22 Jun EF-FI-CIENT email delivery!

As you might expect, your website needs to communicate. With its webmaster, of course, but above all with the outside world: clients, prospects, and suppliers.

This is where things (often) get complicated: writing is good. But ensuring your emails are sent correctly, reach the recipient(s), and are actually read is much better!

Otherwise, it’s the sad refrain of spam with all the consequences: loss of information, loss of clients, lack of communication…

A phenomenal waste of time, constant stress, and an annoyance level that hits the roof!

Not to mention the slowdowns on your site when launching mailing campaigns… Enough to make you pull your hair out.

This last point is actually very easy to fix: to relieve your site during your email communication operations, you can use either a plugin or an external solution (see below).

By default, a WordPress or Prestashop site sends emails via a PHP script (on the server), provided this is enabled (with your host).

However, you should know that this option is very likely to send your emails straight to your recipients’ Spam folder! And unfortunately, they often don’t have the reflex to check and sort through their Spam… (This despairs the Boss.)

Fortunately, two main solutions can guarantee “clean” delivery:

an SMTP plugin
OR
delivery via a mailing provider.

How does it work?

– The SMTP plugin:

There are several plugins on the market with varying degrees of effectiveness. They use the specific settings of your email account (with the SMTP server, its port, address, and password). With each send, the site transmits the email structure to the plugin—including the recipients’ email addresses—and sends it via the SMTP server.

You can set up a CC address to receive a copy of every email sent.

– Using a mailing tool (for example, Brevo):

Simply connect your site to your Brevo account via a specific plugin, and you can send all your site’s emails via Brevo. The advantage of this system is being able to check if the emails were sent correctly, if the recipients received them, and even if they opened them.

It is also possible to create a database of clients and prospects with Brevo, and from there, classify them into different lists if you wish to target your products more precisely: for example, by gender, age, location…

If you choose the corresponding options with Brevo, you can also set up message delivery via SMS or WhatsApp—handy, isn’t it? You can also automatically distribute a monthly reminder of the latest articles you have published.
(The Boss looooves this option.)

A few tips:

1/ In any case, do not hesitate to take advantage of our expertise to properly configure your domain for your email accounts, notably by activating the DKIM signature, and the SPF and DMARC settings in your domain’s DNS zone. These three parameters are exactly what will certify that you (your company) are the sender.

2/ If you use a mailing campaign plugin, choose one that uses SMTP delivery and not your site’s default SMTP (PHP). The ideal approach is actually to opt for a tool like Brevo so as not to slow down your site, which, fundamentally, should only be a website and not a tool for mass email delivery.