For those of you on Wordfly and just had to deal with the IP migration - has it gone smoothly for you? We created our warm up plan, and WF signed off on it. We sent our first deployment on Monday (20K names or so) and it went out promptly, and had good open rates, and low bounces, but now we're seeing delayed sends and inconsistent delivery of tests emails. We'll open up a support ticket if it continues, but wanted to see if others were experiencing the same thing.
I replied before my brain was fully-functional this morning; I want to clarify that we also had IT add the IP address to our spam filter, which was different than the mail server filters. (So secure!!) Not sure if your org has something similar, but worth checking on with your IT team?
Our first send was on Tuesday to a list of about 5 k and it was fine with an expected open rate. However, yesterday evening we sent an email to about 13k all dedicated patrons who have opened an email recently, and our open rate was only 9% (other emails like this are around 25-30%) and gmail which is normally our top domain on opens, was not very high. Plus, the email apparently didn't make it to anyone who has a yahoo account. Any suggestions to fix this? We are supposed to send another email tonight that is a reminder for an online recital that is happening this evening.
I haven't had huge soft bounce issues... yet. BUT, I had trouble with Hotmail accounts earlier this summer. My guess is that it's all the people who never look at them and keep them as their junk accounts.
Are you looking at the domain break-out on the soft bounce page in the view results section (it's different than the page you get when you click on soft bounces)? Right now, my only problem child is Juno (and some .edu extensions). I sent my first block of around 11,000 addresses on Tuesday (top engagement scores), second block of around 15,000 yesterday and a third block of 24,000 today (the final chunk of around 30,000 goes out tomorrow). My send times have actually been faster than normal, but the responses have been really spread out, so they may not be landing all at once. My soft bounces have been 1% or lower.
(That gif was me remembering the great Mail2 debacle of 2016). But interesting turn of events! WordFly replied and said there was a block affiliated with Comcast (a major internet provider in our area). They are working to clear that up. They said there is also a somewhat lower reputation associated with Gmail and Yahoo and referred us to their documentation for warming up specific ISPs. I think I might shift my calendar a day and try sending again tomorrow.
We experienced the same problem today with Gmail and Yahoo but not with Comcast. Yesterday we sent to 6,000 and got an open rate of 40% with the majority opens being Gmail users. Today we sent to 8,000 with a ES4-5 and got 14% opens and no opens by Gmail or Yahoo. Like Reynaldi said earlier, sending to Yahoo and Gmail 10 at a time isn't sustainable, but I guess we have to do it! Thank you, Gabriela, for the link to warming up specific IPs.
Our deliverability issue is definitely just with gmail. We started the new plan, sending to a batch of 20 emails, but so far none of those have registered an open, so it's back in Wordfly's court.
Would it help if we also opened tickets with WF regarding Gmail, or are they aware this is a universal problem? Looking forward to hearing what they have to say.
If you are having that same issue, I definitely recommend opening a ticket! Also, here's WF's response when I asked them if this was a scenario they anticipated, and if we could have been better prepped for it. It sounds like they did not anticipate it, though I would put it back to them and say that as an Email Marketing Service Provider, they should have.
--------------We did and do have a good understanding of the complexity around IPs and ISP reputation. With that knowledge and experience of bringing on new IPs in the past, we crafted our recommendations.What was unforeseen was two fold:1. The challenges some organizations would have with safe listing the new IPs for internal delivery.2. The impact of a brand new full block of IPs with ISPsFor the second issue which has impacted your organization, we are seeing positive improvements and responses with ISPs once they evaluate the mail being sent and authenticate our platform. Given that this evaluation is required, we are in a fast-follow position vs leading. It’s a bit of a chicken or the egg conundrum.Of course, we completely understand there’s never a good time to have email marketing unsettled even for a day or two. But we are seeing clear improvements across the board. We’re confident things will level out over the coming days. We have three people dedicated full time to resolving deliverability all day. I’ve attached a helpful graph from the Google Postmaster showing our progress.
Late last night I got an email from Kirk at WordFly that they are making headway with the Google Postmaster. I asked this morning if we should filter out an gmail accounts from any email we are sending today, but haven't heard back yet.
They are definitely aware and working on it.
Hello all -
I wanted to let you know that we at Tessitura have been in communication with WordFly to stay up to date on their server move and IP warm up issues. As several in this thread have already posted, Kirk and team have been working on this non-stop and have been seeing improvements on the blocking issues, especially recently. I did want to give you a couple of updates and point you at some tools you might not be aware of to help with resolving issues. In order to track issues and be as responsive as possible, WordFly is asking that if anyone is experiencing issues and has not already submitted a ticket to support@wordfly.com, to please do so. Email delivery is a bit of a whack-a-mole game and it’s necessary to look at each case individually since each sender’s behavior is unique. WordFly is also updating their status page a few times a day.
Our forums are for members only to create a safe space for you all to share, and I'm always encouraged by how helpful everyone is here. I do want to make sure you are all aware that we do have an Ecosystem space, divided up by functional area, where our partners are able to interact and post. I encourage you all to join that space as I know that Kirk will be posting an update today and is always happy to engage in dialogue and help with best practice recommendations. This isn't to replace support, but intended to mimic the interaction you all enjoy on the member-only forums with our ecosystem partners.
Yours in whack-a-moles,HeatherProduct Owner, Integrations
We got a reply from WordFly this morning that the issues with Gmail continue - they asked us to limit our use to one campaign per day, and start with a list size of 50. We've got 40k+ subscribers, with daily newsletters plus smaller donor-related emails, so that plan is not workable - and I don't understand why this can't be addressed on a larger sense with Google for all WordFly users (since we're all sending from same block of IPs and sending subdomain).
Anyone seeing better open rates this week?
Hi Emily. I hope all is well. They're a little bit better than last week, but no where close to where I usually am. Typically,I avg 25-30% for opens and I'm at 15%. And, this is only sending to folks who have engagement rating of 4-5 STARS. I'm having major issues with GMAIL. So, not only have I been excluding these accounts, but I need to slowly ramp up to GMAIL. I have sent 4 emails to a small group of 50 that past 3 days. I have yet to receive one in my gmail account. Not good. I have been working with WF on this. I know it's slow process, but I really need to hit bigger numbers.