How To Improve Email Deliverability

What is Email Deliverability?

Email deliverability is the rate at which electronic mail actually reaches its intended audience. It differs from email delivery, which confirms the message left the server. Email delivery is also the percentage or the number of emails that didn't bounce. Email deliverability is more nuanced. In addition to bounce rates, it determines if the message makes it through the spam filters.

High email deliverability is crucial for a company's marketing and sales teams. With email generating a $36 return on every marketing dollar invested, ensuring that emails reach the correct inbox is paramount.

Email deliverability acts as the crucial middle ground between sending emails and sparking audience engagement. If the emails don't land on the primary inboxes, relevant content, great deals, or crucial updates will never reach your target audience. A low email deliverability rate means wasted resources and missed opportunities.

Moreover, good email deliverability circumvents bulk-sending challenges. Managing deliverability becomes more critical for companies sending high volumes of emails. Balancing the need to reach a large audience while maintaining a positive sender reputation requires a strategic approach.

Check out our latest Email Deliverability Guide.

Email deliverability comprises:

Identification and Technical Aspects

Proper identification establishes your legitimacy as a sender and builds trust with email service providers. Your name and email address should be correct and authenticated.

Three email authentication protocols authenticate your "sender ID" to combat fraud and improve email deliverability. Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) verify your authorization to send emails from your domain. This helps prevent spoofing or others disguising their emails as yours.

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, & Conformance (DMARC) is the other more advanced protocol. It both authenticates your emails and injunctions how email providers manage unauthorized emails claiming to be from your domain. This strengthens your defense against spammers and protects your brand reputation.

Infrastructure

While identification is fundamental, email deliverability heavily relies on behind-the-scenes infrastructure. Mail servers, Main Transfer Agents, and IP addresses work together to ensure your emails reach their destination.

Mail servers store, forward, and receive emails. On the other hand, Mail Transfer Agents navigate the internet highways to get your email closer to its final destination. The IP address associated with your outgoing email significantly impacts deliverability. Businesses should have a dedicated IP that provides robust and seamless email infrastructure. Shared IPs, often used by free email providers, can be flagged as spam due to the actions of other users.

Reputation

Your sender reputation reflects your credibility and heavily influences where your emails land. For every email you send, the ISP grades how recipients respond to your message. Varying from 0 to 100, a Sender Score represents your sending reputation.

A lower Sender Score may mean the recipients are marking your email as spam or unsubscribing from your content. It can also mean sending emails to unengaged or invalid addresses that can severely damage your reputation. A higher Sender Score indicates a favorable reputation. Engagement from recipients tells email providers you're sending valuable content.

Content

Your email's subject line and content are vital in increasing credibility, authority, and engagement. Words and phrases like "free," "claim now," or even the seemingly harmless "click here" in your subject line or context can trigger spam alerts.

To avoid spammy language, focus on the value of the message without sounding pushy or gimmicky.

Email Deliverability Best Practices

Below are some crucial ways to improve email deliverability.

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1. Choose a professional ESP

The right Email Service Provider (ESP) can help you achieve optimal email marketing results. Google and Yahoo provide free email services, but spam algorithms often flag these providers when bulk emailing customers.

Also, free ESPs commonly use shared IP addresses for all their users. This means the actions of a single sender with poor practices can negatively impact the reputation of the entire IP pool. This can block or filter your emails, even if you maintain a clean sending record.

Professional ESPs, on the other hand, are intended for bulk emails. They can enhance your email deliverability by providing dedicated IP addresses or pools with a proven track record. This ensures that others' actions don't tarnish your sender reputation.

Leading ESPs also implement robust authentication protocols to verify your legitimacy as a sender. They offer advanced tools and analytics to track your email-sending performance so you can optimize your campaigns for maximum deliverability.

2. Maintain clean email lists

Cultivating a healthy email list helps you improve email deliverability. Start by identifying and removing hard bounces or permanently invalid email addresses. High bounce rates can prompt spam filters to tag your emails as spam and damage your sender's reputation.

Check inactive subscribers, too. A subscriber stops engaging with your emails for many reasons. You can try to re-engage them a few times to win them back. Offer exclusive content or discounts to revive their interests and maintain an engaged list. Removing them from your list will be beneficial if they remain inactive after re-engagement attempts.

Segmentation is critical to having a clean email list. Segment your target audience based on demographics, geography, interests, engagement levels, purchase history, consumer habits, lifecycle stage, and more. This enables you to send highly relevant content that resonates with specific audience segments, which fosters engagement and reduces unsubscribes.

3. Ask permission

Asking permission is ethical and ensures you're targeting the right people. Provide avenues where they seek your message. You can put a sign-up form on your website, add a link to your social channels, or offer valuable content, such as an eBook, in exchange for their email addresses.

Take permission a step further by implementing double opt-in. This process requires users to confirm their email address after signing up, verify its validity, and ensure they genuinely want to receive your messages. This improves list quality and reduces the chances of hard bounces.

4. Make unsubscribing easy

If subscribers aren't interacting with you now, even after trying to re-engage them, they probably won't in the future. Making it difficult to unsubscribe can lead them to mark your emails as spam, significantly hurting your deliverability.

Let them know that if they prefer to opt-out, they can do so easily. Add a clear unsubscribe link in all your emails, and make sure there's enough white space so they click the correct link. It's also wise to add a preference center on the opt-out page. Sometimes, subscribers only want periodical updates or unique content, like exclusive deals—not your entire email marketing campaign. Give them the option to choose the content they wish to receive and how often they want it in their inbox.

But if they prefer to unsubscribe completely, make it easier for them to avoid the chances of spam complaints.

5. Optimize your emails for mobile

About 57% of marketers plan to implement a mobile-friendly design in their email campaigns because several people use their phones to check their emails.

Optimize your preheader text for mobile screens. A cut or improperly designed snippet can discourage readers from opening the email. Ensure your emails are displayed flawlessly across smartphones and tablets so recipients don't get frustrated and delete them without reading.

Wrap Up

There are many ways and best practices to increase email deliverability. Following a schedule to avoid bombarding your subscribers with content and prioritizing mobile optimization can do wonders. Tracking your email performance and giving importance to data are also valuable routines.

The point is that there is no shortage of email deliverability best practices. Audit all aspects of your email campaign and identify areas that need improvement. Adapt the best practices above and mix them with other methods to see which combo works best to improve your email deliverability rate.

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