Let’s set the scene for the true cost of missing the inbox. You’re sending email from your preferred email service provider (ESP) but something changes. Your delivery rate drops at Yahoo or your customers are complaining about finding emails in their Gmail spam folder, but you have no idea how to investigate deliverability issues.  

Since you’re sending less than your ESP’s volume requirement for services, you notice the email deliverability expert you used to consult with is no longer on your account. Instead, you have an omnichannel person with way less email marketing expertise. Or, even worse, you watch your email deliverability consulting services contract price skyrocket just to keep the same level of support you’ve previously enjoyed from their consulting team. 

It’s time to look for a new email delivery platform, because frankly, your current provider (ahem, SendGrid, Sparkpost, or Mailgun) ain’t cuttin’ it. But before you jump into a new contract with a different one of those providers, there is one major thing to anticipate: you’ll be dropped into a huge ocean of data. 

You won’t have an email expert analyzing your metrics 

One of the most important aspects of a quality ESP or delivery platform is performance data. What good is it to send email into the ether without any idea how or if it’s even landing? However, this comes with a major caveat: Without guided service, what do you actually do with that data? 

You get a delivery rate, you get an open rate, you get a click through rate. You may even get an inbox placement rate. YOU get a car, and YOU get a car!  

But all these email stats can only help you if you understand what they mean and how to action them. Signals are just numbers until they have meaning. Looking at each signal, you’re left to contextualize it, figure out why it is what it is, how to use the data to work in your favor, and so on. Unless you’re an email deliverability geek, this is really hard. And don’t even get us started on unsatisfactory data and how to fix a major problem. Big waves in an ocean of data can drown you real quick. 

Sure, there’s help. But at what cost? 

What is the true cost of missing the inbox? 

Chances are, unless you’re a huge enterprise sender with endless dollars to spend, your options for guidance on email deliverability are limited. Some of our competitors used to provide an incredible level of service to every sender, but now, you need to be sending a certain amount of email volume to even qualify for their consulting services, let alone be able to afford them.  

Let’s assume you don’t have stacks of cash on hand to pay for add-on personal deliverability consultation, because understandably, you didn’t anticipate needing an additional, pricey line-item for email delivery consulting. Instead of money, what else are you spending? 

Time 

Time is a huge cost of missing the inbox to any business. Think about how much time you could spend analyzing data points trying to make sense of them. And how much of that time you could be spending on something more impactful to your business. The more time you spend figuring out why you have an issue, the more time you spend watching the issue snowball into a bigger problem!  

Energy 

Then, you’ll likely find yourself in a mess needing clean-up, with very few clues on where to get started. It’s impossible to clean a huge mess without help. If you’re in an environment with multiple senders, your customer support and success teams could clock in overtime trying to calm down and assist your clientele.  

Focus 

IT will be ripped away from other projects to help out, and this disruption could even result in a reprioritization of the product roadmap. Imagine if problems aren’t solved efficiently. There are potentially huge revenue losses in the cards as the problem compounds over time. Shudder. Everyone’s hands get dirty with this endless game of whack-a-mole because there’s no one advising how to tackle the problem once and for all. 

Money 

Yep, you read that right. Not hitting the inbox means you will actually lose money, particularly if your email campaigns are major drivers of revenue for your business. But all those hours spent by marketing and IT to investigate and clean up your email deliverability issues will be a big cost of missing the inbox as well, in addition to the unanticipated overtime hours customer support will spend cleaning up that sea of tickets your recent hiccup has generated.  

Sure, deliverability consulting services will add an additional line-item to your budget, but they may end up saving you thousands in human hours when your team doesn’t have to rush to the rescue at the 25th hour (yet again). 

Customers 

And let’s not forget the most important one of all: you’ll be losing customers. Maybe not all at once. Maybe not after the first sign of a problem. But customers will start to leave if you’re delivering an experience not worthy of their email engagement, or if you’ve lost focus on your business and dropped the ball one too many times. 

Your health 

Authentication terms like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are foreign to you. Improving your sender reputation sounds more painful than getting yourself back in shape. And it feels like the spam filters managed by the ISPs (or internet service providers) are seriously out to get you. Hello, stress. It’s nice to see you again. 

But not if you’re working with an ESP like SocketLabs offering email deliverability services. Then getting help on email strategy and understanding your email performance will reduce your stress levels almost immediately. Our email deliverability experts proactively monitor your metrics, talk to mailbox providers on your behalf and focus on delivery optimization as part of their day-to-day. You stay focused on building your business by creating email campaigns the recipients on your email list will love while your blood pressure stays right where it belongs. 

Why you need to prioritize email deliverability expertise 

Whether you’re sending triggered emails via SMTP or using heavy segmentation and automation to super-power your email marketing campaigns, having a deliverability copilot you can afford is critically important to your email marketing program. Without making it a priority, it’s entirely on you to figure out the email performance data you just gained access to. And to figure out how to keep your plane flying smoothly instead of bracing for a crash landing. 

If you’re not an enterprise sender—or simply don’t have the budget of one—you need to find an affordable option. Just because you aren’t sending as much email as the largest brands in the world doesn’t mean you’re not worthy of guidance! You matter, and so does your email program. 

That’s why SocketLabs provides Concierge service at a fraction of the cost of the other guys. You won’t need to pay for an ESP and also a fancy, costly deliverability tool or third-party consulting package. You get the expertise you need to make sense of transactional and marketing email when something comes up while also enjoying the ability to send email from the same place. Woah, ground-breaking concept for the big guys, but a simple concept for people who know and love email (that’s us). Why settle for only half the package? 

Concierge compounds SocketLabs’ best features. You get better inbox placement because of better access to a ton of signals like first-party data (from us, simply from being your sender) and third-party data (Microsoft SNDS, Google Postmaster Tools, and the like), plus the expertise you need to actually DO something about it. Not only do you get reliable delivery from our mail transfer agent (MTA), which reliably and efficiently processes high volumes of email around the world, but we also provide full email security and authentication support. 

Don’t sell yourself short. Combining the best of both the data and the support worlds shouldn’t be a budget-busting concept. Get a high-quality delivery experience with email expertise and authentication support baked in with SocketLabs’ Concierge.