Email deliverability, or the ability of your emails to effectively reach the recipient’s inbox, is a crucial component of email marketing. Low email deliverability might cause your messages to land in spam folders or be rejected by email servers, which will lower engagement and conversion rates. It’s crucial to adhere to email deliverability best practices if you want to be sure that your emails reach their intended recipients. In this blog, we will outline 20 best practices to help you achieve high email deliverability rates.
But first,
What Does Email Deliverability Mean?
The ability of an email to effectively reach its intended recipient’s inbox without being banned or filtered out by spam filters is known as email deliverability. It is a critical aspect of email marketing as it determines whether your emails are actually being delivered and seen by your recipients, or if they are being marked as spam, bounced, or filtered into the junk folder.
Email deliverability is influenced by a number of variables, including the sender’s standing, the email’s quality, the recipient’s email server settings, and compliance with email laws. It’s crucial to realize that email deliverability depends on the recipient’s email service provider and its spam filtering algorithms as well as on you as the sender.
Factors Affecting Email Deliverability
Several factors can affect the deliverability of your emails. These include
Sender Reputation
Deliverability can be greatly impacted by the reputation of the IP address and domain name used to send emails. Emails may be prohibited or screened as spam if the sender has a bad sender reputation, such as being reported as a spammer, having a history of high bounce rates, or receiving spam complaints.
Email List Quality
Deliverability can also be impacted by the caliber of your email list, which may contain incorrect or inactive email addresses, spam traps, and disinterested subscribers. Your sender reputation may suffer if you send emails to email lists that have not been validated or that you have purchased. This can lead to higher bounce rates and spam complaints.
Email Content and Design
Deliverability can be impacted by the text and layout of your emails, including the usage of spam-trap terms, a lot of graphics or links, and improper formatting. Spam filters are more likely to catch emails that have been flagged as spam or that are poorly crafted.
Email Authentication
SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication procedures, when properly implemented, can assist to establish the legitimacy of your email and increase deliverability. These procedures give an extra degree of protection and validation, assisting mailbox providers in confirming the validity of your emails.
Bounces and Unsubscribes
Maintaining strong deliverability requires effectively handling bounces and unsubscribes. Deliverability rates can be reduced, and your sender reputation may be harmed, if you have high bounce rates and don’t heed unsubscribe requests.
Subscriber Engagement
It’s essential to keep your subscribers interested in your emails if you want to keep a high deliverability rate. Using personalization, segmentation, and customisation strategies, together with calls to action (CTAs) that encourage reader involvement with your emails, can assist increase subscriber engagement and, ultimately, email deliverability.
Best Practices for Improving Email Deliverability?
Successful email marketing initiatives depend on email deliverability. It refers to your email’s capacity to bypass spam filters and not be blocked by email service providers (ESPs) in order to reach the inboxes of your intended recipients. Here are the top 20 email deliverability best practices
1. Use a Professional Email Service Provider (ESP)
Partner with a reputable ESP that specializes in email deliverability.
A professional ESP will have the necessary infrastructure, tools, and expertise to optimize your email deliverability rates and ensure your emails reach the inbox of your recipients.
2. Build and Maintain a Quality Email List
Concentrate on developing a strong email list of engaged customers who have specifically chosen to receive communications from you. Maintain a regular list cleaning process to get rid of spam traps, inactive subscribers, and incorrect email addresses.
To send personalized and pertinent emails, divide your list into segments depending on the preferences, actions, and demographics of your subscribers.
3. Implement Double Opt-In
Double-opt-in procedures should be used to verify and validate new subscribers. This makes it possible to confirm the validity of the email addresses on your list and the express consent of the receivers to receive emails from you.
4. Use Permission-Based Email Marketing
Send emails only to individuals who have specifically agreed to receive correspondence from you.
Purchase or rental of email lists should be avoided since it may lead to high bounce rates, spam complaints, and harm to your sender reputation.
5. Optimize Email Content and Design
Create personalized, pertinent, and well-designed email content that is interesting and valuable.
In your emails, stay away from words that cause spam, too many graphics, and links. Utilize a responsive design and mobile-friendly formatting in your emails. To ensure optimal display, test your emails on various email clients and mobile devices.
6. Personalize and Segment Emails
To create emails that are tailored to the interests and preferences of your readers, use personalization and segmentation strategies.
Your email deliverability rates may increase if your emails are personalized and segmented since they are more likely to be opened and interacted with.
7. Use Relevant and Consistent Sender Name and Email Address
In your emails, make sure to provide an identifiable and consistent sender name and email address.
This lowers the likelihood that your emails will be classified as spam and aids receivers in recognizing them as genuine and reliable.
8. Avoid Spam Triggers
Do not employ spamming techniques that can be detected by spam filters, such as overuse of capitalization, repeated exclamation points, or deceptive subject lines.
Build trust with your recipients by being open and truthful in your email content and subject lines to increase email deliverability.
9. Authenticate Your Emails
Implement email authentication standards including DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and SPF (Sender Policy Framework) correctly.
These methods check the validity of your emails and aid in the defense against spoofing and phishing attempts.
10. Monitor and Analyze Email Performance
Review and analyze your email’s performance indicators on a regular basis, paying particular attention to bounce rates, spam complaints, and open and click-through rates. Utilize this information to locate and resolve any problems that might be affecting the delivery of your emails.
Adapt your email approach and content in light of the performance analysis’s findings.
11. Monitor Sender Reputation
Email deliverability greatly depends on your sender reputation. Keep an eye on your sending reputation score, or sender score, on a regular basis, and take action to raise it if necessary.
Sending emails to engaged and interested subscribers, abstaining from spamming techniques, and adhering to email authentication rules will help you establish a positive sender reputation.
12. Honour Unsubscribe Requests Promptly
Include an easy-to-find unsubscribe option in your emails, and promptly comply with requests to be removed.
Failure to do so may lead to spam complaints from recipients who have opted out, which may have a detrimental effect on your email deliverability ratings.
13. Manage Bounces Effectively
Emails that are returned as undeliverable are referred to as bounced emails. Keep an eye on your bounce rates and classify them as soft or hard bounces (permanent or temporary delivery failures).
Keep your email list clean by regularly eliminating bounced addresses because high bounce rates might affect your sender reputation and email deliverability.
14. Control Email Frequency
Pay attention to how frequently you email your subscribers. Email deliverability may be negatively impacted by sending emails too frequently due to high unsubscribe rates, spam complaints, and lower engagement.
Understanding your audience’s preferences and behavior will help you strike the proper balance when you adjust your email frequency.
15. Follow CAN-SPAM Regulations
Comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, which is a law that sets rules for commercial emails, including requirements for sender identification, opt-out options, and clear subject lines.
Ensuring compliance with CAN-SPAM regulations helps build trust with your recipients and demonstrates your commitment to ethical email marketing practices.
16. Monitor Blacklists
Check frequently to see if any of the major anti-spam organizations have blacklisted your domain or IP address. Because many email service providers and spam filters use blacklists to block or filter out emails, being blacklisted can have a significant negative impact on how well your emails are delivered.
If you discover that you have been banned, act right away to figure out what’s going on and fix it.
17. Test and Optimize Email Deliverability
To find and resolve any problems that might be influencing your email deliverability rates, use tools and services for email deliverability testing.
These tools can assist you in locating issues like invalid authentication attempts, spamming content, or blacklisting and offer suggestions for enhancing email deliverability.
18. Monitor Feedback Loops
Feedback loops are mechanisms that allow you to receive feedback from ISPs (Internet Service Providers) regarding recipients who mark your emails as spam.
Monitoring feedback loops can help you identify and address any complaints or issues that recipients may have with your emails, and prevent further complaints or deliverability issues.
19. Use a Dedicated IP Address
Consider having a dedicated IP address for your email marketing efforts if you have a lot of emails to send. Since it is not shared with other senders, a dedicated IP address gives you more control over your sender reputation.
However, to keep a good sender reputation, it also needs careful monitoring and management.
20. Stay Updated with Industry Best Practices
Best practises for email delivery are continuously changing, so it’s critical to keep up with the most recent industry standards and recommendations.
To keep up with changes in email deliverability best practices and incorporate them into your email marketing plan, subscribe to credible sources like industry blogs, forums, and newsletters.
Conclusion
A crucial component of effective email marketing efforts is guaranteeing email deliverability.
Using a reputable ESP, creating a quality email list, implementing double opt-in, optimising email content and design, personalising and segmenting emails, using pertinent sender names and email addresses, avoiding spam triggers, authenticating your emails, managing bounces, limiting email frequency, adhering to CAN-SPAM regulations, monitoring blacklists, testing and optimising email
To be successful and guarantee that your emails continue to land in the inboxes of your intended recipients, remember to periodically assess and improve your email marketing plan.
If you are looking for automated email marketing services, whether it is campaigns for awareness, lead generation, or sustained engagement with prospects, Xenia’s email marketing campaign services make it easy for you. At Xenia, an email marketing agency in Pune, we manage end-to-end email marketing campaigns for your business, enabling you to achieve your business objectives. We track and monitor to the last level of detail so that you know what is delivering the results.