I am marketing a mobile app which has close to 100,000 downloads and growing daily. I am currently using MailChimp to send update emails to the app’s registered users and we take their permission prior to sending them emails. The emails I send them include all the important information about the new app updates and prize money and payment related information.
I just wanted to clear the air and tell you that we are following all the best practices laid out by all the marketing experts.
Until recently, I was getting an open rate of about 40% for my email and the email delivery rate was close to 100%. For last couple of months, after I send an email campaign, I suddenly noticed that about 5% of my email list has subscribed to a service called BitBounce, which was apparently created to kill spam emails. I decided to dig deeper and understood the whole scenario.
BitBounce seems to be a cryptocurrency platform that apparently pays the receiver of spam emails. You can read more about BitBounce on their platform, but I am not here to give you more information about it. My initial reaction to BitBouce was that is perhaps the nemesis of email automation, and it will bring about the disruption of the email automation industry or monopolise it. But upon deeper thinking and research, BitBounce can actually prove to be a blessing for the marketers.
I am here to tell marketers how they can prepare for the eventuality of all of their emails being blocked by BitBounce and how they can modify their processes to still reach their users. So let’s dig in:
A. FOR NEW SUBSCRIBERS
Make these changes in your forms, landing pages and emails today:
1. Ensure that you deliver value
First and foremost, you need to understand that email is just a form of communication and any form of communication needs to delivery value. Value can be in the form of Expression, Information, Emotion, Entertainment and Education. Humans by default are hungry for communication that delivers value. If your emails don’t deliver value, you don’t deserve to reach the inbox of the subscriber anyway. If your emails deliver value, you can persuade your users to take additional actions so that you can reach them.
2. Build Irresistible Lead Magnets
When your subscribers would want to have these lead magnets, they will need to enter their contact details – including their email. The form submission success message should inform them that they would be able to receive the document only through emails.
3. Ask the user to whitelist you the moment they subscribe
Your thank you message should ask the users to whitelist a specific email address. You should tell them that if they don’t whitelist your email address, they stand a chance of missing out on some of the most important pieces of information you send them, the latest lead magnet included. Also promise them that you will not bombard them with unnecessary information and that they can easily unsubscribe from your list with just one click – if they don’t find your emails valuable. The way the world is evolving, people are willing to commit only when they realise that it is easy to get out of the commitment. Give them comfort and live up to your promise.
4. Send a welcome email
I see that several marketers still don’t send a welcome email to their subscribers. Welcome emails are now going to assume extreme importance. There are going to be critical because you somehow need to persuade your subscriber to white list you, while you are fresh in his/her mind. If you send out an email a couple of days after he/she has subscribed, you have lost half the battle. Create a welcome email through which you subscriber will be tempted to hear more from you.
5. Add to Whitelist Manually 
As a sender, you cannot add yourself to the receiver’s whitelist, however you can push one email to reach the receivers inbox. If you are receiving 50 new subscribers daily who have BitBounce, you can easily click on their ‘I know you – add me to your whitelist’ button 50 times daily, so that the email gets pushed to their inbox. Doing this for every email would still work, but that would be too time consuming for the marketer.
B. FOR EXISTING SUBSCRIBERS
1. Send out one great email campaign
Invest time in building some great content, a perfect subject line and a flawless email that delivers real value. Send out this email campaign to your entire list. You will receive those nagging autoresponders from some of your subscribers. Wait and watch for a day or so.
2. Build a segment for BitBounce users
In your list, create a segment of those people from whom you received those BitBounce autoresponders. This will be an interesting segment and we will need to send some emails to this lot.
3. Send an email campaign to BitBounce users
In this email, inform them about what they are missing out because of not adding you to their whitelist. If possible, without passing any derogatory remarks about BitBounce, tell them that they can lose a lot more than they can gain if they use an additional email filtering service. I am planning to write a blog about what the users can lose if they opt for a service like BitBounce and is it really worth it. You can redirect your users to this blog, or you can create a blog of your own. You will receive Autoresponders to this email campaign. Push them manually by clicking on the ‘I know you – add me to your whitelist’ button. This will be a pain, but I am sure you can take the pain to get back the real quality people. Repeat steps 1, 2 and 3 with a great follow up emailer if you are really feeling possessive about them.
4. Continue your email marketing effort
Hopefully, some percentage of BitBounce users will understand the value you deliver and will add you to their white list. Now keep sending the same high quality emails to them.
5. Remove BitBounce users from your list
You will continue to receive autoresponders from those subscribers who have added you to their white list. Try to push your emails to them manually for a couple of times and then you can actually remove them from your main list and stop sending emails to them. Trust me, these are not the kind of people you want on your list anyway. Set them free. BitBounce will be a blessing in disguise.
I used this process for my list and it worked pretty well. Do you have a better solutions to this problem? Share them in the comments below.