Maximizing Email Deliverability: The Ultimate Guide with Best Tips & Practices
Pivotal Email Practices All Marketers Need to Know
Email marketing takes a significant portion of a marketer’s time. Crafting compelling copy, designing visually appealing templates, and creating irrefutable subject lines all in hopes of securing the email open and increasing click-through rates. However, successful email marketing pivots on a cornerstone – email deliverability.
In this article, we expound on this vital aspect of email marketing and elucidate how you can increase the delivery rate off your emails to the desired inbox. Topics that we will cover include;
– Defining email deliverability and its importance
– Distinguishing between Email Delivery vs Email Deliverability
– Numerous ways you can improve your email’s delivery and avoid spam traps
– Utilization of Email Deliverability testing tools
So, dive in and explore.
In an analogy, think of sending a letter to a friend without indicating the sender’s name. The recipient may discard the letter due to lack of identification. Similarly, emails can be delivered to the right email address but wind up in spam or promotional folders, out of sight for the recipient.
Often, you may hear the term email deliverability being interchanged with ‘email delivery.’ However, although they both allude to email delivery, they carry discrete differences.
Email Delivery vs. Email Deliverability
Email delivery refers to the count of emails successfully delivered, independent of which folder they land. Essentially, it provides if the recipient’s mail service has accepted the email file and transferred it to the inbox.
To be precise, email delivery calculates the percentage of emails that didn’t bounce from the sent emails.
On the other hand, email deliverability estimates the number of emails that arrived at the desired destination. This is also known as inbox placement. It evaluates the percentage of emails that make it to the priority inbox.
In a scenario where 100 emails are sent, and 33 ended up as spam, the email deliverability rate stands at 66%.
To put it plainly, the distinction between these two terms is:
– Email delivery = The count of emails delivered successfully?
– Email deliverability = The number of emails actually received in the recipient’s inbox?
Delivery issues might stem from faulty email addresses, infrastructure problems, or an influx of negative feedback. Conversely, deliverability dilemmas originate from outdated sending and permission practices, law violations, or being labeled as spam too often.
The Pertinence of Email Deliverability
The importance of email deliverability ultimately is tied to your Return on Investment (ROI). The spending on email can be justified by a return on investment of approximately $36 for each dollar spent. Therefore, if your email delivery rate is roughly 97% for 1,000 sent emails, you’re still looking at 30 emails bouncing back.
Think about the open rates. These can fluctuate around 30% – 40%. One of the primary reasons for minimal open rates is email deliverability.
Emails that end up in promotional folders or spam are usually overlooked, consequently leading to lower open rates.
It’s imperative for email marketers to attain higher open rates. To guarantee this, it is crucial to ensure that every email you send lands in the recipient’s inbox.
Factors That Impact Your Email Deliverability Rate
There isn’t a single factor that influences an email’s deliverability rate.
It is possible that you could be repeating various mistakes or perpetuating a single error that results in your emails being labeled as spam. Fortunately, these factors are under your control and can be rectified by learning from past missteps.
Sender Reputation
Each time an organization or a marketer dispatches an email, the Internet Service Provider (ISP) assigns a sender score based on the recipient’s activities. The scores fall within a range of 0-100.
A lower sender score denotes that more recipients unsubscribe or mark your email as spam, leading to a negative impact on your email deliverability rate.
Email Content
The email subject and content play a critical role in enhancing credibility and engagement. An irresistible email subject line complemented with captivating content will command longer read times and higher open rates.
Ensuring these two components are in place secures your email from being marked as suspicious or being directed to the spam folder.
If you own a high volume of email, you need a dedicated IP that provides a robust and seamless email infrastructure to ensure the smooth journey of your emails.
Spike in Email Volume
Ever felt frustrated at receiving a barrage of emails from the same sender in quick succession? That’s a sentiment shared by many.
Regardless of whether you are running promotional campaigns or launching a product, it is advisable that emails should be sent at fixed intervals. This ensures that the emails heap up in intervals without overwhelming the recipient.
Now that we have an understanding of the components that might affect your email marketing, let’s delve into what you should steer clear from if you desire your messages to be delivered successfully. We’ll also posit proactive steps you can take to enhance your email deliverability rates.
24 Strategies to Evade Sending Spam Emails & Improve Email Deliverability
– Avoid buying or renting email lists: Despite being legal, it’s not a smart move. You’ll end up emailing people who have no monetary or personal investment in your brand leading to your email being tagged as spam.
– Don’t email individuals with multiple bounces: The more hard bounces you acquire, the less likely you will access recipients’ inboxes.
– Avoid usage of all caps in your email or subject line: This screams spam. Aim for personalised emails with engaging language.
– Don’t overuse exclamation points: A single punctuation mark can significantly alter your email’s fate.
– Don’t incorporate video, Flash, or JavaScript within your emails: Include an image of your video player that is linked to the rich media on the website.
– Don’t attach files in your mails: Attachments make your plain text emails seem bloated and laded with unnecessary information. Attachments could also trip the spam alarms in the recipient’s inbox.
– Avoid spam trigger words: Be creative, informative, and engaging with the content of your email.
– Don’t forget to perform a spell check: The proper grammar and spelling go a long way in preserving a good impression with the recipients.
– Don’t stuff your email copy with keywords: Ensure that your email is written for the human recipient and not a robot.
– Avoid overwhelming images or huge images: Stick with smaller file sizes and less usage of imagery to present comprehensive and clean content.
– Ensure your email lists are current and clean: Keep your email lists updated to reduce the possibility of people marking your emails as spam.
– Reengage with inactive subscribers: Devise strategies that rekindle the interest of previous subscribers to boost your deliverability rate.
– Implement double opt-ins for email confirmations: Instituting this measure will reduce email bounce rates.
– Encourage subscribers to add you to their address book: Bypass spam filters by being marked safe by the recipient’s email server.
– Include an evident unsubscribe link and physical address in the footer: Making it easy for users to unsubscribe will maintain a healthy list.
– Use a familiar sender name: Including your brand name in the sender’s name increases the trust and likeliness of the email being opened.
– Provide both an HTML and a plain text version of your emails: Broaden your reach and readability by providing an email that can be read in both formats.
– Allow the recipient to view the email in a web browser: Since all email clients view emails differently, allowing for viewing in the browser ensures that all your content is visible regardless of the email client.
– Include alt text in the images of your email: Since many email clients block images by default, adding alt text can communicate the intended message to alt text readers.
– Maintain a short and clear email: The brevity of the email copy is less likely to cause spam filters to react and also reduces the chance of deterring a potential customer.
– Test your emails before sending them: This step can bolster your reputation with your IP address and improve the sender’s score.
– Secure an email sender accreditation from a third party: This is an extra measure of trust that can bypass email filters for your emails.
– Monitor the reputation of your sender’s IP address: Foster a robust reputation by monitoring your IP address’s reputation.
– Keep abreast with anti-spam laws, spam filters, and IPs filter technology: Arming yourself with knowledge about email laws, ISP behavior and spam filter technology can aid you to avoid pitfalls.
Email Deliverability Test Tools
Using test tools can increase the chances of your email being delivered successfully. These include tools like Mail-Tester.com, Mailtrap.io, Spamcheck, and MxToolBox.
Regardless of its often overlooked importance, email deliverability plays a vital role in the success of your email marketing efforts. Understanding and implementing the right tactics to ensure your emails land in the right inbox goes a long way in realizing a higher ROI from your email marketing strategies.
Ensure that you follow the recommended guidelines and practices to improve your email deliverability, and the results will undoubtedly be worth your while.
Trust in MKTG Plan, the marketing agency renowned for extensive prowess in web design and digital marketing, and the expert in optimizing email deliverability for businesses, allowing them to reap great results from their email marketing strategies consistently. MKTG Plan will ensure that your emails reach the right audience, every time!
Role of Web Design in Email Deliverability
Email deliverability stretches beyond the realms of regular emailing practices. In a rapidly digital world, the design of your email and its compatibility with different platforms plays a critical role in its deliverability. The appearance of your email on a webpage is a significant factor that constitutes successful delivery.
Given the variety of devices used by consumers, from smartphones to tablets and laptops, an email designed to be functional and attractive across these platforms can do wonders for your deliverability rates. Equally, it is integral to ensure that your webpage has a strong web design and user interface. Having an aesthetically pleasing and efficient webpage generates a positive brand image that directly impacts the deliverability of your emails.
In this scenario, employing a marketing agency with a laudable record of web design can considerably improve your email deliverability. MKTG Plan, with its extensive experience in web design, can optimize your business website and email designs, ensuring successful delivery into the desired inbox. They strive to make your emails visually appealing and compatible across digital platforms which is an instrumental checkmark in email deliverability.
SEO and Email Deliverability
The world of Digital Marketing is expansive. Methods which aid one area of digital marketing like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can also inadvertently have beneficial effects on another – such as Email Deliverability. SEO is primarily used to improve the search engine ranking of your webpage. However, optimizing your email with SEO practices serves to increase the reputation of your sender’s IP address. An am