It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that without email communication the whole business world would freeze! Almost everybody uses public emails like Gmail, Hotmail, or Outlook for personal reasons. However, when it comes to the business world, having a custom email domain is essential. A custom email domain is basically a service that is hosted in a private server, owned or rented by a company. Credibility and a sense of security are two of many reasons why organizations have a custom email domain. Between promo.simplycast@gmail.com and promo@simplycast.com, it is obvious that the latter one sounds more credible and secured.
Now, even though you have a privately owned/rented server hosting a custom email domain, you should consider leveraging an email marketing platform if you’re planning to send a large volume of email. There are quite a few reasons why you should consider this. For instance, sending hundreds of similar messages manually might tag your email domain as a scammy one or worse, sending a generic message to everyone will bring down your response rate. Therefore, businesses often use email marketing software (e.g. SimplyCast) to send many personalized emails automatically.
In short, the whole process is:
- You associate your email address as the sender in your account.
- You draft an email message, set up the configuration, and choose a contact list to send.
- The platform sends emails to those contacts’ email addresses.
Pretty easy, eh?
But, have you ever wondered what causes or stops your message from being delivered? Why does an email message go into the spam folder instead of the inbox?
Well, we are going to debunk the entire process in nine easy steps for you to learn how to simplify email delivery using SimplyCast.
Let’s begin!
Step 1: Email Project Creation
Everything starts with this step. Before you send an email blast, you need to login to your SimplyCast account, select Email from the list of applications, and create a project. Once a project is created, a few configuration settings need to be adjusted. For instance, you need to choose the type of email you want to send, select a contact list, adjust merge tags if you are going to send personalized emails, etc. This part of the process is pretty straightforward, but once you click Complete what happens after that? Answer: SimplyCast begins preparing your campaign.
Step 2: Project Preparation
When you hit Complete and it is time to send your campaign, SimplyCast immediately starts looking over the web for the servers that are responsible for your recipients' domains — the portion of the email address after the @ symbol (ex. @simplycast.com). During this time, the platform is looking for your recipient’s MX record.
[Note: An MX record is what states which mail server accepts emails on behalf of the email domain. This information is in the Domain Name System (DNS) settings of each recipient’s domain (e.g. website).]
Anytime, an email is sent from SimplyCast, the outgoing mail server (sending server) starts looking for the server responsible for accepting email. Once searches are completed, and your recipients’ domains are located via MX record, the process moves to the next step.
Step 3: Finding Recipient Mailboxes via MX Record
Imagine, you are sending an email to jane.doe@xyz.com. Here, xyz.com is a domain that is hosting the mailbox of jane.doe@xyz.com. Consider the xyz.com as one large apartment building across a world full of apartment buildings. This building consists of many apartments some of which include the homes of jane.doe@xyz.com or dave.smith@xyz.com.
So, this means at this step, SimplyCast is locating the correct building.
Step 4: Detecting the Domain Server
This step is pretty simple. Through the MX record search, SimplyCast finds the server that is hosting your recipient’s mailbox. With the finding of the domain servers hosting your contacts’ mailboxes, the next step is initiated.
Step 5: Target Locked- Located Individual Mailbox
Again, imagine, to deliver a package to a certain individual in the building, you need to find the individual’s apartment in the building. xyz.com may have many apartments - a.k.a. emails - as we mentioned before. We need to find a specific apartment for jane.doe@xyz.com. SimplyCast connects to the server hosting the xyz.com domain and finds the specific individual mailbox.
Step 6: Delivering Message to the Individual’s Mailbox
As the individual mailbox is located in the previous step, SimplyCast simply sends the email to the server that is hosting the jane.doe@xyz.com mailbox. With that, the receiving mail server will indicate that it has accepted the email message.
Now you may be saying,
“Hey, wait! jane.doe@xyz.com doesn’t get the email right away, does she?”
You are right! There are a few more steps before Jane Doe finds the message in her inbox. You need to understand that SimplyCast only delivers the message to the server. How the message is placed in jane.doe@xyz.com’s inbox is entirely in the hands of the xyz.com domain.
Let’s clarify this in the next few steps.
Step 7: Mail Filtering Process
Once a message is reported to be “delivered” it means that the receiving mail server has indicated it has received the message. It is now up to the receiving mail server to filter the message. If you are a Gmail user as an example, you may have noticed that you have different types of inboxes. A few examples of these would be the main inbox, promotions, social, and the dreaded spam/junk. That is one of Gmail’s functions: to filter emails based on the content and what it believes the email is regarding. Gmail’s power comes from the data it collaborates across its users. If many different Gmail users are marking a message as spam, it will automatically begin to place that message in other people’s spam folder. If many users are interacting with a message by opening it, clicking links to products/services, Gmail will use this information to send future messages from that sender to the inbox.
Similarly, when you send an email from SimplyCast, SimplyCast servers give the message to the server responsible for delivering your contacts’ inboxes. The xyz.com server will decide in which category your email fits in and then it will put the message in the place it deems is correct. Therefore, whenever you create an email marketing campaign, make sure you are following tips to create a high-quality email that your audience is first off, expecting, and secondly are engaging with. Using personalization and message targeting in SimplyCast 360 is a great way to create more engaging messages.
Step 8: Placing Message in the Right Inbox
Now, this is a pretty simple step. The host server simply drops of the email in individual mailboxes. Here is the part where Jane Doe can see your email in her jane.doe@xyz.com mailbox. Seeing the email is not an interaction so you will only get the delivery report, but wait and let Jane open the email and interact. This will bring us to the final step: reporting.
Step 9: Reporting
Here we are in the final stage of the email delivery process. In the previous step, email was placed in an appropriate inbox. SimplyCast can’t tell you if it was placed in primary or junk. What SimplyCast can tell you is how your recipient behaved once they saw the message. Depending on the action, you may find these indicators in your report:
- Opened email: Once the recipient clicks on the email delivered to jane.doe@xyz.com
- Opened email but no link clicked: Recipient opened the email but did not click on any link or other CTA button. If this indicator is high in number, you might want to check this blog to increase the quality of your email, so it sells.
- Opened email & link clicked: Congratulations! You hit the goal. The recipient not only opened the email you sent but the CTA was also performed.
So, this is the information you will be getting. And with this information being sent back, the entire email delivery process is now completed.
Any questions?
Sending an email via SimplyCast is a complex process that involves multiple interactions among web servers. However, SimplyCast assures the topmost security of your data and your email content by adhering to the finest security protocols.
If you’re interested in learning more about SimplyCast’s email marketing software, the email delivery process, or how to create more animated email marketing campaigns, reach out to your account manager.
If you’re not currently using SimplyCast but would like to see how you could leverage the email channel or any other part of the platform, click the button below to sign up for a one-on-one demo.
