28th March, 2025 A NEWSLETTER FOR SOLOS Read time: approx. 4-5 mins
What really happens after you hit ‘Send’
Email Marketing
The life and times of an email as it whizzes through the ether…
Have you ever wondered what happens to your email when you hit that ‘Send’ button?
It doesn’t just magically appear in your subscribers’ inboxes – it has to cover a lot of ground and avoid many potential pitfalls!
The Email Journey
Let’s take a tour through the typical journey to see where each individual email goes… let’s imagine you’re using Kit as your email marketing platform.
↳ Step 1
You compose your email and hit the ‘Send‘ button on Kit.
↳ Step 2
Kit hands the email off to a Mail Transfer Agent (MTA), like ‘SendGrid‘ – a delivery service that takes the email from Kit and delivers it to your subscribers’ receiving email server.
↳ Step 3
Once it arrives at the recipient’s email server, it ‘knocks on the door‘ and asks to be let in. The server checks the authenticity of the email (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) and decides whether to accept or reject it.
↳ Step 4
If the email is accepted, it’s either forwarded to the subscriber’s inbox or their spam folder – depending on how ‘dodgy‘ (or not) it appeared during the check.
↳ Step 5
Interaction with your email content is then tracked (where possible); in other words, when a subscriber ‘opens’ your email or clicks on a link inside the email, that message is sent back to Kit – that’s how it can provide analytics for each email.
So, there you have it – that’s a simplified sequence of events for every email you send. A lot of things can go wrong between you sending the email and it finally arriving at its final destination.
Example of the tracking data collected by Kit for emails that have been sent to subscribers.
P.S. Other things that can happen along the way include;
The email gets rejected by the receiving server.
The email ‘hard’ bounces as the recipient address no longer exists.
The email ‘soft’ bounces as there is a temporary problem with the email account.
The email recipient may disable image-loading, rendering the ‘open’ metric useless.
Some people may unsubscribe from your email list using the link you provide.
Some recipients may complain about your email, flagging it to their email provider.
An email may be ‘opened’ and have its links ‘clicked’ by IT software before it even reaches the intended recipient!
Kit Feature
Automation ‘Rules’
One of the best features of any email marketing platform is its automation. Without it, things can get pretty hands-on and time-consuming (not to mention error-prone!).
In Kit, there are two core automations that are used to manage the process of collecting, nurturing, and selling to our subscribers – Visual Automations and Automation ‘Rules‘.
My recommendation is, if you can do what it is you want to do using a Visual Automation, then do that. If you can’t use ‘Rules’.
Rules are great, but Visual Automations are more flexible, powerful, and provide more options when it comes to designing a slick process.
How do ‘Rules’ work?
Think of ‘Rules’ using this scenario…
“If this happens, do this thing…”
It’s a ‘trigger–action‘ relationship – if this ‘trigger‘ happens, do this ‘action‘.
E.g. ‘If a subscriber clicks on this link, add them to this email sequence.’
When to use a ‘Rule’
The screenshot below shows the possible ‘triggers’ that can be used in Kit, however, I’ll share with you the two I use most commonly, and why.
I use ‘Rules’ mostly for these two tasks;
To add a tag to a subscriber’s profile whenever they click on a particular link.
To remove a subscriber from an email sequence when they unsubscribe from it.
The first one is using what’s called a ‘link trigger‘ – i.e. they click a link that triggers an action.
The second one happens when a subscriber changes their email preferences using the link provided at the footer of the email.
Using ‘Rules’ in Kit
If you want to learn more, watch this 17-minute deep-dive on how to design and use ‘Rules’ in your Kit account.
People I recommend
Want to feed your ears with solo-type content?
As we all know, being a ‘solo’ is quite different from life as a corporate ‘cubicle-inmate’, facing challenges that only ‘we’ can fully appreciate and understand.
That’s why it’s good to hear what other solos are experiencing – reassuring us that we’re not crazy and that others are having common challenges.
One of the podcasts I listen to is “indiebusinessclub” by Mel Barfield and BenMcKinney.
They discuss common ‘indie-type’ scenarios, giving tips and advice on how they (and others) approach their problems and challenges.
If you’re a podcast listener, I recommend you give this one a go – I reckon you’ll get a lot from what they share (it’s not one of those ra-ra shows, it’s real talk about real life as a solo).
Mel Barfield & Ben McKinney
‘indie business club’ podcast hosts, copywriters, and business owners (among other things!).
This is one of my favourite Chrome extensions, and one that I use daily!
‘Eye Dropper‘ saves me so much time and effort trying to figure out colours and match them to other digital assets or web pages when I’m creating graphics or configuring colour palettes.
I am a heavy user of Canva (another one of my favourite tools!) and whenever I want to match a colour on a web asset (e.g. a customer’s web page or social profile), I simply click on it using the ‘Eye Dropper’ tool and it automatically provides me with the hex code I need to paste into Canva.
Simply by clicking on the little eye-dropper icon (shown below), you can then click on any part of the screen and the app will capture the hex value (and RGB, HSL, and HSV) of the colour of the pixel you click on, and then makes it available to copy and paste it into Canva (or anywhere else).
You can add it to your laptop/desktop today for free – just click the button below.
A safe community away from socials and customers where solos can learn, share their knowledge & experiences, and grow bizs.
Initially, there will be courses, resources, discussion groups, and ‘live‘ events to help you grow your biz, using an email-first approach to marketing and income-generation.
It’s become a labour of love for me, one that’s taking much more effort and more time than I expected, but I believe it can be something I can grow and cherish for many years to come (only if people value and enjoy being part of it, of course!).
During next month, I’ll be inviting a small group of solos from my email subscriber list to join me inside The Hub, where collectively, we’ll shape what it’ll become.
If you’re interested in getting involved, click the button below and you’ll be first to hear about it.
In 1971, a tech engineer called Ray Tomlinson was sitting at his desk wondering if he could send himself a message, from one computer to another (which was only 8 feet away from him). You have to remember, back then, over 50 years ago, the only realistic ways we could communicate with others was to phone them from a landline, send them a fax, or send a letter in the post!
What Ray did that day would go on to spawn a multi-billion dollar industry, one that every business still uses today, and I suspect will do for many decades to come!
P.S. In case you wondered, the first ever ’email’ sent contained the message ‘QWERTYUIOP’, i.e. the top-row of a QWERTY keyboard.
💙 Ask me your questions
Hit the button below and ask me anything – I’ll be sure to reply, and you never know, your question might be the inspiration for my next video!
