Deliverability is the ultimate test of your email campaigns. Notwithstanding the time and money you spent in building a rock-solid campaign, it’s all to no purpose if emails are undelivered. It’s not just a waste of resources; it’s a downgrading of your reputation as a brand.
Poor deliverability continues to be a major snag for many brands. The solution? You may either need to revisit your entire deliverability infrastructure or simply lighten the HTML weight of your customized email templates. In this post, we will look at all the possible reasons why your emails are not getting through. Let’s get started!
12 Email Deliverability Best Practices
1. Get to The Root: Check Your Mailing List
You would be right in thinking along the lines of content, IP reputation, bounces, etc. all of which play a role in deliverability.
But first and foremost, you must get to the root of the matter: your mailing list. Might your list contain purchased or harvested addresses? Are you sure you’re not sending emails to non-existent recipients? Ask yourself these questions.
2. Take A Fresh Look at Your Email Content
If you are satisfied with the health of your mailing list, revisit your email content. Maybe there’s something wrong with your subject line and body copy.
Before creating a business email, bear in mind that a scroll-stopping subject line and an equally compelling, satisfying, and relevant email content foster credibility.
Now it’s important to realize that ISPs no longer limit their inspection to certain keywords; spam filters look at the URLs in your message, the HTML code, image-to-text ratio, as well as spammy keywords. Our advice? Run an exhaustive spam test before sending out your email.
Get inspired from Email Marketing Examples.
3. Reduce The HTML Weight of Your Emails
The HTML weight of an email is a critical factor when it comes to email deliverability. Generally, the richer the HTML content of your email, the likelier it is for email service providers or ESPs to view it as aggressive commercial messages.
Which is why many marketers are increasingly turning to “sparse” emails. Fewer images, fewer links, fewer symbolic elements, no videos, lighter shades – these ought to govern your strategy as an email marketer. Because a majority of your subscribers will open your email on a mobile device, a lighter email would be more appropriate. So, simply lighten the HTML weight of your customized email templates.
But if you must use dense emails, ensure bug-free coding, and provide a plain-text version for every HTML-rich message.
4. Are You Sure You Include an Unsubscribe Link?
If your email doesn’t have an unsubscribe link, you are a spammer. No two views about it! More often than not, certain marketers tend to hide the link in a bid to cling to subscribers.
However, if your subscribers feel you are forcing your way into their inboxes, the complaint rate will shoot up, further hurting deliverability. Make sure that your email is fully CAN-SPAM-compliant. Include your physical mailing address and contact details in the footer.
5. Take Measures to Reduce Your Complaint Rate
Too many people unsubscribing from your email newsletter is not a good sign. Each time a recipient marks your email as “spam,” it's a new complaint registered against you. If the complaint rate shoots past the limit, all your future emails will be automatically routed to spam.
What this means is that notwithstanding the general eligibility of your email, mailbox service providers will just not accept it as legitimate.
In order to avoid such a scenario, only send your emails to those subscribers who have specifically requested to receive your messages. This brings us back to acquisition. Consider using an opt-in method to capture subscribers.
If possible, ask your subscribers to add your email address to their whitelist for immediate recognition whenever they receive an email from you.
6. Make Sure Your Emails Are Not Long-winded
Too much copy is a pirate flag. Even if you send emails to interested subscribers, they cannot be compelled to read long emails. The inbox is already a crowded space.
How do you write short emails? Try the colloquial format. Write in a conversational tone. But if you must write long emails, consider breaking them up into paragraphs and bullet points.
7. Use Your Brand Name in The “From” Field
It’s a good practice to include your brand name in the “From” field of your email address, instead of using general commercial phrases, like Sales Department, Customer Support, etc.
People relate spontaneously to brands. So a “From” field without a brand name is suspicious.
Another critical point to keep in mind: never use a no-reply email address. This is because certain ESPs tend to transfer such addresses to the spam folder.
Besides, it’s not a good email marketing practice to disable your brand loyalists from replying to your emails. If you do it often, your recipients may modify their security settings so that all such emails are automatically routed to spam.
8. Avoid Attaching Files to Your Emails
When sending a cold email to your recipients, it is not a good practice to include file attachments. It is quite off-putting. Users naturally tend to view such emails as spam.
If you need to add an attachment, upload it on your website and place a corresponding call-to-action button within your email. That’s the proper way of doing it. It will not only minimize your email’s vulnerability to being flagged as spam, but significantly reduce the load time of your email as well, which is a major plus.
Related Read: 12 Email Marketing Strategies
9. Keep Tabs on The Reputation of Your IP Address
You need to keep watch over your sender’s reputation. If you are sending emails from a sender with a poor reputation, chances are your emails will not be delivered.
How to check the reputation of your sender’s IP address? And how often?
There are many websites that allow you to check your sender’s reputation. DNSchecker.org is perhaps the most popular one. Check to see if you are on any blacklist. Feel free to monitor sender reputation once every two weeks. More often is also fine.
10. Make Sure to Authenticate Your Emails
Many ISPs use authentication checks to identify spammers. Therefore, it is an unmissable step. Authentication nips forged messages in the bud, guarding your sender reputation.
Now there are many ways to authenticate your email, including SPF, DMARC, DKIM, rDNS, and so on. The use of these authentication checks will also vary from one ISP to the next. Our advice would be to have all known authentication methods set up from your end.
11. Select The Right Email Service Provider
So much of email deliverability depends on the quality of your email service provider. Both large and small service providers come with their respective pros and cons.
For instance, if you choose a large ESP, your emails may get flagged thanks to the sheer volume of emails these ESPs send out. On the other hand, smaller vendors struggle with tardy troubleshooting. The best way to judge ESPs is to do a comparative study.
Test different service providers by creating free accounts with each one of them. Then compare the test results and see which ESP scores the highest.
N.B. Don’t fall for vendors that claim 100% delivery rate. You want to compare their claims with their inbox placement rates.
12. Keep Abreast of Ever-Evolving Spam Filters
IP filters technology is always evolving. If you are a responsible email marketer, you will stay updated on the latest compliance laws, anti-spam filters, ISP behavior, and so on.
To that end, it’s a good idea to interface from time to time with your company’s legal team. Instead of functioning in departmental silos and missing out on important upgrades, liaise with your legal eagles to prevent unwittingly overstepping your boundaries as a marketer.
Wrapping Up
Email deliverability is not straightforward. However, if you are incorporating best practices into your campaigns and using a robust email infrastructure, you are good to go.
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