I Hate the Term: Email Deliverability
It’s simple: I hate deliverability.
I can’t stand the word. And that is not a simple life when you are an email marketer. My skin crawls when deliverability is mentioned in the same sentence with, “one of the biggest issues” or “a big challenge in email marketing for coming years”. But hold on, I’m not “deliverophobic”. I’m not scared of the word deliverability. I’m just not pleased with how the term is used. Here is why:
Did you get the message?
Deliverability is how well your message is getting through — through to the inbox that is. Not through to your recipients heads. It combines all the issues concerning getting your messages in the inbox, nothing beyond that. And that’s the big problem.
Don’t mix it up!
The term deliverability mixes up technical problems with issues concerning common sense and marketing and that is not how it’s supposed to be. To put it simply: the technical stuff, your ESP should take care of that. But that doesn’t mean that they can guarantee the email is getting to the inbox. A part is to be done by the email marketer themselves. Those common sense and marketing issues should not only make that your message gets to the inbox, but also contribute to it getting opened, read and, if you can be so lucky, clicked.
“Interestablilty”
But what is a message in an inbox worth if it’s not being clicked and read and not contributing to your goals? Right, it’s worth nothing. I therefore would like to introduce the term “interestablilty” – making your message interesting. So interesting it moves your receivers to open your email and act on it. Mind though, this is not the same as relevance. So, what do we call the technical issues before that? Making sure the email makes it to the inbox? Let’s just call that email delivery.
More about “interestability” in my next post!
Until next time!
Jordie van Rijn
Takeaway: Getting the message through is a two part process. One part is delivering it to the inbox and the other is making your message highly interesting for the reciepent.
