There are few things worse as a marketer than putting a ton of time and effort into your email campaigns only to see them perform poorly.
While the usual suspects of content, design, and campaign strategy make a difference, none of that matters unless your email actually makes it to your subscriber’s inbox.
Below, we lay out key steps to maximizing your reach, covering three key areas you should know about email deliverability:
- What deliverability is and why it matters
- Major factors that affect deliverability;
- 7 best practices you can implement to improve your deliverability.
Email deliverability is more nuanced than you think.
Often, when we think about email deliverability, we consider the email delivery rate (e.g., 98% of emails delivered).
But email deliverability is the rate at which emails arrive in the inbox, not just those that are delivered. The difference is important. Your emails can have a great delivery rate—and still not make it to the inbox (or get read).
Consider a hypothetical: Your data shows that 2% of your emails are bouncing, but an additional 10% are making it to the Email Service Provider (ESP) server then being pushed into spam.
How do you know if emails are going to spam? There’s a simple way to check this. Segment your email analytics by domain. If 0% of your Gmail (or another ESP) domain email addresses are opening your emails, you’ve got a problem.
ESPs and IT teams are always on the lookout for spam to keep emails out of subscribers’ inboxes that they deem irrelevant or a potential security risk. If your email is flagged as spam on a regular basis, you may significantly lower your deliverability rating and damage your sender reputation.
One easy, effective way to reduce the likelihood of your emails getting tagged as spam is to encourage new subscribers to add your email to their address book. It won’t guarantee delivery, but it gives you added protection in the eyes of your ESP.
Additionally, you can call out those who, for example, use Gmail and ask them to drag you over to their Primary (not Promotions) tab. – Read more
