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Addressing Common Email Deliverability Concerns
Understanding the Importance of Email Deliverability
Email continues to be a fundamental communication channel for businesses, organizations and individuals. For bulk senders, simply hitting the “send” button doesn’t guarantee that your emails will reach your intended recipients.
Understanding the factors that influence inbox placement is crucial for anyone who wants to use email marketing and campaigns to effectively reach their target audience. In this article, we’ll dive into the common concerns many senders have regarding email deliverability and explore how to ensure your messages are successfully delivered to the inbox rather than being lost, unseen and unread, in the spam folder.
1. Inbox placement
One of the primary concerns for marketers is ensuring their emails land in the recipient’s inbox. We can say email deliverability is like embarking on a road trip, and the recipient’s inbox represents the desired destination, where you want your email to arrive safely and be seen by the recipient.
However, just like driving a car, there are various factors and considerations that influence whether you reach your destination successfully. If you don’t have a well-maintained vehicle, don’t know how to drive, or are unfamiliar with the rules of the road, you are unlikely to reach your destination or arrive on time. But don’t be frightened, we’re here to help!
Think of your email service provider (ESP) as the vehicle you’re driving. ESPs like Campaign Monitor work hard to keep emails flowing smoothly and successfully. If you’re unfamiliar with how to get the most out of our service, we have a range of help articles and online resources available to help.
2. Sender reputation
Just as you need to follow traffic rules and drive responsibly to ensure a safe journey, maintaining a good sender reputation is vital for successful email deliverability. Sender reputation is like your driving license — it reflects your email sending history and determines how trustworthy you are as a sender.
Mailbox Providers (MBPs) act as traffic controllers, and use spam filters to determine which emails can pass through smoothly and which will be pulled over. They evaluate many different data points to decide if your email is worthy of reaching the recipient’s inbox. These include past and current subscriber engagements, list quality, domain reputation, authentication protocols, tracking link and destination links, email content and IP reputation, to name a few.
Here are 5 steps you can take to safeguard your sender reputation:
- Only email people who have directly and specifically opted into your email list
- Set up DKIM authentication in your account, authorizing us to send emails for you
- Carefully manage any changes to your sending domain, send frequency and list volume
- Send regularly to maintain engagement and organically remove inactive emails
- Re-engage and then remove dormant contacts to maintain a healthy list
3. List quality and user engagement
As you strive to expand your subscriber base, it is crucial to prioritize list quality over quantity.
When recipients actively engage with emails by opening, reading and interacting with the content, it sends positive signals to MBPs and is interpreted as evidence for the sender’s credibility and relevance, distinguishing them from spammers or irrelevant senders.
A high level of engagement signifies that recipients find value in your emails, which builds trust, leading to a stronger sender reputation and a higher likelihood for your emails to land in the inbox.
By contrast, a lack of engagement, like emails remaining unopened, being deleted without opening, or being marked as spam, is a negative signal to an MBP and can tarnish your reputation and result in more emails being filtered to the junk folder.
Taking a proactive approach to removing dormant or disinterested subscribers helps you to maintain a high-quality list, leading to improved engagement, better deliverability, and ultimately, higher returns on your email marketing efforts.
4. Deliverability metrics
Lastly, monitoring deliverability metrics is comparable to using a GPS or navigation system during your drive. Just as you rely on real-time information to make informed decisions about your route, you can analyze deliverability metrics to gauge the health and performance of your email campaigns.
Here are 5 key deliverability metrics to monitor:
- Trends in open rates
- Link click rates
- Unsubscribe rate
- Spam complaint rates
- Bounce rates
You can also use the free Insights feature in your account to review your results over a period of time, which you are able to define using the date selection tool. With Insights you can establish performance thresholds for your mailings in terms of open rates, clicks rates, sign-ups, and opt-outs as either aggregate or trending metrics.
A data-driven mindset will help you understand if you’re on the right track and whether you need to make adjustments to ensure maximum reach and engagement with your target audience.
Achieve success with email
Understanding and prioritizing the key aspects of email deliverability is essential for achieving successful email marketing campaigns. The inbox serves as the ultimate destination for your emails giving your content the opportunity to be seen and engaged with.
Focusing on list quality and user engagement, sender reputation, monitoring deliverability metrics and inbox placement will significantly improve your chances of successfully reaching the inbox, fostering meaningful connections with your audience, and maximizing the impact of your email campaigns.
