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1. 00:00Six habits

   Six habits decide whether a campaign reaches the inbox or the spam folder. We'll go through them, then cover segments, design and testing. Here's the list. Clean your addresses. Authenticate your domain. Use double opt-in. Segment. Write honest subject lines. And monitor the numbers.

2. 00:21The six habits

   Verify your list with BillionVerify before every major campaign. Remove invalid and disposable addresses, and look at role addresses before you send. If a list is over six months old, verify it again. Next, authentication. Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC on your sending domain. Gmail and Yahoo require all three from bulk senders. Double opt-in puts a confirmation step in front of your list. Fake addresses, bot sign-ups and mistyped emails stop there. Keep subject lines under fifty characters. Be specific and honest about what's inside. Skip all caps and heavy punctuation. And test more than one version. Then watch your numbers on every campaign. Opens, clicks, bounces and spam complaints. If bounces climb above 2%, clean the list right away. Keep spam complaints under 0.1%. Google's hard limit is 0.3%.

3. 01:15Segments

   Now segments. Start rough. Customers and non-customers. Engaged and unengaged. Even that beats sending one email to everyone. Personalization means the content changes. A first name in the subject line, above a generic email, can do worse than no personalization at all. Then tier your sends by clicks, not opens. People who clicked in the last thirty days get every campaign. Sixty days, most of them. Ninety days, only your strongest. After that comes a re-engagement flow, and then a sunset. You send less, complaints fall, and revenue tends to hold. Better engagement signals put more of your mail in the inbox.

4. 01:52Design

   For design, start with the phone. Use a single column, 600 to 600 forty pixels wide. Make buttons at least 44 pixels square. And preview on a real device. Plan for dark mode too. Email clients change colors in different ways. So use transparent logos, avoid pure white backgrounds, and test your buttons in both modes. And make it readable for everyone. Put alt text on every image. Keep contrast at four point five to one or better. Write links that say where they go, not click here.

5. 02:25Testing

   Now testing. Change one variable at a time, and send both versions at the same time. Otherwise you can't tell what made the difference. Spend your tests on things that repeat. Sender name, button format and template structure carry into every future send. A subject line gets used once. Expect draws. Only about one test in seven gives a significant winner. Use a calculator, and don't call it below 95% confidence. If time is short, test flows first. A campaign test improves one send. A flow test improves every send from then on. Start with the list. A clean list makes the rest of this work.

6. 03:06Get started free

   20 free credits every day you use your account, up to 600 a month. No credit card required. Start at billionverify.com.