The majority of my contacts did not receive the Email
SOLVE
Hi Guys,
As I sent our last Newsletter on November 2019, only 9 out my 111 contact recieves my Email.
As we are now planning to send our Newsletter for Q1 2020, I am afraid that we will face the same issue again, knowing that our list is still the same. Can you please help us with that? Are there any tips that help us solving this problem.
The majority of my contacts did not receive the Email
SOLVE
Hi Ahmed,
Good job on the DKIM, that will certainly help your general deliverability moving forwards.
Where did these contacts come from originally? Did you upload them manually, or did they complete forms on your site by themselves? If so, what was that context - were they filling out a form specifically to receive a newsletter? Were they downloading some gated content? What's important here is what the contacts were informed of when they signed up originally. If they were filling out a 'Join our newsletter' form, and there's merely been a slight technical hitch getting the permissions right in HubSpot, then of course you have every right to be contacting them - you have explicit consent.
If they didn't explicitly opt-in to receive a newsletter, then legally it really depends on where these people are located and what rules govern your communication with them. GDPR rules in Europe, for example, would state that if you haven't received permission to send them your newsletter, you can't send them your newsletter, unless you have some other form of implicit consent or legitimate interest. Here's a good overview of understanding opt-in consent for email.
It may well be reasonable to send these contacts an opt-in request saying "Hey XXX, We'd love to send you our monthly newsletter, we just need your permission to do so." Then include a CTA through to a landing page with your opt-in form that captures explicit permission (via a checkbox) e.g. "Yes, please send me a monthly newsletter". Then you're good. This is called a permission pass campaign, or an opt-in confirmation campaign. HubSpot has a great tutorial on how to run a permission pass campaign in HubSpot.
I'd recommend you have a read of both those articles and see if you can work through the permission pass campaign in order to gain that explicit consent if you don't already have it.
When you say only 9 out of 111 'received' your email. Are you talking about 'Delivered' or 'Opened'?
If 'Opened' there are many reasons why people don't open emails - it could be that your emails are going into spam, or in Gmail into the 'Promotions' or 'Updates' tabs (which people often miss) or simply that your subject line isn't grabbing attention. Did these 111 people opt-in to receive your newsletter (i.e. would they be expecting it?)
Firstly, I'd check your setup. Do you have a DKIM record set up? This helps massively with getting emails into the inbox in the first place. Here are the HubSpot DKIM setup instructions. If you haven't already done this, you should definitely do this first. It might look a bit scary for non-technical users, but HubSpot actually makes it very simple 🙂
The majority of my contacts did not receive the Email
SOLVE
Hi Mike,
first of all, thank you very much for your detailed answer and the helpful guidance.
Following your instructions, I did the DKIM record set up. However I think the original Issue, as you mentioned, is an opt-in one, as my first Newsletter was not sent to 111 contacts and they all marked as 'No subscription Consent'. Is there a process to follow to the get opt-in of these contacts?
Thanks for your help again and have a great start to the week.
The majority of my contacts did not receive the Email
SOLVE
Hi Ahmed,
Good job on the DKIM, that will certainly help your general deliverability moving forwards.
Where did these contacts come from originally? Did you upload them manually, or did they complete forms on your site by themselves? If so, what was that context - were they filling out a form specifically to receive a newsletter? Were they downloading some gated content? What's important here is what the contacts were informed of when they signed up originally. If they were filling out a 'Join our newsletter' form, and there's merely been a slight technical hitch getting the permissions right in HubSpot, then of course you have every right to be contacting them - you have explicit consent.
If they didn't explicitly opt-in to receive a newsletter, then legally it really depends on where these people are located and what rules govern your communication with them. GDPR rules in Europe, for example, would state that if you haven't received permission to send them your newsletter, you can't send them your newsletter, unless you have some other form of implicit consent or legitimate interest. Here's a good overview of understanding opt-in consent for email.
It may well be reasonable to send these contacts an opt-in request saying "Hey XXX, We'd love to send you our monthly newsletter, we just need your permission to do so." Then include a CTA through to a landing page with your opt-in form that captures explicit permission (via a checkbox) e.g. "Yes, please send me a monthly newsletter". Then you're good. This is called a permission pass campaign, or an opt-in confirmation campaign. HubSpot has a great tutorial on how to run a permission pass campaign in HubSpot.
I'd recommend you have a read of both those articles and see if you can work through the permission pass campaign in order to gain that explicit consent if you don't already have it.
The majority of my contacts did not receive the Email
SOLVE
Hi Mike,
thank you again for your great help.
I tried to run a permission pass campaign and some tests. However, the recipients will recieve two emails: in the first email they have to take action 'release and allow sender' and if they do so, they will get the second email, in which they can confirm their subsciption. As i was not sure, if this is the normal process, I was afraid that this would be a higher barrier. Morover, in the body of the email, I was not able to edit the signature. Therfore, it will not be optimal for GroupM Agencies in Switzerland to recieve an Opt-In inquiry from Xaxis Signapore instead of Xaxis Switzerland.
Last question: As our Xaxis Switzerland Newsletter is internal and will be sent only to GroupM Switzerland agencies, I was not sure if we still have t run a opt-in confirmation campaig?
Sorry for asking meany questions and thank you again for your help!
The majority of my contacts did not receive the Email
SOLVE
Hi Ahmed,
"Release and allow sender"? Not quite sure what that functionality is... but you shouldn't need to send two emails to everyone. That's not the functionality for allowing test emails to be sent, right? You shouldn't need to do that, only for yourself and for any testers - not for a general list.
Some screenshots of your emails might be useful here to help me understand a little better, not quite following 🙂
Re: internal contacts -- I can't really advise on whether you need permission to email internal contacts or not. If they're part of the same group, probably you don't. Check with your company data controller.
