Introduction
Email marketing is a powerful tool that businesses can use to reach their target audience. However, it’s not enough to just send emails – getting those emails delivered is key to achieving the desired results. With poor email deliverability, your emails might be marked as spam, blocked or simply not delivered, which can be detrimental to your marketing efforts. In this article, we’ll take a look at 10 effective ways to improve your email deliverability, from sender reputation to list cleaning.
1. Monitor Your Sender Reputation
Your sender reputation is a critical factor that affects your email deliverability. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use this score to determine the legitimacy of your email. A poor sender reputation can result in your emails being marked as spam or blocked entirely. To monitor your sender reputation, use tools like Sender Score or GlockApps, which track your email sending activity, identify potential issues and provide insights on how to improve your reputation.
Regularly check your sender reputation and address any issues promptly. Issues could include high bounce rates, high spam complaints, sending emails without permission or using spam trigger words.
2. Use Double Opt-In
Using double opt-in ensures that your subscribers have given you explicit consent to receive your emails. After filling out a form on your website, they receive an email asking them to confirm their subscription. This process helps to maintain a clean email list and reduces the number of fake or inactive email addresses on your list. Double opt-in also ensures that your email subscribers are engaged and interested in your content, leading to a better email open rate and click-through rate.
3. Clean Your Email List Regularly
A clean email list is crucial to maintaining good email deliverability. A dirty email list with invalid or inactive email addresses attracts spam complaints, high bounce rates and negatively impacts your sender reputation. Use email verification services like BriteVerify or ZeroBounce to clean your email list and remove invalid email addresses. It’s also important to remove subscribers who have not engaged with your emails for an extended period. Regularly cleaning your email list will improve your email deliverability and ensure that you’re sending emails to engaged and interested subscribers.
4. Use a Consistent and Recognisable Sender Name and Email Address
Using a consistent and recognisable sender name and email address helps your subscribers identify your emails and improves your email deliverability. Your sender name and email address should be aligned with your brand and be easy to recognise. Avoid using generic sender names such as “Marketing Team” or “Sales Department”. Instead, use a real person’s name to provide a more personalised touch to your emails. Also, ensure that your email address is not flagged as spam, and it should be different from a free email address like gmail.com.
5. Craft Engaging and Relevant Subject Lines
Email subject lines can make or break your email campaign. It’s a key factor in getting your subscribers to open your email. Ensure your subject lines are relevant to your email content and provide value to your subscribers. Avoid using clickbait, spam trigger words or capital letters as they increase the chances of your email being marked as spam. It’s also important to maintain consistency between your subject line and email content.
6. Use Whitelisting and Authentication
Whitelisting and authentication are two measures that can improve your email deliverability. Whitelisting involves requesting that your subscribers add your email address to their contacts or safe senders list. Doing this ensures that your email will be marked as safe and avoids being sent directly to the spam folder. Authentication, on the other hand, involves linking your domain and email address with your email marketing software. Authentication proves that your email is legitimate, and it contributes positively to your email deliverability.
7. Segment Your Email List
Segmenting your email list involves dividing your subscribers into specific groups based on their interests and behaviours. Doing this allows you to send targeted and personalised emails that are relevant to their needs. Segmented email campaigns have a higher open rate and click-through rate than unsegmented campaigns. Use tools like Mailchimp, Aweber or Constant Contact to segment your email list and create personalised email campaigns.
8. Monitor Your Email Deliverability Metrics
It’s important to monitor your email deliverability metrics to identify potential issues and take corrective measures. Metrics like open rate, click-through-rate, bounce rate and spam complaints provide insights into how your email campaigns are performing. High bounce rates and spam complaints, for example, may indicate that your email list needs cleaning, or that you need to improve your email content. Tracking your email deliverability metrics helps you optimise your email campaigns and improve your email deliverability.
9. Test and Optimise Your Email Campaigns
Testing and optimising your email campaigns can improve your email deliverability and increase engagement with your subscribers. Use A/B testing to experiment with different email content, subject lines or sending times. Split your email list into two and send different versions of your email to each segment. Monitor the results and see which version performs better. Implementing the changes that work best can give you invaluable insights that can improve your email campaigns.
10. Use an Email Deliverability Service
Using an email deliverability service can improve your email campaigns by monitoring your email deliverability, providing alerts for potential issues and taking necessary corrective action. Services like Sendgrid, Mailgun or Sparkpost provide real-time reporting, inbox delivery statistics and insights into your email campaigns. They also offer deliverability experts who can help you optimise your email campaigns and provide guidance on how to improve your email deliverability.
Conclusion
In conclusion, improving your email deliverability is critical to achieving your email marketing goals. Monitoring your sender reputation and using double opt-in can maintain a clean email list, and segmenting your email list can allow for targeted and personalised campaigns. Whitelisting, authentication and using an email deliverability service can enhance your email deliverability, while optimising your campaigns through A/B testing and monitoring metrics can improve engagement and email open rates. Implementing these ten effective ways can help you achieve better email deliverability and improve the success of your email campaigns.
Key Takeaway
Maintaining good email deliverability is essential to achieving email marketing success. Implementing these ten effective strategies can help you improve your email deliverability, optimise your campaigns and keep your subscribers engaged. Always remember to clean your email list regularly, use a recognisable sender name and email address, and segment your email list for more personalised campaigns. With good email deliverability, you are well on your way to email marketing success.