Email deliverability is the ability to reach your active subscribers’ inboxes. There are a lot of different factors that determine this, including your sender reputation, authentication, and more.
Using best practices like sending emails over a fixed time interval helps boost deliverability. Also, using content that is relevant to your recipients and following up on their engagement levels positively affects email deliverability.
Reputation
Email deliverability refers to the success of marketing emails reaching their intended recipients. There are a number of factors that determine email deliverability, including sender reputation, content, and infrastructure. Associations should monitor email deliverability metrics regularly to detect drops in performance, and take steps to correct them before they have a negative impact on the bottom line.
The first step in ensuring email deliverability is to build your sender reputation, try using Emails Nest. This is based on how well your organization follows email best practices and what kind of content you send to your subscribers. If your subscribers report your emails as spam or your messages bounce back from unvalidated addresses, your sender reputation will decline, and ISPs may start to flag your communications as unwanted.
You can improve your sender reputation by using authentication tools like DKIM and SPF to verify your emails are legitimate, and sending your subscribers only relevant information. You can also increase your reputation by following an appropriate schedule of how often you send emails to your subscribers, as ISPs expect reputable brands to have consistent communication habits.
Your email content has a major impact on email deliverability, so it’s important to avoid words and phrases that are typically used by spammers. These include all-cap words such as FREE, ACT NOW and CLICK HERE, and punctuation patterns that are similar to other messages reported as spam or junk. You can improve your email content by ensuring it’s relevant to your audience, and by adding personalization to your emails.
The infrastructure of your email campaign is another factor that impacts deliverability, and includes the servers and networks used to store and process your emails. Make sure that your ESP has a good track record and has been accredited by the email industry’s top vendors. You should also look for an ESP that offers whitelisting, which gives your communications higher priority over messages sent by unknown or suspicious senders.
Finally, you should always provide an easy way for your recipients to unsubscribe from your communications. This will reduce your email volume and improve your deliverability by lowering the chance that your messages will be marked as spam or blocked entirely.
Content
Email is an essential part of any marketing strategy, and email deliverability is one of the most important metrics to monitor. Deliverability is the percentage of your emails that reach an active subscriber’s inbox, instead of landing in their junk or spam folder. There are many factors that affect email deliverability, including the size of your lists, how you build your list, and the content of your emails.
A great way to improve email deliverability is to create more personalized emails. This includes subject lines that are more relevant to the recipient, as well as avoiding generic or catchy phrases that may indicate spam mail. It is also helpful to regularly monitor email reports and audience data to ensure that you are sending the right emails to the right people.
Another important factor in email deliverability is how your emails are authenticated and verified. Make sure that your emails are both SPF and DKIM-verified, and that you have set up DMARC records. These measures can help to prevent your emails from being blocked by email services like Gmail or Yahoo. It is also crucial to ensure that your email list is clean and free of inactive subscribers. Inactive subscribers are more likely to flag your emails as spam, which can negatively impact email deliverability.
In addition, it is important to be aware of emerging email deliverability trends. For example, it is increasingly common for ESPs (email service providers) to blacklist marketers who use spammy practices or send emails to unengaged subscribers. Maintaining a high email deliverability rate is key to maximizing your campaign ROI and ensuring customer loyalty.
When you invest in your email deliverability, it will pay dividends. A strong email program will increase brand recognition, drive new business, and grow loyal customers. To maximize your email campaigns, it is crucial to work with an email service provider that understands and implements the latest industry best practices and technologies. Contact Higher Logic for more information on how we can help you reach your target audience, optimize your email deliverability rates, and boost your revenue.
Infrastructure
Email deliverability is a complex and evolving issue. It’s important to keep an eye on metrics like open rate and inbox placement to see how well your campaigns are performing. But it’s also essential to understand how and why emails get flagged or sent to spam folders, so that you can take steps to improve your email delivery.
A variety of factors affect email deliverability, including how you manage your lists and the infrastructure used to send your emails. For example, the IP address that you use to send your emails can play a big role in how inbox service providers, or ISPs, view your brand. Some businesses choose to use a shared IP for all of their outgoing messages, while others opt for a dedicated one. It’s generally a good idea to use a dedicated IP for your email marketing, as it gives you more control over your sending reputation.
Inbox placement rate is another key metric that reveals how much of your email reaches recipients’ primary inboxes, rather than the junk or spam folder. This metric is more specific than open rate and can be a helpful indicator of overall performance. For instance, if you have a high inbox placement rate but low open rate, it could indicate that your subject line isn’t getting clicked on or viewed as relevant by your audience.
Finally, how you manage your email list and your contact data can also impact your deliverability rates. For example, it’s important to remove inactive subscribers from your list regularly and only use email addresses that have been opted in. Inactive contacts are more likely to report your emails as spam, which will negatively impact your inbox placement. Using a double opt-in process can help ensure that all of your email recipients actually want to receive your messages.
It’s also important to make sure that your email content is engaging, relevant and informative. While AI can be an effective tool for creating email content, it is important to have a human review and refine the material so that it meets your objectives and won’t trigger spam filters.
Automation
Email delivery is the percentage of emails that reach a subscriber’s primary inbox versus landing in their promotions or spam folder. For associations that depend on email to engage their members, maintaining a high deliverability rate is vital to keep the conversation going.
To achieve and maintain high email deliverability rates, associations must follow best practices in all areas of their email marketing program. This includes list hygiene, content quality, and technical issues on the client-side that can impact email deliverability. In addition, they need to regularly assess their inbox placement rates using free tools like the Virtual Inbox Test by Higher Logic Thrive Marketing or inbox placement testing tools available online.
ESPs, or email service providers, are the engines that drive your marketing emails. Just like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook (webmail providers), ESPs have a reputation that directly impacts their email deliverability rates. That is why it is important to choose an ESP with a good reputation and one that offers a variety of tools that help you keep your email lists clean and optimize your content for optimal inbox placement.
The most common reason for an email to be marked as spam is a recipient reporting it as such. This is a major red flag for ISPs that can cause your emails to get filtered and ultimately end up in the junk or spam folder. It is critical to only email recipients who have explicitly given you permission to do so and that your emails contain content they are expecting and want.
Purchasing/renting email lists or sending email content other than what your subscribers signed up for are also bad habits that can negatively affect your email deliverability. These are both clear-cut violations of email best practices and should be avoided at all costs to ensure your association’s deliverability remains strong.
Email deliverability is a complicated process, but a well-run email marketing program with a focus on providing relevant and valuable content will keep your subscribers engaged. By monitoring inbox placement rates and regularly assessing your sender reputation, you can prevent email deliverability problems from developing that could have a serious impact on your ability to communicate with your audience.
