One of the obstacles to maintaining a marketing strategy can be poor email deliverability levels. Fortunately, we have found out the common causes for this issue and how to handle them. Stay tuned to find out how to boost your email deliverability.
The notion of email deliverability
If you have ever been around digital marketing circles, you have probably heard email deliverability being mentioned several times.
Email deliverability can simply be described as the ability to get emails into subscribers' inboxes - the term is self-explanatory.
A common marketing issue that you might not know yet is why some emails do not get to the recipients.
What are email deliverability and email engagement?
Email deliverability is the ability to get emails straight to the recipient’s inbox. Email delivery, on the other hand, means simply getting messages to your addressee’s inbox or...junk mail. Email engagement implies the subscriber reading, relying on, or forwarding your email.
What affects email deliverability
The main cause why messages might fail to get through is typically hard bounces. They necessarily indicate that an email address no longer exists. Alternatively, the reason for a hard bounce might be that the email server has permanently blocked emails from your email address or email domain. There are several guides on hard bounces that you can take a look at to make sure you understand them.
You should also consider soft bounces that cause emails to fail and never reach your recipients’ inboxes. Soft bounces can be the result of several errors that include connection timed-out error, DNS failure, and a full recipient’s inbox. Another common reason for soft bounces might be the messages you are sending are too large for the recipient’s inbox.
Abuse might also be the root cause of email failures. If a subscriber writes to you requesting you discontinue the email program, you are required by law to get them off your mailing list.
Tips on improving email deliverability
Email deliverability might impact the success of your marketing efforts and overall revenue. To ensure that it is not the case, you can implement some of these tips for your emails to get to the intended recipients’ inboxes. If you plan on improving email deliverability, you need to use these tips, and we will tell you about some actions you need to avoid to improve your sender scores.
Use an authenticated email domain
As a result of an influx of spam mail in the early years of email technology, email service providers created a system to tackle this problem. As a result, most email services now come with quite a comprehensive email spam filter. These filters are automated and follow the rules to the dot. If one of these rules is not to allow unauthorized domain email addresses to deliver messages to the user’s IP address or email, then your email will certainly not get to their inbox.
There is also something that is referred to as spoofing. Spoofing is basically when someone takes control of your email address and sends whatever they wish to your mailing list. It will get both your email address and your IP address blocked. Spoofing will get you reported. After this, you will probably lose a chunk of your subscribers.
How can you cope with this? It's quite simple. You have to enable what is referred to as SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail). By enabling these two, you have substantial proof that allows ISPs to identify you as the entity you claim to be. You have to try using these tips. Email jacking has been on the rise of late. And, besides improving your email deliverability, these two actions will also help in securing your email account.
Make the opt-in process engaging
There seems to be a growing trend with websites where marketers create quite vague opt-in pages. Most people have no idea what they are subscribing for. This technique will only help you have a large subscribers list. If customers perform actions without knowing what they are subscribing to, they are likely going to categorize your first email to them as spam. Once you have been reported as spam, your emails will never make it to the subscriber's inbox, nor will you ever get a reply.
You have to ensure that your opt-in page is concise and clearly states that potential customers are subscribing to an email program. It will make sure that the people that go on to subscribe to your email program are engaged and want to receive emails from you. This method might take you a while to grow a mailing list. But once you are done, you will certainly have an engaged audience. It means that you have a better chance of delivering emails as well as the recipients reading your emails. Several service providers tailor opt-in pages. It can be a good idea to acquire their services.
Clear your email list of inactive accounts
There is a need to check your email list. Several accounts could become inactive over a certain period. If you do not clean up your email contacts list, chances are your reputation is going to get tainted. That is the last thing you would want. You have to avoid having unresponsive subscribers on your list. There are also bound-to-be subscribers who will not engage with your content.
Manually clearing your list can be quite a daunting task. That might be one of the main reasons why other people might be a bit skeptical about cleaning up their email lists. The good news, though, is that over the years, developers have created several tools to make sure that your email list is clean.
Another way you can make sure that your email list is squeaky clean is by adding a link that recipients can use to subscribe to your email program. This way, you will have an automated means of removing subscribers who no longer want to get your content.
Produce great content
If your content is not impeccable, chances are your email deliverability, engagement, and domain list reputation will hit a high fall eventually. It is essential to create top-tier content that subscribers will enjoy in order to get a reply. According to studies, an effective marketing email is only between fifty and two hundred words long. If you see your emails making larger numbers than these, then you might end up having an unsuccessful email campaign.
You can always hire a professional content writer to ensure that your emails are top-tier. They will help to grow your audience and keep it engaged. Email deliverability best practices will assist you with delivering messages to your desired recipients, but interesting materials are what will catch their attention. Thus, it is essential if you plan on getting business leads with the help of engaging materials. Alternatively, let Belkins help you with B2B lead generation. It is always a good idea to consult an expert and request professional services.
How to check email deliverability
Most probably, your email service provider does not give comprehensive statistics. It means that you should use other services to check email deliverability. You can use a few tools to track your messages. Your email service provider will only show whether your email has reached the recipient but won’t show whether it went straight to the spam folder or not. These services will do just that and more.
There are several services which include GlockApps, MailTester.com, and SendForensics. They will ensure that you can check email deliverability and the overall effectiveness of your email campaign. All three services work perfectly fine, but you might need to choose one that suits your preferences in terms of user interface and navigation.
Why it is important to improve email deliverability — do’s and don’ts
Improving email deliverability has a dynamo effect on the marketing structure and the business as a whole. If your business can reach a large audience, you are going to have a larger customer base. If you want to get B2B leads for your business easily, email deliverability is of the utmost importance. If you want to get leads, follow up on them, and make a profit, you must boost email deliverability by using the tips and practices mentioned in this article. Those are the do’s of improving your email deliverability. As for the dont’s, it is difficult to imagine a long-term project without a well-thought and forward-looking strategy including such steps.