Are you being ghosted by your email list?

Today I welcome email strategist and business coach Karen Grill to walk us through the critical 2025 updates to email deliverability. From SPF and DKIM to domain-based email protocols, Karen breaks it all down in plain language, and gives you the roadmap to keep your emails landing in inboxes (not spam folders).

Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting to build your list, this conversation is your signal to pause, reset, and get your email game back on track, before your list stops listening for good.

Key Takeaways:

• You must authenticate your domain:  Use SPF, DKIM, and DMARC or risk your emails going to spam.
• Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft: All are actively penalizing senders who don't follow new protocols.
• Mass marketing emails from a Gmail.com address:  Is a no-go domain-based email is essential.
• Email service providers (like MailChimp or Kajabi) won’t protect you:  Unless your domain is properly authenticated.
• Segmenting your audience is a critical step: Sending irrelevant emails can tank your sender reputation.
• Open rates can be misleading: Track click-throughs and replies too.
• If you notice a drop in performance: Stop sending emails immediately and investigate your metrics.
• Avoid broadcast-only strategies:  Treat your list like individuals, not numbers.
• Use AI to support, not replace, your writing: Your voice, your individuality and connection matter.
• Schedule a monthly deliverability check-in: Prevent long-term damage to your sender reputation.

About Karen: 

Karen Grill is a Business Coach and Email Strategist specializing in email authentication and deliverability. With over 15 years of experience helping small business owners build profitable, sustainable systems, she now focuses on making sure their emails reach the inbox - not the spam folder. In 2025, new sender requirements from Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft mean the old way of sending emails no longer works. Karen helps business owners adapt with smart, strategic systems - combining SPF, DKIM, and DMARC technical fixes with an up-to-date strategy, segmentation, warm-up sequences, and content that builds trust. Beyond email, she also helps clients strengthen their funnels, refine their offers, and streamline their operations. Her approach isn’t just technical - it’s transformational. Because in today’s landscape, deliverability is visibility.

https://karengrill.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/karengrill1/

Unlock the Secrets to Building a Resilient and Profitable Business at the Profit Connectors Club - https://profitconnectors.club/

About Sharon:

Sharon Galluzzo, Profit Growth Strategist at Profit Connections, is the author of several Amazon Best Selling books including “Legendary Business: From Rats to Riche$.” She ran a successful multi-six figure, award winning business for more than a decade before selling it for a profit. In her more than 19 years as an entrepreneur, Sharon has coached professionals across the country from franchisors and solopreneurs to businesses on the verge expansion. 

http://sharongalluzzo.com/

https://www.facebook.com/sharonagalluzzo/

https://www.instagram.com/sharon_galluzzo/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharongalluzzo/

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Welcome to the profit connections Podcast. I'm

so glad that you're here, and today we have a very special

guest, and I know that you are going to just love everything

that she has to say. And it's super, super, super important

for business owners to understand these changes. And so

I've brought Karen here because she has the latest information,

and I want everyone to know about it. So my guest today is

Karen Grill. Hello, Karen, hi. It's so great to be here. I'm

going to read her bio for you just so we can get started.

Karen Grill is a business coach and email strategist

specializing in email authentication and

deliverability, with over 15 years of experience helping

small business owners build profitable, sustainable systems,

she now focuses on making sure their emails reach the inbox,

not the spam folder. Yes. Hallelujah. Thank you for being

here. Karen, first of all, tell us. Tell us about these changes

that have come about. What's going on? We're in July of 2025,

so talk to us about what's new.

Yeah. So you when these changes came in October

2023, Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft, all of them started talking.

They want to make email a better experience for their end users,

so people who use Gmail and Yahoo, they want to reduce spam.

And I think we can all get behind that, right? Nobody wants

to receive spam. But what they did is they said that now, as

business owners to send marketing emails, we have to do

some additional steps, and I feel like the rollout wasn't

very good. Most people didn't realize that. Starting in

February 2024 these regulations started, and then June, another

one started. So I think they didn't get the word out to small

business owners, because so many of the people I work with didn't

know about these changes. And so not to interrupt and to

interrupt you said, this happened in 2023 and there are

still people in 2025 who don't know about them. Yeah, they

started talking about it 2023 they didn't have things start

until February, 2024 but it's been over a year, and people

still don't know. And so that's why I feel really bad, because

people just don't know what they don't know, and so they can't

implement these things. And actually, they're being harmed,

right? If you use email as a huge asset in your business, and

you don't know about this, you could be getting penalized, and

your emails won't reach your end users, and how, like on on the

business owner side, can we even tell that it's happening?

So there are some clues. So first of all, it's always

important to start first, I think, with your email service

provider. Now, they can't give you all the information, but

they typically tell you about email authentication. So there

are three new records we have to put into our email, and those

are the SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and I don't want you to worry about

all the terms, but what you need to know is these are all

designed to help make it sure that people can't spoof our

emails, right? We don't want other people taking over our

emails and pretending to send on our behalf. So we don't want

that. And they're also used to show that we own this domain and

we allow, let's say you use MailChimp, MailChimp to send on

your behalf. So that's all it's really doing, is letting these

end users know I'm a real person. This is my real

business. I've done all the things that I need to do to

ensure that I'm a real user, as opposed to a spammer.

And so let me ask you this question, like, say

I use MailChimp. Doesn't MailChimp? Like, isn't that the

protection that we need? Doesn't that say that we're a real

business and we're doing real things?

No. So the change, one of the changes they made, is

you can no longer use kind of those email service providers on

their behalf, like in the past, you could maybe even use like a

gmail.com to send marketing emails, but that was the changes

we don't control. Gmail.com the domain, right? So there's no way

we can add any protections or make any changes so they want

domain based emails. So it's Karen girl.com Jaren galooza.com

right? Those are the domains we can control, and so you need to

use that domain based email, even though you're using

MailChimp. So

so we use an email service provider that no

longer has protection for us, we have to then put it when you say

on your domain. So that is the E the website, the URL that it the

email is sending from

Correct, right? It's not really the website, but

you know, when you buy your domain, you bought it from some

registrar. So there are certain records there. They're called

DNS records, domain name servers. So that's where we

actually have to put these new records. So it's the same. So if

you have a problem with your website that can affect your

email deliverability, if you have problems with your email

deliverability on that domain, it can affect your website,

right? So it's all connected based on that domain name. So we

have to be really careful, both with website and email,

right? So if you're if your URL is living on

a platform like HostGator or some other hosting site, that's

where these certificates need. To be correct.

So there's three places that most of these DNS

records are. So they can be where you purchase, like you

said, if you you bought your domain, I don't know, GoDaddy,

whoever you buy your domain from, they can be at your host,

or they can be a third party, if you use Cloudflare or something.

So those are the three places to look for those DNS records. And

that's where you'd update those three records that I talked

about. Awesome. And so whenever, whenever we're

okay. So let me just take a step back. We're going to go really

deep into the nitty gritty, ugly stuff, just to let you know that

it exists, and also to let you know on top of that, you don't

have to do it yourself. People like Karen. Karen's an expert.

This is why I brought her here, because she knows all of these

things that make my head, you know, not exposed, explode, but

really like throb, and it's just like, Oh, it's too much. It's

too many details. This is why I brought Karen in. I want you to

understand as a business owner, where are the roadblocks that

can keep you from reaching your customers and give you some

assurances that you don't have to figure it out all by

yourself. So continue to continue our conversation. So we

have these certificates that need to be updated. How

difficult is that? I mean, is it really like, do we have fill out

a lot of forms? Is it really overwhelming? Like, how does

that? How do you How does that whole process go?

Right? So your DNS records, you have to add records

now, and this is why you have to start first with your email

service provider. They will give you what you need to add there,

but you just have to know where you're doing DNS records are. So

a lot of people don't even know where those are. So that's the

first step. Go find where your DNS records live, so that you

know where you can update them. Now, some of these email service

providers have even done kind of tools, and they will

automatically do it for you, which is even better. So you can

go to your email service provider, see what they say

about email authentication, and they will help you with the SPF,

the DCAM and the DMARC records. Now I will say as a caveat, your

email service provider is one place where you might send

emails, but you might have a CRM, you might have a course

platform, you might have a membership platform. You might

send emails from there. And so you will need to see if you need

to do something for those platforms as well. So typically,

what I say is make a list of all the platforms that you use that

maybe you send emails from, and then go and see what they say

about email authentication. So that the SPF record, for

instance, is the record that says, I allow MailChimp or

Kajabi or whoever, to send emails on my behalf. So you have

to have the full list. If you don't have everyone listed

there, you can be looked at as spam. So that's why it's

important list all the programs to use. Go check out what they

say about email authentication and then do what they say.

Awesome. So so the first, most important part

is we want our emails to get to our customers. So we need to

figure out if all of our ducks are in a row and all these

certificates have been filed and all of that's in place. Now,

let's just say we have all of those things in place. Are there

still other roadblocks that might keep our emails from

getting into the inbox and not the spam box? Yes,

there's still several things. So one of the

things I think we have to rethink as business owners is

really our email marketing strategy. So in the past, you

know, especially before all these changes, you could send an

email to your whole list every week, no problem. You know, if

people didn't open it, that was fine. Maybe your open rate

wasn't great, but you didn't get penalized. Now, the problem is,

if you send emails to people who don't want them, let's say they

don't open them. You're showing Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft, all the

people that you're sending unwanted email to people. And so

you can start to get penalized, right? And so we can't just send

kind of broadcast emails all the time to everyone we want. We

have to rethink our strategy. And I think one of the things to

think about, are maybe the different segments in your

audience, right? You always want

to talk about, I mean, I want you to break down

segments before we even go further, because not everyone

understands what you mean by segments, and somebody might

think they know what you mean. So break that down for us, a

little bit segments. What does it mean? What does it look like,

and how do we utilize that within our in our back offices.

So, you know, in segments, I'm just saying to

kind of break down your audience. Each email service

provider calls it something different, unfortunately. So

they'll say segments or tags or groups. It's really just

thinking about your audience. And so, you know, maybe they

came in through one certain lead magnet, right? And so, you know,

they're interested in Topic A, right? So you don't want to send

them emails about topic B, because they might not open

them, and it's more likely that they might mark you as spam,

which we'll talk about in a minute. So we have to rethink

our audiences, right? And we want to see, okay, what are

their interests? And you'll have probably received emails where

it'll say, if you want to learn more about topic a, click here,

if you want to learn about topic B, click here. They kind of

survey their audience. And you might think, Oh, that's great.

They want to know what we like, but they're also trying to

figure out what types of emails you want, so they're not sending

you unwanted ones, right?

That is brilliant. That is brilliant

that you send, if you send out an email to your audience and

ask them on a survey what kinds of things that they want to

receive, those will be the ones that. More likely to open and

not mark a spam and not feel like they're you know, you're

just emailing them all the time about things they're not

interested in. So segment, segmenting your audience, or

putting in tags or groups is identifying what what your

audience is interested in, or how they came to you, or somehow

how you communicate with them, you know what kind of what they

want, and so utilizing something like a survey will enable you to

actually go in and segment your audience so that when you send

out an email about a sale, they want to hear about that, whereas

they maybe don't want to hear about some educational things,

or vice versa. So by polling your audience, by asking them

exactly what they want, you can actually customize the customer

experience. And I think that is where they're trying to go. They

want these, all of these Gmail and Yahoo and all these places

they don't want you sending things to people who don't want

what you're selling or what you're saying or what email

you're sending. So we want to find out what do they want,

where, what emails are they most likely to open, and then only

send them those?

Yes, exactly.

So now, now we've got our so we've taken

care of certificates. We've segmented our audience and on

segmenting that audience and creating that experience. About

how long does that take? Is that very overwhelming? I

don't think so. I mean, we're lucky that we have

these email service providers who've kind of thought of that.

They have a lot of tools for us to use. So again, all of them

work, right? So there's not one platform that doesn't do

something like this. You just have to figure out what your

platform what your platform calls it, and how they do it,

but all of them do it, so I definitely recommend, you know

it can just even be a link in there. Say, if you want to hear

more about this, click on this. We're trying to get reactions

from them. And as you know, if people click in our email,

that's a good signal for Gmail, Yahoo and Microsoft and everyone

else as well. So we're kind of twofold. We're learning more

about them, but we're also getting them to click our

emails, which is perfect as well.

Perfect as well, right? So yes, learning

about them is their customer experience, but as the business

owners, what we want to know is, what are they going to open? So

there is a two fold process to that. Yes, it is. It is a double

sided coin. Is that a double? It's a single sided double. Just

two sides of the same coin. There we go. My God, I don't

know what a double sided coin? Um, yeah, so that that's really,

you know. So there, there's when you're and when you're doing

anything in your business, you always want to be of two minds.

You want to be thinking about what is the customer experience,

what's going on for your customers, and how do you

approach everything as a business owner, so you can get

done what you need to do as a business owner while solving

their problem and having them have a good experience. So this

is a wonderful conversation about that as well. So now,

whenever we we've, I love that you talked about that the the

different platforms already have the tools. So if you go into

your platform and you're like, I remember Karen telling me all

about this really cool stuff, and I don't know how it works

for my platform. Let me give you a quick tip, go to the Google

and write or say into the Google. How do I figure out

segments on my platform and name your platform, and Google will

tell you, or whatever platform, whatever search engine, you're

using, it will give you step by step, or it will link you to

your server, your service provider, and it'll tell you the

steps from there. So don't feel like you have to remember or

know how to do it all. You can ask the search engines, and

they'll step you through things. That's actually become one of my

shortcuts for everything. When I get to the point where I'm like,

I can't remember how to do this, I just go in and I say, How do I

and then, and sometimes you have to dig, but usually it comes

right up, and it's really makes it more user friendly for

platforms who may not be so user friendly,

and all of those email service providers, they

all have knowledge bases of some kind. So if you can't get the

exact answer from Google, you can definitely go look at them.

They all have tons of information for you.

Yeah, I recommend the other one. Yes, go

to the Knowledge Base. However, sometimes I can't find it in

knowledge base because I'm not wording it correctly. So that's

why i That's why I will use that cheat with asking the search

engines what to do. Okay, so now we're, we've we've taken care of

certificates, we've segmented audiences. What's next?

So one of the things that I typically find is

that people are reluctant, or maybe scared, of looking at

their email analytics, right? They don't take the time to go

look at your analytics, and we need to get more feedback from

our audience and then make kind of data informed decisions

around them, right? And so if you're not looking at your email

analytics, a you're not going to know what your audience is

really, you know, liking, you know, maybe there's certain type

of email that you send that everybody opens, or. Clicks.

Maybe there's some that they don't like as well. That's

information we need to use, because if we want to keep our

open rates high, we want to have click through rates and

conversions in the end, right? We need to make sure that we

understand what our audience is really resonating with. So we

need to make sure that we're looking at those numbers.

Awesome. So email analytics is tell us, what

is that? What does it look like? And where do you find it?

So again, it's in your email service provider.

Everyone has some kind of dashboard that you can look at.

They're all a little different, but they're all do the same

thing. And again, it's going to show you open rates. Click

through rates, there are some things you can find there, and

those are the main ones. You know, open rates have changed a

little bit over the past because Apple iOS, they mark everything

as open, even if people haven't opened it. So if, let's say,

your open rate shows on your email service provider 50% I

usually subtract 10% so it's about 10% lower than probably

what's shown. But we can still use it kind of as a baseline

over the long term, looking and seeing if there's any blips,

right? That's what we're looking for, we're looking for any

anomalies that might signal, oh no, something's going wrong. I

need to investigate. But when people never look, yeah, they're

never gonna know.

Let me ask you about open rates. So open rate

means that the email went into their inbox or their spam box,

either way, and they clicked on it and opened it and assumably

read it correct? That means they opened it. What if they delete

it without opening it?

So again, you know there's difference. The open

rate typically will not show that then, unless it's like the

Apple situation. I said, usually, you know, if they

haven't actually clicked to open it, it won't count as an open

now, it's would be considered kind of delivered, but not open,

right? Got it. Okay, two. So two different

things. They received it. They just didn't open it and then

click through means what?

So within the email, a lot of times, we'll

have a link to, I don't know, say your website, or maybe to an

event. If they click on that link, that's a click through

rate. So you're looking at how many people actually click that

link within our email.

So when we're looking at our analytics, we

want to look at open rates with a grain of salt on the open

rates, because we're not exactly sure with those numbers, because

of the apple situation, what are we looking for as a and I know

this changes, but in general, what is a good open Rate? Is it

like, you know, 80% is it 10% like, give us a range of where

it looks like you're getting a decent open rate.

So I will say they typically say kind of industry

standards, you know, 30 to 40% is considered good. Definitely.

I think with these new strategy, you can get much higher. I have,

like, in the 70% range, because I'm really in tune with my

audience in terms of click through rates, it's much lower,

right? So typically one to 3% is considered good, so use those as

guidelines, right?

Excellent. Because sometimes I go in and

look at analytics and I'm like, great, here are numbers. What do

they mean? So that was Thank you very much for digging into that

a little bit with me, so that I so that people understand what

is, what is D? What is a industry standard for those

analytics? What other kind of analytics should we be looking

at, other than open and click through rates? So there's

something that we call reply, so let's say a lot

of times in like a PS or something, you might say, hey,

hit reply and let me know what you're thinking or whatever you

were talking about. So that typically is not captured in our

email service provider. So that's something that we would

have to kind of track ourselves. But replies are great for us,

because typically I will get emails and say, Oh, I totally

agree with this. Karen, it totally resonated with me. I

have these problems. So you get so much information that you can

use. It's information we can actually have a conversation

with those people. And I think that's another kind of mindset

shift about our email. Before was kind of broadcast. We just

kind of talked to everybody. Now we want to start building

relationships and having conversations, and we can do

that by saying hit reply. And when they do, they reply to your

email and tell you about something that's gold, right?

That's, I think, rates really high on the scale. We're talking

open rates. And then click the rates, and then reply rates. So

it's definitely something you can keep track of yourself. It's

they're not able to do that in the email service provider.

Talk a little bit about it was very

interesting. What you said is, you are very in touch with your

audience. So talk a little bit about, if you don't mind, what

kinds of things do you talk to about your audience and to your

audience, and what kind of like, tell us a little bit about what

your emails kind of look like in general.

So because I have my segments, my emails are

different, right? Like, I don't have one email that I send. So I

talk a lot about email, as we're talking about here, but I also

talk about funnels. I've often also talked about offers, and so

I know what my audience likes to hear from me, and so I really

tailor my messages to them. So I'll only send, you know, email

people about my email. I'll only send funnels about my funnel

people. And so, you know, I do a variety of things, a lot of

it's, it is educational, but I also do kind of storytelling,

you know, sharing, maybe kind of parts of my life, but how that

relates to my business, right? I get a lot. Lot of responses to

those kinds of stories. So I definitely recommend, you know,

testing it with your audience. Every audience is different. We

all have different collections of audience, whether it's on

social media or email, and that's why you need to listen to

your audience and really try to figure out, what do they really

want to hear from me, what do they respond to what types of

emails? And we can only do that by testing and looking like I

said, our analytics to make sure we're seeing, Oh my gosh, this

email got a huge open rate. There's something that I did in

that email, and then we have to kind of dissect, was it the

subject line? Was it the topic? You know, did I have something

that I had them click on? You know, really figure out what's

working so that you can do more of that, as opposed to the

things that they didn't like. So that's what I really tried to

kind of cultivate with my audience.

That's really good point talking about, like,

I've, I've seen more of a move in emails towards, hey, telling

a little bit of story about something that happened in my

life, or making it a little bit more personal about me.

Personally, I think sometimes, even if you have a bigger

business and it's not per you know, like you're not a coach,

or you're not somebody, like you're not the face of the

business. Even in a broader business, in a franchise, in a

in a regular business, you could still tell a personal story, and

you don't have to bear your soul. It can be like I went

strawberry picking with my family this weekend, and this

conversation came up, or this occurred to me, or I stepped on

a strawberry, and it reminded me of that, and that way, it gives

them a little bit of a more of a connection to you and the

business as a human experience, as opposed to, as opposed to

just being that entity.

I think there's been a shift from like creating

content to like collecting or cultivating content, just from

our lives or even our business experiences. People really

connect with other people. And so when we start to be able to

kind of weave that in to our emails, as opposed to just buy

this, buy this 20% off, you know, that just doesn't work. So

really trying to draw people in so they get invested in the

business and your story, that they want to read more, and the

more they read, more likely than they are to eventually maybe

hire us or buy our product or service.

That's an excellent point. Yeah. And with

regard to the email, whenever we're doing something like, I

know some people, we go to extremes, right? Oh, I'm just

going to tell stories, and I'm not going to make any offers, or

I'm just going to do this. And how do you balance that out and

make it a customer journey as opposed to a one note

experience?

And so this is kind of getting back to understanding

your audience. Because instead of just, like I said, sending

one off emails just kind of broadcast to them, we want to

think kind of an kind of, I call them persuasion arc. So we want

to have kind of, maybe a series of emails that we're kind of

leading them down the path that we want them to go. And not

everyone will go with us, but many people will. And so we want

to make sure that you know whether there's some stories.

But we also want to educate. We want to give them value, but

kind of draw them in and have them go along the path, and

maybe in the end, it's some product or service, right that

we want them to offer. So we can't just think of kind of

individual emails. We want to think of several emails together

so that they can see a pattern, they can follow along where we

want them to go.

That's what an excellent point. Because I think

a lot of times it's a to do list, checklist, just let me get

this done. So actually, putting some thought into the process,

into the journey that they're going on is a really excellent

point. And I think that's something else that's changed

about email. So thank you for that tip. That's amazing. That's

gold. So make sure you make note of this, because that was a gold

tip, right there. Talk for a second before we move beyond

email, talk to me a little bit about how AI can be, can be. How

is it good and bad whenever we're creating an email journey

for our customers.

So I definitely think AI can be a really useful

tool, I think, and it can help you, like brainstorm, I think

that's a really good way to use it even maybe edit some of your

things or maybe give you options for your subject lines. But I

don't recommend it writing for you unless you spend a ton of

time to really train it so it knows your voice, it knows your

brand, it knows how you think all those things, because

otherwise, I mean, we've probably all seen it, we've all

received probably AI emails. We see them in comments on social

media. It's just kind of obvious, right? And if you're

really trying to connect with your audience, they don't want

to connect with the AI, right? So I think the impetus from our

stories, the way we tell them, kind of our own voice. I think

should really come to us. But I do think we can help say a I

want, you know, to take my audience from here to here. You

know, what's kind of a journey, a path that we could bring them

on, like help them do that. You can say, I have these ideas.

What do you think are the most you know, beneficial ideas for

my audience. Like, you can help it can help. Analyze and tell

you maybe what the best direction to go in. But I really

think that if we want to create these connections and

relationships, it has to be from us as the business owners.

That's awesome. I love that. Thank you for that

tip and and my daughter is she's so funny. Every email that she

writes, she runs it through AI to say, make sure it sounds

professional. It doesn't sound passive or whatever. She puts

all these things around it and it rewrites, it takes her words

and rewrites it so that it fits into those things. And AI can do

all kinds of things. If you wanted to add like NLP,

languaging, if you wanted to add any kind of like persuasion, or

you wanted to make it more fun or more it will help you redo

your retool your stuff, so that it sounds more however you want

it. So that's, that's a really good point. I use it a lot for

brainstorming. I don't always put it back in to have it, you

know, check for those things. That's a really good point to to

use. And that's a really good way to use AI. And I think it's

really important not to delegate all of your thought process and

all of your emails to AI exclusively. Great point, Karen,

it's a tool to help enhance however, if you, I mean, you do,

you know, you get something, and you're like, This is AI, like, I

have somebody who uses an A on eye on a social media and at

first I started responding, and I'm, like, such a weirdly

question, a weirdly worded question, but okay. And then

after like, the third time, I was like, Oh, this is an AI, so

now I ignore it. So that's, you know, that's the good and bad of

the AI. It can help, help us with with workflows. However,

you still need to have the human oversight and looking at it and

making sure that it is what you want it to be. Yeah, I think

it's good for brainstorming, kind of analyzing

and polishing, but not creating like we need to be. The creators

love

it awesome. So Karen, talk to us about other

things beyond email that we need to be looking at in our

business.

Mm, hmm. So for me, you know, I'm kind of email

centric. I mean, email is kind of the core of my business, and

other things flow from there. But I do think that, as I said,

with our domain name, we have to protect that, because it's our

sender reputation, it's our website. If you're going to show

up on searches, you need to have a good website reputation,

right? So we really need to think differently about how we

do things like email and our domain and our website aren't

separate entities, right? They're all kind of the same. So

I do think we have to really work to protect those things,

and that means we need to be, you know, looking at our data

and our analytics and making sure our website's good, our

email is good. Phew, Okay, we're good. But I think it's really

important to, like, schedule one time each month just to go check

to make sure things are working smoothly on both of those

things, so that we can make sure that we're able to reach our

audience, whether it's the website or the email. And

that's a really good point about making sure

that you're checking in monthly I think gone are the days of set

it and forget it. That's kind of my go to and I'm learning that

have to unlearn that now, because that's not the way

technology is working on any on any level. It's not set it and

forget it anymore. So having a time that you go once a month

and check everything and see how everything is going is so

critical. Because if there's something wrong and you don't

discover it for three or six or eight months, that is three or

six or eight months worth of business that you have lost out

on because you don't have things set properly, so that your tools

and your processes and your systems are giving you the

deliverables that you have set them up to give you,

yeah, and you know, with email, while they haven't

explicitly explained how they penalize us, the one hint they

gave us is so let's say at first you have something wrong with

your records that we talked about, they said, well, first

we'll penalize 5% of your list, then 10% then 15 so it's a slow

kind of penalizing. And the problem is, it doesn't show up

really dramatically in your analytics, like, in a way, like

100% because you'd see a huge drop off. No one's opening, no

one's clicking. You'd see that right? One is like, slow

penalizing. It's really hard to see. Only if you're looking at

your analytics, you know, all the time would you actually kind

of start to see this drift, and you're like, Huh? And I can tell

you, people have waited a long time to actually come to me and

get help, but it can take then, you know, three to six months to

repair their sender reputation and a lot of money to do that.

So, so much better if you're looking at it all the time. So

you can nip it in the bud and stop anything. Stop emailing. So

that's the one thing. If you see something wrong, stop emailing.

Don't email until you figure out what the problem is. Because if

you keep emailing, they're gonna keep thinking, wow, she keeps

sending to these people who don't want it, and they keep

penalizing more and more and more. So anytime you see a

problem, I would stop emailing for them, even if you have it

scheduled on or something, I would stop that. I would stop

that scheduled email going out and just say, hey, let's take a

look at my analytics try to figure out what's happening. You

know, if you get a spam complaint, the spam threshold

now is point 3% so that's so low if you get like, one spam

complaint that can actually ruin your whole center reputation. So

that's why it's so important to schedule that. Time every month

to go look at your analytics to make sure you know kind of you

get a sense of your email, like, where is the baseline for you,

what's typical open rates, what's typical? Get through

rates. You know, you know that. So if there's something that's

different this time, you know that, hey, wait a second, I

think there might be something going

wrong. And if you, if you've listened to this

conversation and you're feeling significantly overwhelmed at all

of this. First of all, like I said at the beginning, there's

there's help. Karen is amazing. Get in touch with her, have a

conversation. She is no pressure. She's really amazing,

and she'll be honest with you about what's going on and and

give yourself a little bit of patience and grace. However,

this, if this is one of the main ways that you communicate with

your clients, and it should be, then this is something critical

that you need to be have in place, and you need to figure

out what's working, what's not working. Am I setting myself up

for failure? Am I being shadow banned? I just use that word for

what she said before, where they're kind of cutting off your

email deliverability a little bit at a time. That's probably

not what it means. However, if you, if you you know this is a

really critical thing to be working on in your business, so

let's make sure that it's healthy. Let's make sure that

you have all the things in place that you need to have in place.

So make sure that that is something that you make a

priority, and you make a priority of it at least once a

month.

And you know, you know, social media, a lot of

people use it, and it's great, but we actually don't own it. We

don't really control it. Emails The only thing that we can

really control. So even if you use social media, I would be

pushing people to my email list because you have the most

control over it. Now, I know these new changes maybe seem

overwhelming, but if you're a business owner, it's something

that we actually have to prioritize for our business. If

we earn money from our email, if this is a way we connect with

our audience, then we actually need to make this a priority and

really understand what we need to know and get help when we

don't

excellent at Karen, this has been so

enlightening, a little bit overwhelming. There's so much to

know. And with anything technology, it changes. It

changes all the time. And, oh, I had another question that I

wanted to ask you really quickly. What Is there anything

special about having gmail.com accounts with regard to

deliverability or send ability.

So, you know, really, as business owners,

we're not supposed to use gmail.com accounts. Those are

personal email accounts, and so typically, they won't allow you

to send that. You know, you'll, you'll see a lot of people try

to send, you know, many emails, one to many, and they don't

allow that. They kind of cut that off. So definitely, if

you're sending one to many, you want to do that now, Google

workspace is kind of the business way of using kind of

Google's, but typically you have your own domain anyways, with

that, okay, but that's more like one to one kind of client

communications, as opposed to marketing where you're sending

one to many. So definitely, you know, have that domain based

email, again, we can control it. We can make sure it has a good

sender reputation by doing some of the things we talked about

today. So you want the most control@gmail.com is really for

personal

Awesome. Thank you for I meant to ask that

earlier, and I forgot till just now. So Karen, I understand that

you have a gift for our listeners, so I would love to

hear about that.

Yeah. So I know we talked about a lot of things

today, throw a lot of terms out. So I have something. It's kind

of email authentication, 101, it's a quick fix inbox

visibility guide to it'll walk you through everything we talked

about today. What you need to be looking for. It's a checklist

for you, too. So you know, if you've done everything, just to

kind of get you started, to make sure you can start to take

control over your own email deliverability.

That is an amazing gift, and I love that,

that it starts at like an easy level 101, walk us through what

we need to do initially, and that's an amazing gift. Thank

you so much for that. And what we're going to do is we are

going to put a link to Karen's gift in our portal, which is

profit connectors. Dot club. That's profit connectors,

because you're the connectors to your profit. Profit connectors,

dot C, l, u, B, it's free to get in there, go in, and we will

have Karen's bio, her contact information, and her free gift

for you inside our community and allow you to connect with Karen

that way. If it's an easy way to find everything on all of our

episodes, we do publish all of our episodes on there, as well

as everyone's bio gifts, all the stuff that's we've had for the

entire podcast. So you go in there, you can find Karen's gift

and other gifts as well. So we encourage you to do that. I want

to thank you, Karen, so much for your time today, and your

information is so important and a little overwhelming, if I'm

honest. However, it's so critical because we. Use Email

to to have that client experience, especially there's a

lot of online businesses that don't ever even see their people

in person, so that that is kind of a lifeline for us. So thank

you so much for your time and the critical information. Well,

thank you for having me, and I just hope that

everyone can get their emails to land in the inbox.

Yay. Awesome. So thank you everyone for being

here. I encourage you to keep showing up your future self will

thank you, and remember it's your business and your impact.

Go, make it count. Thanks for joining us for this profit

connections podcast. You.