💡 This guide will outline the best practices for new users who import a big email subscriber list to Beacons email app. This is a critical moment to get the switch right, to establish good email deliverability to your subscribers.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably not new to email marketing. You probably have a fairly large list of subscribers (3000+), and you’re tired of paying your previous marketing provider their ridiculous monthly fees. you switched to Beacons, knowing we have unlimited email marketing sends for a flat $30/month.

If this is NOT you, click away now. We’re about to get very nerdy about how to not ruin the email marketing platform transition. 🤓

Okay now that I have the right people paying attention, the first thing you should know is this: now is a critical time to nail the platform transition, lest you want to get relegated to spam inbox purgatory. We’re going to review the step-by-step best practices to make sure your subscribers see your emails.

Let’s start with some important concepts:

What is deliverability? Deliverability refers to the concept of actually getting your email into the right place in your subscribers’ inbox. The most obvious example of this: avoiding the spam folder.
What is Sender Reputation? Good deliverability is function of a good sender reputation score. Think of sender reputation like a credit score: Email Inbox Providers — like Gmail, Apple Mail, Outlook, etc — are constantly evaluating you as a sender, based on your history of opens, clicks and best of all, replies. The better your score, the better your deliverability.

Now here’s the bad news: If you’re just starting out on the Beacons email platform, as far as email inboxes are concerned, you are a new sender with no reputation. This means that, if you were to send a blast to your entire imported list of 3K+, a good chunk might end up in spam. The reputation you built with your previous provider — good or bad — does not transfer over. Again, you are a stranger to Gmail, Hotmail, etc. From their perspective, when they see a relatively new sender doing a huge blast to a bunch of their accounts, well, that looks like spammer activity to them.

Gone are the days when you could rely on the platform’s stellar reputation to carry you past the spam inbox — and by the way, Beacons platform is beyond compliant and built a great reputation. Inboxes like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo etc are now tracking sender reputation down to the individual sender.

It’s not all bad news: it’s a chance to start fresh, and shed any bad hits your might have taken to your activity on your previous platform.

So let’s get good!

1. Signup to Welcome Email Flow

This is probably the single most impactful thing you can do to quickly improve your sender reputation. Here is how to do it:

Setup a Real-Time Welcome Email with Beacons. If you’re a first time user, the Beacons’ onboarding wizard will guide you to create one. Or, simply go to your Email app in Beacons and click on the top “Automations” tab to create a welcome email from scratch.
Most Important: Instruct New Subscribers To Fetch Your Welcome Email. When you have the welcome email activated, let people know in the “Success Message.” This is the message people see on your Beacons profile AFTER signing up for your newsletter. This is moment to tell your new subscriber to go retrieve that welcome email, INCLUDING to check their spam folder.
- You can find this setting under Link in Bio > Email Signup Block > Form tab
- Here’s a good example:

Once completed, your welcome email should be your highest and most engaged email ever. This is important for two reasons:

Getting your welcome email opened and engaged should instantaneously and forever improve your placement in that subscriber’s inbox. Especially if you land in their spam folder.
Email Inbox Providers like Gmail, Apple Mail, etc., assign you a general sender reputation score, which affects your overall deliverability and inbox placement. When they see good engagement on the welcome email build up over time, they’re likely to improve your overall sender reputation score and deliverability, for the next blast, the next subscriber, etc.

Watch this video for step-by-step instructions on how to do the above on your Beacons account ⤵️

Once you have a good signup>welcome flow, it is CRITICAL that you start sending your followers to your Beacons profile to sign up BEFORE you send your first blast.

Personally I would aim to get around 5% of your import size in new signups getting welcome emails. So for example, if you imported 10,000 old subscribers, I would aim to drive 500 new signups on Beacons, getting welcome emails, BEFORE you think about sending a blast to the entire list.

2. Batch Your First Broadcast

So let’s say you did the above and are getting ready to send your first blast to your list. Depending on how big your list is, you should highly consider batching your first send.

So for example, let’s say you have 10K+ total subscribers. The first batch send should go to a group of 1K-2K subs. The next day, send to 2K-4K subs. The next day, 4K-8K subs. And so on and so forth until your first broadcast is sent to your entire list.

Generally speaking, it’s safe to increase the batch size 2X-3X each day. But it’s critical that the first batch is no larger than 2K subs.

Why bother? Again, the idea here is to start establishing a sender reputation before you burn your entire list. The first batch of 1-2K is not so large that it will automatically mark you as a spammer. Especially if you have incrementally something of a reputation with welcome emails in step 1.

With a safe first batch of 1-2K subs, you start racking up engagement - opens, clicks, replies. Your reputation goes up. You’re less of a stranger to the various inboxes. They trust you more to then send that 2-4K batch send. And so on and so forth.

Want to be extra advanced? Stack the deck of your first batch or first few batches with your best subscribers. Here is a ranked order of what qualifies as a “good” subscriber:

All your New Beacons signups
1. Show how to filter for this in CSV
Import: Most engaged subscribers
1. Oftentimes the export CSV you got from your previous platform will include a column of their engagement score or activity (”Member Rating” in Mailchimp). Basically, how often they open or clicked, or the last time they opened and clicked.
2. IF your previous platform does not export engagement scores, sometimes they left you export folks who recently opened or clicked your recent emails. This is a good subsitute for your best subscribers.
3. IF your previous platform does not export either of the above, a good fallback is signup date. Generally speaking the newer the signup, the better they are for first batch sends.

Once you sort the best contacts, upload them as a CSV import. Uploading them as an import will automatically those subscribers as a group. And don’t worry if they’re already in your audience from a previous import: all subscribers get de-duplicated. Even in the edge cases where an email shows up twice in your audience manager, they will only ever get sent an email once in a y single blast.

3. Clean Your Import List

Before sending out any emails to your imported list, it's crucial to clean and optimize it to ensure better engagement and deliverability.

Here's how to do it effectively:

Remove Inactive Subscribers: Identify subscribers who haven't engaged with your emails in a significant amount of time. These inactive subscribers could harm your sender reputation and decrease your overall engagement metrics. Consider removing them from your list or running a re-engagement campaign to try and win them back.
Check for Invalid Email Addresses: Scrutinize your list for any invalid or misspelled email addresses. Sending emails to invalid addresses can lead to hard bounces, which negatively impact your deliverability.
Update Contact Information: Periodically review and update contact information, such as names, email addresses, and preferences. Keeping your list accurate and up-to-date helps prevent sending emails to outdated or incorrect addresses, improving deliverability and engagement rates.

By thoroughly cleaning and optimizing your import list before sending out emails, you increase the likelihood of reaching your subscribers' inboxes and fostering meaningful engagement with your audience. Remember, quality always trumps quantity when it comes to email marketing success.

If you have any other questions, please contact our creator support team
by emailing [email protected]!

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