Welcome to the "Monitor and Optimize" section of the Twilio SendGrid Onboarding Guide.
In this Onboarding Guide section, your team will:
Once you are sending email, your campaigns will generate data. That data will help you understand how successful your email program is at delivering to inboxes and how people are engaging with your content.
Twilio SendGrid offers a few ways to view and use your email data from raw data feeds to aggregated data and analytics.
Twilio SendGrid strongly recommends that you implement our Event Webhook. The Event Webhook sends the raw delivery event data and engagement event data to a destination that you own. Good sending practices include tracking global email statistics and bounces, which are stats you can retrieve through a Twilio SendGrid API call.
Enabling the Event Webhook gives you maximum flexibility to store and manipulate the data for your unique needs.
The Email Activity Feed provides a snapshot of recent activity so that you can address questions and issues in real time. Email Activity allows you to dig into specific messages to understand your email program at a granular level. Just keep in mind that by default Twilio SendGrid will only store this data for 30 days unless you purchase additional activity history. You can also store the data on your own systems using the Event Webhook mentioned above.
Analytics and reports aggregate and filter the event data to provide insights on different key performance indicators (KPIs) for email performance. For a full list of the different dashboards available to you and how best to use them, please check the links under Statistics.
Deliverability Insights allows you to assess how well your email is reaching target inboxes at a higher level. Email deliverability is a discipline that combines analysis with strategic actions that improve inbox performance. We share more about deliverability below, but reviewing the statistics featured in Deliverability Insights will be a good way to start.
Twilio SendGrid offers Category Statistics and Unique Arguments so that you can track your email program in the ways that are most meaningful to you. Categories can be assigned to a campaign, allowing you to track performance for an event, product launch, or similar send. Unique Arguments are unlimited and allow you to dig into individual messages to track more granular data.
Setting alerts, such as usage limits and click or spam reports, allows you to proactively stay informed about how your email is performing. Alerts are sent on your chosen cadence to key members on your team.
Navigate to the linked documentation and resources below to complete the actions in this step.
Action | Requirement Level |
---|---|
Integrate with the Event Webhook | Recommended |
Configure the Event Webhook Security Features | Recommended |
Understand email events and data | Recommended |
Enable global email statistics in the API | Recommended |
Start retrieving your bounce rates using the API | Recommended |
Read about Category Statistics vs Unique Arguments | Recommended |
Learn about working with Categories | Recommended |
Learn about working with Unique Arguments | Recommended |
Get familiar with the Email Activity Feed | Recommended |
Get familiar with the Deliverability Insights dashboard | Recommended |
Configure Alerts | Optional |
With your email application up and running, you can focus on developing a strong campaign strategy and good content. Reading through the following Twilio SendGrid articles and resources may help your team hone your email templates and creative approach to make your email program thrive.
Navigate to the linked documentation and resources below to complete the actions in this step.
Action | Requirement Level |
---|---|
Learn about how to write better emails | Recommended |
Review what influences email opens and clicks | Recommended |
Review how to send with dynamic transactional templates | Recommended |
Review how to use handlebar templating language in your email templates | Optional |
Get familiar with cross-platform email design | Recommended |
The term deliverability refers to the practice of sending emails that arrive in your recipients' inboxes as intended. Good deliverability strategies will lessen the likelihood that your email will get sent to spam or be blocked by inbox providers, thus harming your reputation.
Every year, the Twilio SendGrid expert team publishes a deliverability guide. This guide provides strategies for improving how you monitor and manage your email program. As previously mentioned, Deliverability Insights will be a great tool for tracking important metrics such as bounce and block classifications.
Twilio SendGrid does not offer services that help you track the reputation of your IPs and domains. Reputation monitoring is a best practice and your team can employ 3rd party services for this purpose.
Here are some options you could consider:
Changes to your recipient lists are inevitable once your email campaigns are up and running. As you built your application in the previous milestone, you may have already learned about and planned for suppressions. But, as time goes on, your team may need reminders and reeducation around these concepts. Properly managed lists will improve your reputation with mailbox providers and recipients.
Navigate to the linked documentation and resources below to complete the actions in this step.
Action | Requirement Level |
---|---|
Read through the Deliverability Guide | Recommended |
Learn about Bounce and Block Classifications | Recommended |
Read through the Blocks Documentation | Recommended |
Read through the Bounce Documentation | Recommended |
Review Twilio SendGrid Suppressions | Recommended |
Get familiar with Unsubscribe Groups | Recommended |
Create and Manage Unsubscribe Groups | Recommended |
Now that you have completed onboarding, the continued work of developing your email program begins. To jump-start a long term practice of optimizing your email, you should have:
Congratulations on making it this far in the onboarding process! If you need help with onboarding or deliverability, Twilio Professional Services can help. Our Professional Services team provides guidance on how to maintain or improve domain and IP reputation, enhance message content, configure dedicated IPs, create a custom IP warmup plan, and more. Contact us for more information.