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6 things that will quickly improve your email deliverability

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Email marketing is a common form of communication with customers, especially if you run your business online. Sending regular newsletters gives you the opportunity to maintain consistent contact with customers, inform them about important actions in your business, and also helps build loyalty and remind them of your offerings.

In today’s article, however, I don’t want to tell you what email marketing is and why it’s important—I want to focus on the issue of deliverability and how not to ruin it.

Let’s start by explaining what deliverability is.

Email deliverability measures the effectiveness of placing marketing emails in your subscribers’ inboxes.

Maintaining good email deliverability means all messages are successfully sent and delivered. Poor deliverability indicates that something catches the attention of spam filters, directing messages straight to spam or not delivering them at all.

Deliverability should be worked on from the very beginning. Implementing best practices and continuously monitoring and measuring deliverability will be key to your success as an email marketer.

In today’s article, I will outline six fundamental steps to start improving your deliverability so that your emails reach their intended destination.

Collect email addresses properly

Collecting email addresses means allowing people to sign up for your subscriber list through a registration form. There are two popular methods:

  • single opt-in ✅
  • double opt-in ✅✅

Let’s look at them.

What is “single opt-in”?

As the name suggests, this process requires just one action to turn a visitor into a new subscriber. Single opt-in should be used with caution as it allows unverified addresses to be added to mailing lists. This means typos or outright falsifications can be included without checking their validity. This can lead to complaints, bounces, and eventual sender reputation issues. 🤷‍♂️

What is “double opt-in”?

An email address is added to the mailing list in any way. Then, a confirmation email is sent to verify whether the person owning that address agrees to receive messages. Usually, this is done by clicking a confirmation link. Sometimes, consent can also be given externally, even offline.

Thus, double opt-in registration occurs when the email owner’s explicit consent is required to receive messages.

Which option should you choose? The recommended practice is to use double opt-in instead of single opt-in for your lists. 👍

Additionally, secure your registration form (use CAPTCHA). This gives you two main benefits:

  • Your list will include people who 100% want to receive your emails.
  • You avoid having invalid email addresses on your list due to typos or mistakes made by potential subscribers.

2. Clean your subscriber base

Cleaning your subscriber list involves regularly analyzing your list and removing invalid and inactive subscribers (inactive subscribers are those who haven’t opened or clicked any links in your emails for at least six months).

By regularly cleaning, you ensure that you’re sending emails to the right people. It’s commonly believed that success is having a large subscriber base. Sure, it’s great to have a big list, but size isn’t the only thing that matters—engaged subscribers do. 🤩

Once you’ve obtained an email address, it doesn’t mean the person will want to receive your emails forever.

You also can’t be sure if, over the years, that email address is still used by its owner.

Therefore, don’t be afraid to clean your list based on user activity (we recommend removing users who haven’t opened any emails from you in six months). Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are constantly monitoring your sends.

A good email is one sent to someone who wants to receive it. Regardless of their impact on future email deliverability, sending emails to those who don’t want them is also a waste of resources and money—a smaller list means lower sending costs.

⚠️ Why else is cleaning lists crucial?

Invalid or long-unused email addresses are often turned into so-called spam traps. These are fake email addresses that look real but aren’t. Spam traps are set up by ISPs and blacklist providers to catch unscrupulous email senders who collect addresses in unethical ways.

Spam traps affect email deliverability and sender reputation. They’re like honeypots hidden online. When spammers harvest email addresses using scraping programs or purchased email lists, these fake addresses often end up on their lists. Sending even a small number of emails to these addresses automatically labels the sender as a spammer.

A bad subscriber list is a direct path to bounces (sending blockages).

ℹ️ Bounces are emails that fail to reach the subscriber. If you receive a returned email indicating a nonexistent mailbox, immediately remove that contact from your list. (In ExpertSender, this happens automatically.)

There are two types of bounces you should know about: soft and hard bounces.

What is a hard bounce?

A hard bounce occurs when you send an email to a mailbox that doesn’t exist. Maybe someone used a fake email to subscribe to your list or changed email providers. Either way, you don’t want these addresses on your list.

What is a soft bounce?

A soft bounce is an email that couldn’t be delivered to the recipient’s mailbox due to temporary reasons. This means that although the current email didn’t reach the recipient, you might be able to ensure successful delivery at a later time.

Soft bounces occur when:

  • You send an email to recipients with an out-of-office reply.
  • The recipient’s mail server settings block your email.
  • The recipient’s inbox exceeds its storage limit.
  • The mail server is physically offline.

3. Maintain regular and consistent sending schedules

Try to evenly distribute your email marketing campaigns.

A consistent number of email campaigns, without significant drops or spikes, plays a significant role in the sender’s reputation.

For example, if you send emails to your list twice a week, jumping to five times a week without prior preparation will cause disruptions. There will be times when you’ll want to send more emails than usual, such as during a busy holiday season. But whenever possible, aim for a regular, consistent schedule.

Also, avoid sudden jumps in single sends: if you typically send newsletters to 30,000 subscribers, don’t suddenly jump to 60,000—such growth isn’t natural.

4. Respect your subscribers

Treat your subscribers like friends. Don’t abuse their goodwill. This is a relationship that needs nurturing, understanding, and growth.

What damages this relationship?

Irrelevant content (lack of personalization)

A crucial factor in email deliverability is sending relevant content that your subscribers want to read. Unfortunately, this isn’t always possible for multi-industry brands with large mailing lists. A proven method to give your subscribers exactly what they want is segmentation.

ℹ️ A segment is a subset of a mailing list with common characteristics.

For example, you can send different campaigns to people interested in electronics rather than sports equipment. You can create segments based on gender, age, location, recent purchases, or products your subscriber showed interest in.

Automated sends, such as cart abandonment notifications and algorithmic product recommendations, are also available to all marketers. ExpertSender offers a wide range of segmentation and marketing automation options within our platform.

No option to reply to emails

Why shouldn’t your subscribers reply to your emails? Don’t you want to hear from them?

There’s more than one reason to avoid a “no-reply” option. Firstly, it makes you look unprofessional and unapproachable.

It also has a significant impact on email deliverability and engagement rates.

No convenient unsubscribe link

Make it easy for subscribers to unsubscribe from your list—give them an alternative so they don’t have to click the “spam” button when they no longer want to receive your emails. Although it may seem counterintuitive to your goals, it actually works to your advantage.

Here’s why: hiding unsubscribe links with tricky font sizes and color combinations frustrates subscribers and erodes trust. Worse, they may mark your email as spam instead of unsubscribing.

👉 The industry standard for “complaints” is 0.1%.

This means sending a campaign to 10,000 subscribers allows for just ten clicks on the “Mark as spam” button. A lack of a convenient unsubscribe option can significantly increase this rate, quickly ruining your reputation.

A footer offering an easy-to-find unsubscribe link (without tricks!) is a great way to maintain a low complaint rate and secure your place in inboxes.

5. Appearance matters: stay consistent with your brand image

Good website and newsletter design plays a key role in email deliverability results.

It goes without saying how important branding is in marketing. Your website and other marketing materials should have a consistent appearance. Your email campaigns should be the same. Different types of communication should create a flow, complementing rather than contradicting each other.

It’s important to maintain brand consistency in your newsletters. If your designs conflict with each other, you risk your customer not recognizing your brand in an email. When that happens, the customer might mark you as an untrusted sender.

Your subscribers are familiar with your brand’s identity. They don’t expect drastic design changes between campaigns.

While your newsletter’s images will draw attention, don’t forget to invest in equally compelling email content to keep your subscribers engaged.

6. Choose the right partner to collaborate with: how infrastructure affects email deliverability

The infrastructure for email delivery is the software and hardware needed to perform the task. The system required to send emails on a large scale should not be underestimated.

Skipping this step can be detrimental to your campaign and brand. Building your own infrastructure instead of using a tool like ExpertSender is very complex and cost-prohibitive.

There are several protocols and standards that must be implemented and adhered to. You’ll quickly find that a highly specialized team is required to handle operations.

Technical aspects to remember include sender authentication through DKIM, SPF, and DMARC. Additionally, SSL in links and TLS in electronic communication. Also, FBL, as well as configuring the necessary DNS records—these are just some of the aspects ExpertSender’s team actively supports clients with.

Moreover, we provide very detailed reports and the ability to customize them to your needs, including generating automatic campaign summaries.

Your turn!

It’s natural to occasionally end up in the “spam” folder or have someone file a complaint. It happens. 🤷

However, look at your actions as a whole. Think about what you can improve and plan long-term. Be proud of your work as a diligent and vigilant marketer!

Proactivity (not reactivity) and taking care of your sends from the beginning will help you avoid stressful situations caused by poor email marketing campaign results.

Need help tackling poor deliverability? Contact us!

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