We take so many of our digital communication and marketing methods for granted. When we compose an email to a coworker or friend, we know with relative certainty that it will be delivered to its intended recipient. But so much goes behind the scenes when you click send.
In this article, we’ll dive into the what and how of email sending, taking you through the step-by-step process from the moment you click “send” to when it arrives in your recipient's inbox. We’ll also explore email marketing and how the process for email marketing differs.
Once you create your email in your email client (like Gmail, Outlook, or Apple Mail) and click send, what happens next? Before your email can be transferred to the recipient’s email client, the email must go through a series of steps to process, authenticate, and route the email.
First up, your email client kicks off the communication chain by sending the email to your outgoing mail server (the SMTP server). An SMTP server stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and it's an application used by mail servers to send, receive, and relay outgoing email between senders and receivers.
SMTP Server: The SMTP server verifies your email address and checks for spam, viruses, and invalid email addresses.
Metadata: The email client adds metadata such as sender's address, recipient's address, subject, date, and time. This is like adding an address to a handwritten letter–this information gives the post office the information needed to route the letter.
The outgoing SMTP server needs to look up exactly where to send your email, just like a postman may need to consult a map on where to deliver your letter.
DNS Lookup: To find where to send your email, the SMTP contacts the Domain Name System (DNS) to look up the exact IP address to send your email. The DNS is a global network of computers that translates a domain name into an IP address.
MX records: With the IP address in hand, the SMTP checks the mail exchange (MX) records to get details on where to send the message. MX records specify the mail servers responsible for processing incoming mail for a particular domain.
MTA: From there, the SMTP server sends the message to the recipient’s mail transfer agent (MTA) server. MTA is a server that transfers emails between different mail servers across the internet. Read more about the MTA, what it is, and how it works.
Now the sender’s SMTP server must make a connection with the receiving SMTP server. This process can require the message to be passed to multiple SMTP servers before finding the appropriate receiving server.
Once located, the receiving server must do its due diligence to ensure the email is legitimate before processing the email.
Once OK’ed by the server, the email will be sent to IMAP or POP3 server.
IMAP/POP3: IMAP and POP3 store the email and allow the recipient’s email client to retrieve the email. (IMAP is often preferred. IMAP allows you to access your email from multiple devices, while POP3 downloads emails to a single device.)
Filtering: The email client then checks the email against spam rules and directs the email to the best folder (such as primary, promotions, or spam).
Success: Woohoo! The recipient can now access their email. It’s hard to believe that all of this happens within seconds of clicking send–but, believe it. This is how we all send emails every day!
Now that we understand the intricacies of email sending, let’s explore how email marketing differs from your average email send. Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that sends targeted email messages to a list of subscribers. Through email, you can quickly and inexpensively reach large groups of people.
Marketing emails are sent in the same way as regular one-to-one emails – the emails go from your email client to the SMTP server and so on – but there are key differences in how companies approach email marketing.
Consider this: when you’re sending an email from your personal inbox, you’re likely sending it to one person or several people, at most. When you send a marketing email, you’re sending to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of contacts. You also have email automations in place so that emails are automatically sent when someone subscribes to your newsletter or downloads your ebook.
Because of the scale at which email marketing is leveraged, the way you approach your email marketing needs to be much more thoughtful than the emails sent from your personal inbox. Marketing emails are managed and sent through an email service provider, such as Twilio SendGrid. This allows marketers to manage contact lists, build emails, and measure results.
To successfully deliver marketing emails to a recipient’s inbox, there are a few best practices email marketers need to follow, including:
Before you can send an email, you need to have a list of contacts who have opted in to receive your marketing emails. You can build your email list by offering incentives on your website, such as discounts or interesting content.
This allows you to build an email organically with contacts that are engaged with your company. Some companies will buy lists of email contacts, but this often leads to disastrous results. Purchased lists are riddled with spam traps and honeypots that will tank your deliverability rate and sender reputation.
Divide your contact list into multiple segments based on similar qualities. This allows you to create content personalized to these segments of people. Consider location, interest in product types, and demographics as potential characteristics to use for segmentation.
Segmentation keeps your contacts engaged, promoting open and click-through rates. These indicators of engagement show email clients that your content is valued.
Create visually appealing emails with a clear call to action. You can use email templates to help you craft an email design that is optimized for mobile and desktop. When building your email consider length of copy and image size so that whatever you include looks just as good on mobile as desktop.
When writing your email content, avoid spammy material such as a lot of exclamation points or emojis in the subject line–this could trigger the spam filter.
Schedule your email to be sent at an optimal time. Test a variety of send times to see when your audience is most engaged. If you have recipients in different time zones, you can use the segments you created earlier to send the email at different times.
Track the performance of your campaign and make adjustments as needed. There are a lot of email marketing metrics that you could track, but a few important ones are:
Deliverability rates: The percentage of emails that were delivered to the recipient’s inboxes.
Open rate: The percentage of recipients that opened the email.
Click-through rate: The percentage of recipients that clicked and opened a link within your email.
What gets skipped the most often is email list maintenance. No one wants to get rid of contacts on their subscriber list. But here’s the thing—if you don’t clean out old contacts, you are:
Paying for contact storage that you don’t need
Potentially sending to spam traps
Decreasing your open and click-through rates
The best practice is to get rid of contacts who have not opened your emails for 3 months. This ensures that you’re only delivering to highly engaged contacts.
Email is much more complicated than what meets the eye. Whether you’re learning about email routing methods or managing an email marketing program, there’s so much that happens behind the scenes.
Luckily, Twilio SendGrid offers Expert Services to help you reach your recipients and develop a successful email foundation. Whether you need support setting up your email program, troubleshooting delivery issues, or ongoing consulting, our team of email savants will take the complexity out of your email program.
