In today’s digital landscape, email is one of the most popular and cost-effective ways to reach your target audience. In fact, email marketing is one of the top online marketing tactics of email marketers or business owners because it has an ROI of nearly double that of social media marketing.
However, just because your company uses email as a primary communication tool doesn’t mean that your newsletters are reaching their intended audience or it lands to your recipient’s inbox. In fact, many email marketers find that their emails are getting caught in spam filters or ending up in user spam folder.
This indicates a problem with your email deliverability rate. To get more people reading your emails and fewer deleting them without opening, you need to improve your email deliverability rate by following these tips:
1. Send from a dedicated IP address
There’s too much spam out there and filters monitor emails to make sure they’re not junk. The easiest way to communicate is to put your IP addresses on the sender’s address line, right after your email address.
Start any email campaign by sending small batches of emails from your email service provider. Send these messages to addresses that you know are engaged. As these emails are received and opened, your IP will grow more trust with the internet service providers used and able to avoid spam messages from any email delivery.
2. Register a subdomain and use it only for email activity.
If you do this, you might want to create a different subdomain for your email marketing, so that users can have another channel from which to access your company’s content. Over time, people may come to trust the subdomain and that could be a really good thing for branding.
By creating a subdomain, your sender’s IP address reputation can be monitored and will also be able to get through some spam filters that are based on the subdomain.
3. Implement a sender policy framework that can increase your email deliverability rate.
Having an SPF makes you more trustworthy to receive emails. The reception server can do a domain check with the IP address to verify your sender and make sure it’s trusted. If you don’t have an SPF in place, get one now at Mail Monitor!
4. Check your sender reputation while avoiding spam traps.
Most people don’t realize this, but the sender score of an email is one of the most important factors in an email deliverability. If you fall below a certain level, senders internet service providers will reject your email automatically due to them not wanting their reputation to be tarnished by sending out spam.
Return Path is the company that produces Sender Score. It assigns a score to mail servers based on traditional email metrics such as unsubscribes and spam reports. All the major email service providers are using advancements in email deliverability tool protection to make sure that your email account or business email will never be compromised.
The spam filters act serves as the first line of defense, analyzing incoming emails, spam subject lines and allowing the good ones to reach your inbox improving your email deliverability rate while anything suspicious are filtered into your spam folder.
5. Check feedback loops.
Most large ISPs have complaint loops which allow the sender to get feedback from the people who complained about their email affecting the sender reputation if IP address are being detected. These are called Complaint Feedback Loops or FBLs.
Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft make it easy to get this information. Gmail allows users to set a Feedback Loop header that does not use the traditional ARF format of most FBLs. Marketers tries to find new ways to grab the attention of their audience and stand out in a competitive landscape when sending out an email using their own email service provider. They know that well-crafted subject lines and readable content helps them not only get clicks, but also boosts the reputation of their business if their email deliverability is high.
Spam filter also assess the subject line, header and content of emails. One of the aspects they are on the lookout for is whether the email is in HTML or plain text version, if it contains any unsupported HTML code such as scripts or forms and whether embedded images are present that can affect the sender reputation especially those that are just email spoofing to their recipient.
Before you press send on your email, make sure to do an email deliverability check first and professional subject line. This will help keep your emails out of the spam folder. You can also preview your message to see if any words were flagged as suspicious by any algorithm in addition to making sure that nothing is hidden in attachments or images that affects email deliverability.
6. Stick to a consistent schedule and create a preference center.
Having a low email deliverability rate or having emails rejected from email service providers can be caused by broadcasting spammy content with no regular schedule. This will also affect the sender reputation especially when sending too many messages in one setting that can lead to a bigger chance to be rejected and reduce email deliverability. Always maintain a high email deliverability by creating a preferred schedule when sending your email newsletter.
One of the best ways to build trust with your subscribers is to allow them to:
– decide which channels they prefer to be contacted on (SMS, push notifications, email),
– which subjects they’re interested in,
– the types of messages,
– and the frequency coming from email service providers.
As a responsible sender, you’re obligated to ensure that your emails haven’t been blocked by the recipient spam filters and in order to do so, it’s important to include an “unsubscribe” link in every email. This way you can maintain a good sender reputation score and ease for recipients if they want to click on subscribe or unsubscribe link.
7. Purge your list while using a double opt in or confirmed opt-in.
The most popular form of opt-in is single opt-in and double opt in, where users agree to an email by simply checking a box, or leaving the pre-checked box checked from the domain keys identified mail. This might seem like a great strategy for harvesting email addresses and offers a degree of automation base on email deliverability. That being said, if it generates too many spam complaints and affect the sender reputation, then the process is counterproductive. Complaints about spam are very dangerous. ISPs may block IP addresses after only a couple of reports from an unacceptable percentage of emails out of a thousand, that is why it is crucial to avoid complaints at any cost that can ruin your email deliverability and being detected from spam traps when doing email campaigns.
The best way to defend against spam complaints and increase the email deliverability rate is to use a double opt-in and a reliable email deliverability tool.
HOW DOES DOUBLE OPT-IN WORKS?
By sending a confirmation email to the subscriber asking them to validate their address and consent, you can make sure your marketing emails reach only relevant people from email campaigns. If you’re sending messages to non-existent recipients, you will also experience higher bounce rates and subsequently destroy your sending credibility while reducing your email deliverability score. Occasionally, remove all inactive recipients by filtering out everybody who hasn’t opened or clicked the emails for several months.
High Hard Bounce Rates can have a negative effect on your email marketing efforts, activate recipient’s inbox spam trap and most of all destroy your email deliverability . You may want to use a service like MailMonitor.com which can help with this issue, a very well know email deliverability service provider.
Furthermore, email deliverability services are able to detect if emails sent are duplicate emails, typos, outdated addresses, IP reputation and other common mistakes which usually lands to the spam folders.
8. Filter contest entry email signups and comply with the law.
The worst type of email lists happen to those created from giveaways or signups. People, true to their nature, will attempt to enter multiple times with fake email addresses that are invalid or unverified. They don’t care about getting on your email address list; all they care about is you purchasing their email list.
If you are using a contest or giveaway to capture email subscribers for your mailbox provider, then you need to double-check the list, use spam trap yourself and validate the addresses before turning it into your subscriber list. You could be on the IP addresses blacklist if you don’t take measures to prevent hard bounces.
Here’s a few tips to help get off it: a preference center that has an unsubscribe button in each email, an option for users to report problems with their delivery from email service providers – and updates on the latest email deliverability issues. CAN-SPAM requires that all unsubscribes are valid, functional and honored within ten business days base on IP address if IP reputation is good including your spam score.
The law requires that you have explicit permission from your users – confirmed opt-in lists are more engaged from the start and will effectively help you build a positive sender reputation for your business and acceptable subscribers inboxes.
Sending emails to people who didn’t give you permission to contact them is considered spamming that result to spam complaints and poor email deliverability. This will cause them to mark your email as spam and ISPs may blacklist you for doing so, which means your emails won’t reach your recipient’s inbox and compromise your email deliverability.
9. Manage Email Lists And Monitor Feedback Loops
Buying email lists is a bad practice when sending legitimate emails, as we’ve witnessed on several businesses who purchase their leads and is not a recommended email deliverability best practices . To have a successful email marketing, you should focus on organically growing your subscriber database with email addresses that are interested and who trust you.
One of the most important things you can do as part of your email deliverability best practices is to find out how clean and update your lists. Finding email addresses that are already interested in the products or services you offer and addressing them allows you to get your message in front of the ones who will actually buy, rather than going for numbers. If the recipient has not engaged with you for 6 months, try sending them a special marketing message while using a reliable email deliverability service to maintain your good spam score. If that does not work, remove them from your list and consider it as inactive subscribers.
By targeting a smaller subset of your total subscribers, you’re increasing your email deliverability relaying relevant message to them. This also entails less bounce rates and avoiding spam traps because you’re only reaching those who are interested in receiving your content. These complaints are not visible but you can sign up for a feedback loop to make it easier for you to spot them – this will allow you to stop sending similar messages in the future.
If you are the sender, you should use feedback loops to listen to your subscribers and secure your inbox placement and their email addresses to avoid any soft bounce. It’s important to learn from the complaints you receive because they can help you evaluate underlying issues
10. Send emails at the right frequency and understand your reputation metrics.
Too many email addresses can hurt your list and too few can mean a decrease in revenue. Using an email deliverability software can help you schedule the right sending mail frequency from your mail server.
So how do you maximize your open rates when using an email deliverability tool? Do you try an A/B test email deliverability? Sending the right amount of emails is key and using an effective email deliverability software. The best way to find out what that amount may be is by conducting an email deliverability test, which can take a lot of time.
ISPs have stated that they look at how many emails are opened, how many abandoned email addresses and how many are deleted without being opened as a factor in their spam filtering decisions especially from a dedicated IP address. Spam filters of an IP address can lead to your marketing emails being marked as spam and affect your inbox placement and destroys domain reputation.
Ready to improve your email deliverability?
Sending an email from a mail server and landing it to the inbox is one of the most important factors you should consider when deciding on an email campaign strategy while maintaining your domain reputation.
The following email marketing deliverability guidelines above have been designed to help you communicate more successfully with email deliverability service providers and improve your email campaign, domain reputation, avoid spam filter, avoid spam traps, avoid spam complaints, maintain good sender reputation score and more.
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Email marketing get sent to the dreaded spam folder because of the lack of email deliverability service. These email deliverability services guarantee a better email delivery and maximize email deliverability score with ISPs.