What exactly is email deliverability?
Email deliverability gauges how well your marketing emails are placed in your receivers' inbox folders.
Ensuring strong email deliverability entails sending and receiving all of your emails. Poor email deliverability indicates that something triggered a spam filter, directing the email to the spam folders.
No matter how reputable an email marketer you are, there are a slew of factors you may be unaware of that can prevent your email from ever reaching a recipient's inbox. With stricter restrictions and increasingly sophisticated spam filters, it's in your best interest to be aware of anything that might impair the deliverability of your email.
How To Increase Email Deliverability In 2023
1.Do not purchase or rent email lists.
Certainly, it is legal to rent and buy lists of people who have agreed to receive email communications – but it is never a smart idea. Not only is this a filthy email marketing approach that violates your email service provider's Terms of Service, but these folks don't know you and are unlikely to welcome your emails.
In other words, chances are they'll designate you as spam. Furthermore, let's be honest: high-quality email addresses are never for sale.
2. Maintain consistency in your volume
Make an effort to equally divide your email marketing initiatives.
A regular volume of email messages with no big decreases or surges is important for sender reputation. There will be occasions when you feel compelled to send out more emails than normal. For example, during the hectic Christmas season. Wherever feasible, try to stick to a regular, predictable routine.
Your list will quickly learn your schedule, allowing you to enhance open rates and click-throughs. Inconsistent volume, with dips and spikes, from a dedicated IP address will be counterproductive and label you as a spammer.
3. Do not scrape websites for email addresses.
Scraping websites for email addresses may appear to be a quick method to develop a contact list, but it's terrible for business and illegal in many countries.
4. Maintain Clear Lists to Reduce Bounce Rates.
Bounced emails are those that do not reach the intended recipient. If you receive a bounced email, remove that person from your list right away. They are a waste of resources, regardless of their influence on future email deliverability. You can use the following to clean your email list, Email list Verify, NeverBounce and Data validation
Because bounce rates are one of the primary characteristics used by internet service providers (ISPs) to assess an email sender's reputation, having too many hard bounces may force them to cease allowing your emails into people's inboxes.
5. Don't use all capitals in your email or in the subject line.
Utilizing all capital letters in your subject line may catch the recipients' attention, but not in a positive manner. Using all capitals might severely irritate folks. It's irritating and might appear spammy.
According to a Radicati Group research, more than 85% of respondents prefer an all-lowercase subject line over one in all capitals.
6. Spam Complaints.
When it comes to managing your email reputation and great email deliverability, a spam complaint is your worst nightmare.
Your newsletters should never be marked as spam by subscribers. If this happens, you should reconsider what you're putting out. It is critical to keep the content of your newsletter relevant to what the consumer subscribed to while avoiding spam-like activities.
When your subscribers click the dreaded "Mark as spam" button, mailbox providers like Google and email service providers like Moosend are notified. Your domain's reputation will suffer dramatically. Mailbox providers immediately restrict senders, even if the number of complaints is tiny.
7. Do not use exclamation marks!
What else might make your subject line and/or email appear unprofessional and spammy? Exclamation points, especially a lot of them in a row.
8. Stay away from spam traps.
What exactly is a spam trap?
It's a phony email account that appears to be genuine. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and blacklist providers use spam traps to target unethical email marketers that gather emails.
Even sending a small number of emails to certain addresses instantly brands the sender as a spammer. It's evident that they compiled their list in an odd manner.
9. Use no video, Flash, or JavaScript in your email.
Most email clients do not enable the viewing of rich media such as Flash or video embeds by default. Use a picture of your video player (complete with a play button) that connects to the rich media on a website page instead.
Even if a spam filter permits your email through, most email clients will not allow JavaScript or other dynamic scripts to work, so avoid using them entirely.
10. Use SPF to validate your sender IP address.
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is an email validation system that verifies the sender's IP address to avoid spam.
SPF is also used to prevent spammers from sending faked communications on your behalf. Setting up SPF allows email servers to check and certify the validity of the email being sent. An SPF record enables web managers to specify which web servers are permitted to deliver messages from a certain domain.
11. Forms should not be embedded in emails.
Due to security concerns, forms are not supported in email in most email clients. In the body of your email, instead, include a call-to-action button or a link to a landing page containing a form.
12. DKIM may be used to validate the ownership of an email message.
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) indicates that an email message is owned by a certain business. DKIM exists to prevent any emails with a spam suspicion from being received by the email server.
The organization's signature is appended to the email headers while the message is still in route to the recipient. To determine who sent an email, most email clients will look for a valid DKIM signature.
When DKIM is correctly configured, any email you send should have an encrypted digital signature in the email's header area. This verifies that the email's contents have not been altered in transit and that it is sent from the proper domain.
This implies that DKIM is a viable method for preventing email delivery concerns and improving your sender reputation with email providers. The origin of the email marketing campaign can be determined by the receiving mail server.
13. Emails should not contain attachments.
If you wish to give your receivers something like a PDF or a Word document, do not attach the file to the email; otherwise, spam filters may block your email. Instead, post the attachment to your website and use an effective call-to-action button to connect to the file location in your email.
This reduces the likelihood of your email being banned by spam filters and shortens the time it takes to load.
14. Secure Your Email Using TLS to Increase User and Mailbox Provider Trust.
TLS is a type of email encryption that prevents material from being read by entities other than the intended receivers. Email encryption may also be thought of as a type of authentication.
TLS-enabled emails will display a lovely padlock icon in Gmail to alert your clients that your emails are secure.
15. Avoid using spam trigger words.
One of the simplest strategies to avoid spam filters is to carefully select the phrases in your email's subject line. Instead of employing spam trigger phrases, be innovative, entertaining, and instructive – but not too revealing.
16. Keep an eye on Mailbox Provider Feedback Loops.
Feedback loops must be processed on a regular basis. Most major mailbox providers have a feedback loop service that sends complaints back to email service providers like Moosend. When a subscriber clicks the "Mark as spam" button, a request is routed back to the ESP via the feedback loop.
It is critical to immediately unsubscribe and remove customers who have complained from your mailing list. The only way to accomplish this is to monitor various mailbox provider feedback loops.
17. Remember to use spell check.
According to the Radicati Group study, spelling and grammatical errors are the most unacceptable email offenses for 80% of all respondents. But spelling errors aren't just unprofessional; they're also a spam trigger. It's easy to overlook minor spelling errors, especially when self-editing.
18. Create (and keep an eye on) an Abuse Reporting Mailbox.
To operate an abuse-reporting mailbox, some mailbox providers require email campaigns to land in their users' inboxes. What exactly is it? An email address to which abuse complaints should be forwarded.
To ensure email deliverability, you must set up an abuse reporting mailbox and monitor it on a regular basis. You can use an email header to accomplish this.
Many mailbox providers that lack feedback loops will instead forward complaints to those mailboxes.
19. Don't stuff keywords into your email copy.
Keyword-stuffing your emails means stuffing as many keywords as possible into them. There's a reason Google penalizes keyword-stuffed webpages, and it's because it harms user experience. Nobody wants to read content that has been optimized for robots.
Write your emails for humans, not robots, to increase the likelihood that they will be opened and not marked as spam. Copywriting that inspires people to act is both simple and compelling. Use casual language, colloquial expressions, and even personal anecdotes to make your writing sound more personable and relatable.
20. Send content that your subscribers will find interesting.
Will your email campaign actually benefit your subscribers?
Think about it before you send it! It doesn't get any easier than that. Consider whether your subscribers are expecting this type of content.
Do your subscribers expect beauty-related offers, but you send them the latest blockbuster movie? They will almost certainly unsubscribe. Worse, they may report you.
21. Don't use an excessive number of images or huge images.
Using a single large image as your entire email, or too many images in general, causes recipients' spam folders to fill up.
To avoid long email load times, make your image file sizes as small as possible without sacrificing visual integrity. Some image compressing tools you may use include compressor.io, compressjepg.com and jepgmini.com.
22. Looks Count: Be Consistent in Your Design.
We don't have to tell you how crucial branding is in marketing. Your website and other marketing materials will have a unified appearance. Your email campaigns should be consistent.
Maintaining brand consistency throughout your newsletters is critical. If your designs are all over the place, your customer may not recognize your email. When a customer sees your brand in an email and does not recognize it, they may mark it as spam.
Your subscribers are aware of your brand's identity. They will not anticipate significant design changes between campaigns.
23. Designing for mobile devices is no longer optional.
Did you know that nearly half of all email opens now take place on mobile devices?
This means there's no reason to send campaigns that look great on a desktop or web client but look terrible on mobile. Subscribers will be disengaged if a campaign appears out of place on mobile devices.
In certain circumstances, people may unsubscribe because they are unable to receive your brand's messages using their chosen mobile email client.
To prevent one of the most common email deliverability issues, make sure your campaigns are mobile-friendly and include the appropriate newsletter graphics and language.
24. Examine whether you can reactivate dormant or occasionally active subscribers.
"Graymail" refers to email that individuals have nominally signed in to receive but do not desire, causing them to become less active or inactive entirely. Although not considered spam, sending graymail is troublesome since it might reduce your email's overall deliverability.
ISPs and inbox providers may push email from known-graymail senders directly to recipients' "junk" folders if they detect poor interaction rates.
Maintain a list of inactive and seldom active subscribers and create re-engagement efforts for contacts who have ceased responding to your communications.
25. Be Wary of URL Shorteners
URL shorteners are those useful little programs that take a large URL and shorten it.
They are great for shortening your URLs, but they are also effective for masking the location of a link.
The abbreviated link above, for example, does not specify its end destination. This is why spammers frequently employ link shorteners.
They want consumers and mailbox providers to be unaware of their harmful websites and blacklisted domains. While most link shorteners are public services, nothing prevents spammers from utilizing them to conceal their URLs.
We highly advise against including these services into your email marketing strategy.
26. Make use of double opt-in.
Once someone subscribes to your email list, you send them a follow-up email with a confirmation link to ensure they want to receive email communications from you.
People who must indicate that they want email messages from your organization are more likely to read and engage with the emails they get. Your email lists will be considerably more qualified and your subscribers will be much more engaged if you implement double opt-in.
27. Don't use free or personal email addresses in your campaigns.
Your advertising must accurately reflect your brand. Therefore sending emails from your own Gmail account is pointless. The rationale is straightforward:
A Google account is a personal email account. This implies that your email campaign will almost certainly be classified as spam by the different filters employed by email service providers.
28. Request that your subscribers add you to their address book.
Spam filters are more stringent than ever, so that emails that people value and want to read occasionally land up in their spam boxes.
Nevertheless, most spam filters let you whitelist a sender by adding their email address to their address book. Spam filters will relax when subscribers add you to their address book.
29. Add a plain-text version in addition to your HTML campaign version.
Isn't an email campaign without images generally boring?
But what if I told you it's one of the finest strategies to improve your email deliverability? Email clients are intelligent.
Based on your subscribers' preferences, they will show the most compatible version of your email campaign.
While not very elegant, this is a decent practice for email deliverability.
Plain-text works since your message will be visible to all recipients. That's great news for your delivery!
30. In your email footer, offer a clear unsubscribe link as well as a physical postal address.
Enabling individuals to unsubscribe is vital for list cleanliness since everyone getting your emails should do so voluntarily; otherwise, you're just spamming them. But did you know that in many countries, including the United States, it is unlawful to not provide an easy mechanism for your recipients to unsubscribe?
You must offer a means for people to unsubscribe from your email list in your marketing communications, either by sending a reply email or by going no more than one level down to reach a page where they may unsubscribe. It is absolutely up to you the strategy you use, as long as the information is clear and easy to find.
Because these unsubscribe CTAs are most commonly found at the bottom of your email, consumers are more likely to seek for them there, resulting in a better user experience.
31. Fill in the "To:" area with the name of your recipient.
Spam filters will recognize that you know your receiver this way. Furthermore, customizing your emails for your contacts might be critical to their engagement with your material.
32. Enable recipients to see your email using a web browser.
Even after taking every precaution to ensure appropriate email design, an email client might nevertheless display an email incorrectly. Add a link in every email that allows you to read the email as a web page.
Also read: Brand Marketing Strategies that convert.
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