Email Marketing is still one of the most effective methods to generate leads and convert prospects. As one of the few marketing channels where your audience opts to hear from you, it is a no-cost way to reach them. As a result, many new and growing online stores place a lot of value on email marketing.
The problem is it’s too easy for companies to disregard email as a valuable and profitable tool. The reason is that trying to escape the spam folder can sometimes feel like getting your car stuck in the mud. It is inconvenient, frustrating and feels impossible. Moreover, you can’t even figure out the best method for getting your email out of the spam folder. Even so, improving email deliverability and staying out of the spam folder is not impossible.
Email Deliverability and its Importance
Email deliverability refers to both email delivery and inbox placement. Email delivery refers to whether the message reaches the server or is blocked by the IP provider. In contrast, inbox placement refers to whether the message lands in the spam folder, promotions folder, or the customer’s inbox.
It is crucial that email marketers pay attention to the signals they receive from their audiences (such as open rates, click rates, unsubscribes, bounces, mark as spam, etc.) and adjust their sending strategies accordingly.
Several factors determine a recipient’s inbox placement, and these factors may vary from provider to provider. An example of this difference is Gmail’s algorithm for determining if an email will go to the recipient’s primary inbox versus Outlook’s approach. There is also uncertainty arising from the fact that neither you nor your email marketing platform knows the algorithms.
Steps to Improve Email Deliverability
Whenever your audience engages with the content you’re sending them, inbox providers will take note of that and allow it into their inbox. There are several actions you can take to get your email from the spam folder to the primary inbox of your clients.
- Get permission
Email deliverability depends on getting permissions right (assuming all technical settings are correct). Unfortunately, this is also the most common error companies make.
A list of email addresses from a trade show or a purchase could indicate that you have permission to stay in touch, but this is not always true. The same applies to people who sign up to download an e-book from your website and provide their email addresses. In a few cases, it may suffice, but not always. You should be very clear when you can automatically send communication to people who provide their email addresses and when you require more permission.
It’s imperative that you only send marketing emails to recipients that have provided explicit permission for you to do so. Double opt-in subscriptions are crucial to ensuring that this occurs.
In addition, if the process is transparent and rewarding for the recipient, you’ll have more engaged subscribers to your lists.
2. Practice good list cleaning hygiene
While a straightforward opt-in process makes maintaining a list easier, a good list cleaning ensures your deliverability at its highest level.
It is a good practice to remove email addresses from your lists that have not been opened or clicked within the past six months. If you’re sending to unengaged users, your open rate will be low, which will harm your deliverability rate. Furthermore, do not start sending marketing emails to recipients if you have not emailed them recently.
3. Follow subscription best practices
Making unsubscribing from your emails easy is the most efficient way to ensure high email deliverability rates. Furthermore, unsubscribing offers a way to inform a sender that a client no longer wants to hear from them, so you can focus on retaining subscribers interested.
Maintain a consistent schedule to keep your customers from becoming overwhelmed, but make sure those messages come frequently enough for them to remember your brand.
4. Send high-quality content
Inappropriate or unwelcome emails may come off as spam, which decreases your sender reputation. Therefore, always ensure that every email you send contains relevant, high-quality content free of typos or errors. In addition, the subject line and the text of the email must be error-free.
You can also keep your unsubscribe rate low if you provide value to your audience. However, along with that, you should make sure your content is delivering the right message. Your brand’s uniqueness can sometimes make it challenging to keep recipients engaged. But, in the end, you know your customers best.
5. Make sure your email looks legitimate
In addition to content such as images and links, you should expect that your email will be reviewed for spam, phishing attempts, and other types of malicious emails by ISPs. Verify that the email does not contain broken links, typos, or missing email headers.
Authenticating emails is also crucial for deliverability. Validating that your emails are coming from your brand is vital for deliverability. Having these errors can cause your emails to be considered spam.
6. Test your emails before sending them
Once your email is ready, make sure to test it before sending it to your contacts. For example, there may be display differences between how your email appears to all your customers and your perfectly crafted email might seem cumbersome in their inbox. Therefore, you should test all your emails before you send them.
Testing can be carried out manually by sending emails to different providers using different accounts and opening them on various devices or using a service to help you with the job. Email marketing services usually offer the option of testing emails before sending them.
Deliverability issues don’t last forever
There is nothing laudable about sending spam. It indicates you have work to do to make your emails more targeted. Deliverability issues aren’t permanent. In the end, it comes down to a clean, engaged audience that builds a strong sender reputation. There are always changes you can make to get your brand back in your customers’ primary inboxes. Be open to trying new things and keep track of your experiments and results.