Dumb email advice from a major ESPs support desk

Below is an email I got last year from an Email Players subscriber who wishes to be anonymous, talking about some awful advice he was subjected to by a major ESP's customer support staff. I removed the company names he is referring to protect the guilty. But it’s quite the email marketing lesson in and of itself. Here goes: === EMAIL PLAYERS SUBSCRIBER: Had some serious issues with my client's ESP. Had ___ at first, and then they removed the 'unlimited emails' plan, affecting all existing users. So annoying. So I moved them over to ____ - then the deliverability was terrible (as well as their onboarding tbh) Here's what ___ said about the emails containing images, hopefully it's helpful: ESP’S CUSTOMER SUPPORT: I reviewed your campaigns and let me tell you: I love your templates as they are - only a few minor tweaks should be enough to have an impact. Being in this kind of business, your templates have many images. There's nothing wrong about it, and it's actually a good thing to be "visual", however I noticed that many images in your templates are "heavy" (in terms of kilobytes). In fact, anti-spams prefer individual images in email smaller than 50kb. My recommendation is to optimize/compress your images accordingly. The most evident takeaway is that you might need to optimize your images. Currently some of your images are way too heavy. This is against email marketing best practices, for a couple of very good reasons, mostly because: - Anti-spams process images too (they try to grasp their content with OCR and AI technologies) and if something is too heavy they'll just “give up” and assume that you are trying to hide abusing content by preventing them to process the images - you will more easily incur in mailboxes that are full or over quota (and you want be able to deliver your message) - it provides a bad user experience (many people is checking their email from their phone, not everyone has a good connection or data plan) You should keep images light in weight: every single image should be smaller than 50kb. Since this threshold is applied to individual images, feel free to slice bigger images in smaller parts to meet this suggested value on each of them. However, it's usually enough to use the .jpg format (instead of .png) and compress the images with functions like the "Export / Save for Web.." on Photoshop. Using a 60-70 compress factor will make them lighter without losing the look and feel. Last but not least, avoid CTAs in forms of images. Converting them to actual text positively impacts your click rate and deliverability.” EMAIL PLAYERS SUBSCRIBER: I tried to drop the image file size down as much as I could but it is physically impossible with some images to get lower than the maximum 50kb. I was around 74kb+. But ___ also said: "Put an unsubscribe link at the top of emails to lower spam complaints and therefore increase deliverability." - I disagree with this so much, it's a negative mindset IMO "Ask people to reply, star, click, and forward emails to try to 'game the system' and create fake engagement to improve deliverability." Purely tactical. No mention whatsoever about being in the customers' world and sending them emails that they actually want to open and read - like you teach. I’m shocked that such a big ESP gives such harmful advice to its users. And then ___ are trying to convince me to send "fewer, more targeted emails". It was only when they looked at our sales figures, did they tell me on a Zoom call that they would never normally advise people to do what we do (email daily) because it normally ends up with low open rates and engagement. Like, these guys are so obsessed with the wrong things. And this is what they do for a living. Email. It's shocking really. No wonder so many companies get it wrong, the ESPs are miseducating all of their userbases. We're gonna switch back to ___ I think. I could try selling them on joining BerserkerMail but I already know the answer… === All sounds rather exhausting to me. It’s also typical of advice I've seen from various ESP programmers & developers & customer service people who probably have never sent a single commercial email in their entire lives that sold anything to a list they’ve built themselves, much less by following their own silly & convoluted rules. Whatever the case: My Email Players subscriber is right. These other ESPs' customer support guys are focused on all the wrong things, chasing algorithms and looking for scooby snacks from big tech, when they could just: + take the images out + learn how to write and tell simple stories + create Vision with words — literally copywriting 101 — to get engagement & sales No need to do a rain dance for the tech gods if one follows the basics. But let’s face it: Most marketers don’t want to hear that. They want to learn how to “game” systems because they think it makes them sound cool. They want to be able to send short, boring, superficial emails they can write fast. (Or, now, prompt with fapGPT, AI, etc). And they want to send as few of those as they can get away with because they’re lazy. I suspect they never even think to test against what a tech platform says — which is the first thing we do at BerserkerMail (at the command of my biz partner — Navy Nuclear Engineer-turned-software developer & former Executive Director of Technology at Encyclopedia Brittanica Troy Broussard), and is one of many reasons why the platform helps our clients who understand the basics above get such high inbox deliverability. Doesn’t matter what I say about it though. The proof is in the using. And you can do that, free, with a test drive at the URL below: [https∶//www.EmailPlayers.com/berserker]( Ben Settle This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2024 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. No part of this email may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from Settle, LLC. Click here to [unsubscribe]( Settle, LLC PO Box 1056 Gold Beach Oregon 97444 USA