posted on June 9, 2014June 1, 2016 by Erin Posey Ready to send a bulk email to your list? Well, before you press send, we need to have “the talk.” The internet is actually just like high school. Your reputation always precedes you – and it means everything. Sure, you may be a straight-A student taking the right extracurriculars. But as soon as you sit at the wrong lunch table or go to the wrong party, your status takes a hit. It doesn’t take long for crummy associations to stick, damaging your sterling reputation for the rest of your high school career. It’s not always fair, but that’s how it works. Spam filters are like that, too. You may have the best intention of sending helpful, informative correspondence to your contacts. But if it starts to resemble the profile of spam in anyway (even accidentally), your email reputation takes a hit. Here’s How Email Works Your email resides on an email server. For example, if you have a gmail email address, then your email resides on gmail’s servers. When you send an email, your email server delivers your message to the recipient’s email server. It is the recipient’s email server that decides whether to deliver the email to their inbox, stick it in the junk folder, or not even deliver it at all. Email servers are picky – only about 80% of email actually makes it to the inbox. Now, when you send one-off emails from your personal or business email account, they will most likely make it to the inbox. It becomes more tricky when you send a single email to multiple contacts, such as an update to your list of customers. Email servers take a closer look at bulk email, because spammers send in bulk. It’s back to high school – uncool by association. When you send email in any volume, it becomes more difficult to get 100% into the inbox. Building Your Sender Reputation As you send email, you will build an online reputation for the quality of your email. Email service providers track everything when you send email: How many of your emails bounce, meaning they cannot be delivered because the email address is faulty or does not exist. How many recipients complain about spam How many recipients open your email How many recipients click a link in your email How many recipients quickly delete your email Red flags such as a high bounce rate or a high spam complaint rate will make you resemble a spammer, damaging your reputation and causing the email service providers route your email right to the spam folder. Getting a Bad Rep Just like in high school, problems usually start with the company you keep. In this case, that’s your contact list. In an ideal world, your email list is made up of people who share interest in your business and have signed up, or opted-in, to receive email from you. Because opt-ins want to hear from you, they will open your emails and won’t flag you as spam – keeping your sender reputation clean as a whistle. Unfortunately, lists can expire over time. Contacts who opted-in a long time ago may have had a change of heart and no longer open your emails, decreasing your open rates. Older email addresses may not exist anymore (especially if you have a list of business emails that tend to turnover more often) affecting your bounce rate. Also, if you don’t stay in touch frequently, old contacts may be wondering, “how do I know you?” and send you into the spam folder. Cleaning Up Your Reputation Cleaning up your sender reputation is as easy as keeping a clean email list. After all, what is the point of sending out lots of email to a huge list if no one reads it, or it doesn’t even reach the inbox? Remove people from your list who have not opened an email from you in a while. Send a re-engagement email to old contacts, re-opting them into your list to decrease spam complaints. Remove any bad or faulty email addresses from your list. Trim down your list to your best contacts, and you’ll see a boost in your engagement rate, getting more email delivered to the inbox and keeping your sender reputation clean.