Since the end of August, almost 200 of you have taken part in our deliverability personality test. This test enabled you (and still enables you) to check whether your deliverability practices are good and whether you have a good knowledge of the subject.
As 200 (195 to be precise), that's already quite a lot of data, it seemed interesting to us to compile the results in order to have an idea of the level of Badsender readers. Obviously, we can't take this little study as totally scientific or representative of the state of the French market, but it allows us to have a small idea of the knowledge of Badsender readers 🙂
In general, what are the results
We can say that they are satisfactory, but we can clearly do better! We had divided the results in 4 categories: Grandmaster (a score of more than 90%), Knight (a score between 70 and 90%), Padawan (a score between 50 and 70%) and finally Apprentice, below 50%
The current results give 126 Knights and 68 Grandmasters, congratulations to them! Then we have 56 Padawans and 29 Apprentices.
These results show that overall deliverability knowledge is good among Badsender readers, but for 85 of them (about 40% respondents), there is still a lot of work to do.
The questions that make people angry
The double optin
It was a foregone conclusion that the no side won the question "Do you use a double opt-in procedure to confirm all registrations? But what surprises me much more is the presence of the yes not far behind, not sure if it is representative of the market.
The promise of frequency
Unfortunately, you are in the minority when it comes to answering the question "Do you make a frequency promise when signing up your subscribers?" and that's a real shame. This frequency information (especially if you state that it is scalable) is a real confidence builder for your new subscribers.
Too many of you don't know!
For each question, the respondent was given three options: "yes" (I apply, I am in this case), "no" or "I don't know". If on most of the questions the answer "I don't know" was very rarely answered, it is not the case everywhere, and it is representative of certain subjects which are often avoided or ignored.
Authentication: SPF and DKIM
It is obviously a technical subject, but nevertheless essential. It is a notion that should ideally be known by any emailing professional, even if he is rather on the marketing side of the force.
"Is an SPF record configured for your domain name?"
"Are your emails signed by DKIM technology?"
Is your router a member of a pro organization?
Again, this is a question that triggered more "I don't know" than average. It must be that this is not a criterion considered by some email marketers, even though it is extremely important.
"Is your router a member of any of the following organizations: Signal-Spam, MAAWG or SNCD?"
Need help?
Reading content isn't everything. The best way is to talk to us.
WHOIS
Here, less surprise insofar as it is really a technical dimension that is ignored. One could even wonder about the number of "yes" answers.
"Is your WHOIS (administrative contact for your domain name) public?"
The good news
There is also good news, as for some questions we got an overwhelming majority of "yes" votes!
Hard bounces
A very large majority of you stop routing an address as soon as the very first hard bounce is received. A very good news, and we will encourage others to follow the movement.
"Do you stop routing an address at the first HARD bounce received?"
Spamtrap
It seems that the notion of spamtrap is now well integrated as well since few respondents did not know the answer to the question.
"Do you know what spamtrap is?"
Rendering test
A good point also for almost all test respondents who check the rendering of their emails in several webmails and email clients.
"Do you test your email rendering in multiple email/webmail clients?"
Conclusions
I guess the education work done here and on other blogs is paying off! Even though most of the readers of Badsender are industry professionals, I didn't think we would get such a positive response. Whatever happens, we're going to keep it up!
Moreover, if you wish to improve your knowledge, do not hesitate to ask us for more information about our email deliverability training. We organize these either within your company or during inter-company sessions. Do not hesitate to ask us for the dates!
