Show HN: Hello Inbox – Free email deliverability checklist for marketers | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Hello Inbox – Free email deliverability checklist for marketers

helloinbox.net

37 pointsismaelyws29 comments

After struggling with low open rates in my small lifestyle software business, I decided to go down the rabbit hole that is email deliverability, learned a bunch of things I didn't know even after being in tech for a decade. A/B tested a bunch of things and finally got good results. I then decided to put together a comprehensive checklist of everything I learned and got me results to share with others. Now I help companies fix poor email deliverability and boost their email ROI. I want this checklist to be a repository of email best practices so I'm always looking to improve and update it. Your feedback is welcome.

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Maybe a little off-topic, but I always wonder if the folks who work on stuff like this ever consider that they might be the bad guys.

Like, sure, maybe the people you're trying to send email to are already customers, or they're otherwise really interested in hearing what you have to say, and maybe that's what they all tell themselves. But "tips for disguising your unsolicited commercial email as legitimate communication so you can succeed in shoving it into people's inboxes" feels like it'd take a lot of reality distortion to not feel guilty about.

Am I just naive? A Hacker News sheep living on grass while the wolves feast on red meat? Is there such a thing as being a conscientious objector for spamfucking people with trashy ads and sales pitches?

Most of my customers work really hard and spend a lot of time and money to acquire opt-in leads only to see their efforts go to waste. There are many legitimate reasons for making sure an email makes it to the inbox. Without even mentioning transactional emails. Not sure where you got the idea that I’m providing "tips for disguising your unsolicited commercial email as legitimate communication so you can succeed in shoving it into people's inboxes".

It comes down to "nobody likes ads", and marketing emails are just ads.

This. On the topic of checklists, how about compliance with not emailing me! Deliverability is one thing, but what if I truly hate being interrupted with goddam ads in my Inbox?

See, get a lot of unsolicited shitmail at work that gets through spam filters. So yay for your delivery checklist, enabling interruptions and annoyance.

Here comes the fun part. About half don’t comply with the CAN-SPAM Act. So, what do now is make my own, which is a reply with this:

“The CAN-SPAM Act is a law that sets the rules for commercial email and establishes requirements for commercial messages, including the right for recipients to stop receiving emails[1][2][3][4][5][6]. The Act applies to any commercial electronic message to U.S. recipients, including transactional and marketing messages[4][5]. To comply with the Act, commercial emails must provide recipients with a clear and obvious mechanism to opt-out of receiving further emails, and they cannot include misleading subject lines or inaccurate information in the header fields[4][6]. Additionally, commercial emails must include a physical mailing address in the body of the email, and an address where unsubscribe requests can be physically mailed[4]. Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $43,792, so non-compliance can be costly[4].

Citations: [1] https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-spam-act... [2] https://www.fcc.gov/general/can-spam [3] https://www.mirabelsmarketingmanager.com/blog/how-to-comply-... [4] https://www.practicalecommerce.com/quick-refresher-of-u-s-ca... [5] https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/insights/legal/practica... [6] https://www.unsubcentral.com/2023/04/26/can-spam-compliance-...

If they email me even once more, I now send them a bill for the minutes I was interrupted at my attorney hourly rate. If they reply they aren’t paying, then comes the violation penalty threat.

Yeah, that’s how much I don’t want your ad in my inbox.

It's good to see that the spam button can hurt reputation. I'm going to be far more liberal with it.

Yes it can hurt reputation and torpedo open rates if a sender receives consistent spam complaints over a sustained period of time. I’ve seen it happen in real time with a client who claimed their leads were warm/opt-in when in fact they were not all. Open rates went from 38-40% to under 7% within a few hours. So the spam button is effective, that’s why it’s important to only email warm/opt-in contacts for bulk email, send engaging content and make it easy to unsubscribe.

It's a nice checklist.

The only thing missing is reverse DNS lookup capabilities, and maybe the MTA-STS DNS records (which I might have overlooked).

In my case I had to switch the provider my domains were kept at, because their DNS setup there didn't allow to maintain reverse DNS zones.

I am mentioning this specifically, because without it you land in the spam folder for Outlook users, no matter the rest.

Of course you could run any spam operation on Azure without any validation mechanism and still bypass their spam filters with those IP ranges instead...

MTA-STS is also quite important because if the other MTA supports it, they will always enforce SSL/TLS usage without all that STARTLS crap.

Edit: oh, and DNSSEC. Without it, a lot of those verification URL scraper mechanisms will downgrade your domain reputation real quick.

Did not know that about DNSSEC, have you seen it directly impact sender/domain reputation?

Are you sure about the DNSSEC thing there? The overwhelming majority of deliverable domains aren't DNSSEC-signed (because the overwhelming majority of all domains isn't).

Having an unsubscribe link is the minimum, but if I click it and I see ANYTHING other than "you're unsubscribed", I'm going right back to my mail client and marking as spam.

I absolutely hate this when they require you to login to turn off unsolicited mail. It is strange that there are no laws to it

Yes this is also very annoying.

I often mark as spam then set up a rule to bin them. Saves finding the old password etc.

In Australia it is now against the law.

Complete agree with you, I also don't like it when the unsubscribe text is smaller than the rest of the text, subscribers that never open your emails end up hurting your engagement over time and in turn your deliverability, better just make it easy for people who are no longer interested to unsubscribe.

I've become rather paranoid about a malicious actor sending an email that looks like regular spam, but where the "unsubscribe" link is the attack vector, so I've been using the "Mark as spam" button for anything unsolicited that comes in from a sender I've not previously engaged with.

Makes me think, what if email was extended with these sorts of lists in mind. So in the subscribe box you enter a unique code generated by your email client. This code ties that subscription and that email address. It’s existence allows the spam filter to let it through. And at any time you can unsubscribe within the email client by breaking that link. Maybe this sends a reply back so the sender can save money by not sending anymore, but if they do it gets bounced. Probably they should provide a seperate email address for this purpose too.

Then everyone wins. Perfect delivery for the lists and perfect unsubscribe for the receivers. And more of an explicit opt i too!

Love this idea!

Your service doesn’t validate SPF. An invalid SPF (eg too many DNS lookups, invalid syntax) will result in all passes but creates a security risk.

Yes, from a marketing perspective this is fine. But you should warn about it.

Good point, will add that. Thx for suggestion.

Deliverability is a big issue for a lot of companies, super helpful checklist, thank you!

You're welcome, glad you find it helpful :)

step 0: Make sure your marketing is relevant. I receive hundreds of "marketing" emails per day, mostly of products I use, and they are so irrelevant they go straight to spam or the trash.

If you need to push your marketing onto users by clickbaiting them or using shady practices like starting it with "hey, this is Anne, ...", or spamming them outright (multiple emails a day), then maybe its utterly fucking irrelevant.

Dont use my full name in marketing emails, dont go "<Full name>, how to ...", and for the live of god dont use emojis in your subject.

If your email is irrelevant, please dont send it.

This is a helpful checklist, thanks for making it

You’re welcome :) glad it’s helpful. LMK if you think I should add or change something. I’m always open to improving it.

Appears really explicit - thanks!

You're welcome!

The page is broken in several places in Firefox Mobile.

One more point to add: if you sre collecting the details of EU residents, read up on and obey the GDPR, otherwise it may get very expensive. This goes way beyond just not sending spam, you need to have a compliant privacy policy, use data only for the purposes you collected them for, publish full contact details, etc.

Yes I'm aware lol, the page has so much info it's a pain in the ass to optimize it all for mobile, but yes I need to address that at some point. Thanks for the reminder. Will get to it soon.

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