Email marketing, just like any other part of the marketing mix, might look overwhelming at times, especially if you're just starting your journey. We are all reaching for the maximum ROI, and high deliverability plays an essential part in it. Otherwise, recipients won't even have a chance to see your emails, no matter how relevant and well-crafted. Most marketers know that email texts can be engaging and magnetic, or boring, irrelevant, or simply so spammy they would be filtered to a junk folder. That is why in this article we're not going to talk about the email content. We will concentrate on email deliverability aspects many dismiss as unimportant or simply don't know about, but these aspects can significantly improve your chances to land in the inbox.
Delivery vs Deliverability
Let's get the terms right first. It is a common mistake to take email delivery for its deliverability. If you use an ESP (Email Service Provider), after sending out your email campaign you will see as the number of delivered emails grows and grows, and leaves you pretty happy with the results.
Unfortunately, this is not the number you're looking for. Why?
The delivery rate simply shows you the number of emails that did not bounce back. They could land in the inbox, promotional tabs, spam, or simply be lost on the way.
E.g. You have sent out 14 000 emails, and 12 500 were delivered.
12 500 delivered emails ÷ 14 000 total emails sent * 100 = 89% delivery rate.
Email deliverability, on the other hand, is the ability of an email to reach the recipient's inbox. The deliverability rate shows how many emails land in the inbox out of all the emails sent.
E.g. 10 000 emails that landed in the inbox ÷ 14 000 total emails sent * 100 = 71% deliverability rate.
So you see, the actual difference can be significant.
Since there is always a place for improvement, let's look at the top-priority email aspects you should take care of.
Tip #1 Keep Email List Squeaky Clean
Your email list is the base on which you build everything else. It is very important to remember that if you are not following the best practices with the email list, you most probably won't achieve the desired result.
Grow email list organically. There is nothing worse than hitting a spam trap while sending out your email campaign. And this is only one of many downsides of purchasing or harvesting email addresses. You can also get spikes in bounce rate, spam rate, complaint rate. In addition, people from a purchased email list most probably are not even your target audience and the results from such a campaign would be disappointing compared to emails sent to the interested and engaged audience.
Choose a confirmed opt-in method. This is an opt-in method that requires one more step to make sure the person agrees to receive emails from you. Yes, it is longer, and not every user will follow through with it. But quality is better than quantity. Some might argue that the CAN-SPAM act, for example, does not require opt-in at all. But what you should remember is that any recipient is one click away from hitting the 'this is spam' button when they see your email. And they don't really care if you are allowed by the law to send commercial emails - their actions will influence your deliverability.
Regularly clean email list. As it grows, you will have engaged and unengaged subscribers. You will also inevitably accumulate role accounts (e.g. sales@, support@) and emails with typos (e.g. @gnail instead of @gmail). All these emails will clutter your list, increasing bounces and complaints from people who have long forgotten they've subscribed for your emails. Also, remember that the mailbox providers look at their users' behavior towards your messages, and a big unengaged segment will indicate that your emails are not relevant, decreasing deliverability.
Tip #2 Take Care of Your Sender Reputation
Sender Reputation is the score mailbox providers assign to you according to your email-sending behavior. You can check it at SenderScore. Here are basic things to take care of for a good reputation:
Run regular IP blacklist checks. Email blacklisting is a large topic in itself, but here is what's important to remember. There are blacklists that do not have an effect on your deliverability, and there are false positives - situations where you are not at fault for being blacklisted. However, there are also blacklists that harm deliverability quite significantly and there are blacklists that do not notify you about your blacklisting. In this case, inbox placement will drop without you knowing it or understanding the reason behind it. It is highly recommended to run blacklist checks. The good news you can adjust them to run automatically, and only receive notifications when something goes wrong.
Monitor bounce and complaint rate. A bounce happens when an email cannot be delivered to the recipient. It can be a temporary thing - soft bounce - for example when the recipient's mailbox is full, or a hard bounce - when an email was trying to get to a non-existing email address. Hard bounces are the ones you should worry about: as soon as they happen you should delete these email addresses.
Always warm up IP addresses and domains. IP address warmup is a process used for new IPs: slowly growing the number of emails sent. This process is important for your sender reputation because the new IP has no history of traffic, and mailbox providers do not know what to expect of it. If you send out a major email blast, providers can mistakenly take you for a spammer. That's why slow and steady growth of emails sent is the best strategy for a new IP.
Tip #3 Authenticate Your Emails
Email authentication is a technical part of your email marketing that needs to be taken care of. In 2021 mailbox providers pay more attention to what their users receive, partially due to phishing attacks spike related to COVID-19. And although the primary reason for email authentication is to protect the sender and the recipient from malicious actors, it also has an impact on email deliverability. When your emails authenticate, mailbox providers have more trust in your identity, and your emails have more chances to land in the inbox.
There are three widely used authentication protocols: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. These protocols are not ideal and have their weak sides, that is why it is recommended to implement all three for the higher level of protection.
Having DMARC implemented on your domain also gives you an opportunity to get more attention, trust, and brand recognition in 2021 with a new BIMI standard. So far BIMI is supported by Google, Verizon's AOL and Netscape, and Yahoo! but it is already a trend and it's picking up steadily.
Tip #4 Test Emails Before Sending
By testing emails here we don't mean A/B testing of content or a subject (which is also a good idea). But what we want to emphasize is the importance of deliverability testing, or commonly known as spam testing. It gives you great insights into where your emails will be delivered so you could improve them before launching the campaign.
There are many third-party tools that offer spam testing, but they are not created equal and we would recommend trying more complex ones, not just those testing content and subject lines for common spammy words. For example, GlockApps spam test offers full diagnostics, including your spam score, authentication records, IP blacklistings, HTML code, links and images, headers, and footers. They also provide you with actionable steps you can follow to make your email better and increase your chances of landing in the inbox.
Takeaway
A lot has been said on the importance of email content, while other aspects of email deliverability are being overlooked. To keep landing in the inbox it is important to take care of your sender reputation, keep email list clean and ditch the practice of buying or scraping email addresses, implement three commonly used email authentication protocols: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, and never forget spending 5 more minutes to test email inbox placement before sending out your email campaign.
When it comes to email deliverability, we can accomplish much more than we think we can, if we truly commit to following best practices.
