Email deliverability is important for any digital marketer or email marketing professional. It is imperative to guarantee that your emails reach their desired recipients and don’t end up in the junk mail folder.
In this blog post, we’ll explore what exactly email deliverability is, how you can improve it, common mistakes to avoid when sending out campaigns, strategies to get around spam filters and blacklists, tools available for testing delivery rates as well as tips on ensuring high success rates with each campaign sent.
What Is Email Deliverability?
Email deliverability refers to ensuring that emails are delivered successfully and on time from the sender’s server to the recipient’s inbox. It includes a variety of factors, such as IP reputation, email content, sender authentication, and more.
Email deliverability aims to ensure that messages reach their intended recipients without being blocked or filtered out by spam filters or other security measures employed by ISPs (Internet Service Providers).
For an email message to be considered “deliverable,” it must pass all these checks with flying colors to make its way into the recipient’s inbox instead of getting caught in spam traps or, worse yet – deleted outright.
Why Does Email Deliverability Matter?
For businesses relying heavily on email communication with customers and prospects alike, having a high successful delivery rate can mean everything when trying to maximize ROI from marketing campaigns.
Poorly optimized emails can cost you money due to lower open rates and fewer conversions resulting from not reaching your target audience – and engaging them enough, so they take action.
That’s why understanding how your emails perform across different platforms (mobile vs. desktop) and different providers (Gmail vs. Yahoo.) is essential if you want your messages to land in front of those who matter most – potential customers.
The benefits of improving your email deliverability extend beyond just increasing open rates. Better delivery means more customers receive relevant messages at appropriate times, leading to higher engagement and improved ROI for marketers.
Furthermore, it also increases customer satisfaction as recipients feel valued knowing they have received important updates about products/services that are relevant to them, rather than being bombarded with irrelevant offers all day long.
How To Improve Your Email Deliverability?
Ensuring your emails reach their intended recipients and not get blocked or diverted to the spam folder is critical for any business that relies on email communication with customers.
#1. Warm Up Your New IP Address
When you switch ESPs and get a new dedicated IP address, it’s important to slowly warm up that IP address. This means sending emails in small batches and gradually ramping up until you’re sending them to your whole list.
It’s like easing into a cold pool – if you jump right in, the shock can be too much for your body (or ISP).
Start by sending emails to only those on your list who have recently engaged with your content or opened an email from you. If they’ve interacted with you before, they are also more likely to open this one.
You can also segment customers who have not opened any of your emails in the past six months and send them separate campaigns tailored specifically for re-engagement.
This will help build trust with ISPs while giving inactive subscribers another chance to engage with your brand.
Once these smaller groups have been sent mail without any issues, start increasing the size of each batch slightly over time until, eventually all of your contacts receive messages from the new IP address.
As long as there aren’t any delivery problems along the way, ISPs will begin recognizing that this is legitimate traffic coming from a trusted sender rather than spammy activity from an unknown source—which is exactly what we want!
#2. Implement A Sender Policy Framework
It is essential for digital marketers and email marketers to implement a sender policy framework (SPF) in order to ensure their emails are not rejected by the receiving server.
An SPF allows the server to cross check the domain name against its associated IP address. This helps confirm that the source of the email is legitimate. Without an SPF in place, your emails may be blocked or flagged as spam.
Setting up an SPF record can seem intimidating at first but it’s actually quite simple once you understand how it works.
Once everything is in place and configured properly, any emails sent from one of your domains will be put through a gauntlet of authentication checks before arriving at its intended destination. Hence, minimizing the risk that it gets blocked or flagged as spam due to incorrect settings or malicious intent by another entity attempting to imitate your identity on the web.
#3. Stick to a Consistent Send Schedule
A consistent email sending schedule is essential to maintain an effective email marketing strategy and protect your sender score from being penalized by ISPs or IP rejections due to random and erratic broadcast activity.
This helps ensure that you are delivering emails at the right time when they will be seen and opened by recipients instead of getting lost in their inboxes. It also helps build trust with customers who expect to receive emails on a regular basis so they know what to expect from you as well as keep them engaged with your content over time.
#4. Optimizing Your Subject Line And Content
The subject line is one of the most crucial elements when it comes to email deliverability because it’s often used by ISPs to decide whether an email should go into someone’s inbox or not – so make sure yours stands out.
#5. Cleaning Up Your Contact List
Cleaning up your contact list is a key step in improving email deliverability. Start by removing any invalid or inactive addresses from your mailing lists. You can also segment contacts into different groups based on their interests or behaviors so that you can send more relevant messages to each group of people.
This will help reduce the number of unsubscribes and complaints, which can hurt your reputation score with ISPs (Internet Service Providers). Here’s more detail on how to clean your email list.
#6. Optimizing Subject Lines
Optimizing subject lines and content is another way to improve email deliverability. Keep subject lines short but informative so they stand out in crowded inboxes without triggering spam filters.
Make sure the body copy contains keywords related to the topic at hand as well as links back to helpful resources such as blogs or webpages where readers can learn more about the topic being discussed in the message itself.
Additionally, be sure not to use too many images or large attachments since these may cause problems when delivering emails through some ISPs’ networks.
#7. Personalize Your Messages
Personalizing your messages is one of the most important steps in ensuring high delivery rates. By including personalization tags in your emails you can increase open and click-through rates by up to 50%.
This includes adding the recipient’s name or company name into the subject line or body of the message. Additionally, segmenting your list based on interests or past purchase history will help you create more relevant content that resonates with each individual customer.
Common Mistakes That Affect Email Deliverability
Poorly Formatted Emails
One of the most common mistakes that affect email deliverability is sending poorly formatted emails. It’s important to make sure your emails are correctly formatted, as any errors in coding can lead to deliverability issues.
Make sure you use HTML and CSS properly, include ALT tags for images, and test your emails on multiple devices before sending them out.
Using Words Or Phrases That Trigger Spam Filters
To avoid this issue, it’s important to stay away from words like “free” or “guaranteed” in the subject line of your emails. Additionally, don’t use all capital letters or too many exclamation points—these can also trigger spam filters and result in low open rates.
Here is a list of 284 spam trigger words you should avoid improving email deliverability.
Low Sender Score And Reputation
Sender score is a metric created by Validity that measures your email sender reputation as well as how email service providers rate your IP address. It takes into account factors such as the number of spam complaints you receive, the number of unknown or inactive subscribers on your email list, and whether your domain is on any industry blocklists.
If you have a low sender score, you’ll almost certainly have an email deliverability problem.
Not Following Best Practices For Sending Frequency
You should always ensure you’re not over-emailing your subscribers by providing them with content they actually want at a rate they’re comfortable with—otherwise you risk ending up in their junk folder or even getting unsubscribed altogether.
To maximize engagement levels while avoiding potential deliverability issues, make sure you know what type of content resonates best with each segment of your audience so you can tailor messages accordingly and send at an appropriate frequency for each group.
Tools To Help Improve Your Email Deliverability
Email deliverability is a critical component of any successful email marketing campaign. Fortunately, there are several tools available to help businesses ensure their emails reach the intended recipients.
Here are some of the most useful tools for improving your email deliverability:
Email Client and Spam Filter Testing
It’s important to make sure that your emails look good in all popular email clients (e.g., Outlook, Gmail) and don’t get caught up in spam filters. To do this, you can use services like Litmus or Email on Acid which allow you to preview how your emails will appear across different platforms and check if they contain anything that could trigger a spam filter.
Design Analysis Tools
A poorly designed email can be just as detrimental as one with technical issues – it may not even get opened! Services such as MailChimp’s Inbox Inspector provide an analysis of how well-designed your emails are so you can identify areas for improvement before sending them out into the world wide web abyss!
Deliverability Testing Services
These services allow you to test whether or not an individual recipient’s mailbox provider is accepting mail from you by simulating a real-world send scenario without actually sending out an actual message – thus avoiding potential blacklisting issues due to too many sends at once or too quickly after each other..
Popular services include 250ok and GlockApps which offer detailed reports on delivery rates, IP reputation scores, bounce rates etc., helping you determine where improvements need to be made in order for messages to reach their destination successfully every time!
List Cleaning Tools
Having accurate contact information is essential when it comes to ensuring successful delivery rates invalid addresses lead directly towards bounces & rejections from ISPs (Internet Service Providers).
Using list cleaning tools like BriteVerify or NeverBounce helps keep track of valid contacts by verifying each address against various databases & flagging any outdated invalid ones so they can be removed from mailing lists accordingly before being sent out again later down the line!
FAQs About Email Deliverability
Conclusion
Utilizing the right techniques, approaches and information can guarantee that your emails are conveyed productively and arrive at their planned beneficiaries. Taking the time to understand what affects email deliverability will help you make informed decisions about how best to optimize your campaigns for maximum success.
Make sure you’re reaching the right people by testing deliverability and optimizing design for maximum impact.
