Email deliverability is a critical element of successful email outreach. But it isn’t always easy. Your emails must make it to the inbox of your target leads and customers. Anything less than that is a waste of time and resources.
While you always have the option of email deliverability services, there are plenty of ways to improve the metric on your own. This article will tell you everything you should know about email deliverability, how it works, and what best practices you can use to enhance it.
What Is Email Deliverability?
Email deliverability is a measure that indicates how many of a sender’s emails have actually made it into their recipients’ inbox. While it’s often confused for ’email delivery’, this latter term only refers to a message’s ability to make it through servers at all.
To put it simply, delivery tells you whether an email has been accepted by a recipient’s email provider, whereas deliverability gauges where it lands after that. Good deliverability rates mean that your emails are successfully reaching users’ main inbox, right where they can easily find, see and open them. A poor score usually indicates that many of your messages are being seen as spam and directed to those types of folders.
Why Does Email Deliverability Matter?
Email deliverability is pivotal when it comes to understanding a marketing campaign’s effectiveness and its potential for future success.
For instance, if your email delivery rate is high but your deliverability rate is low, it means that a lot of your messages are bouncing straight back to you, and that they’re not being seen by customers. That’s essentially a missed opportunity as far as a marketing campaign is concerned, and it’s something that needs to be addressed.
On the flip side, a good deliverability rate is often indicative of a successful email campaign. When high, this metric typically translates to more opens, clicks and conversions and a better overall return on investment.
How Do I Improve My Email Deliverability Rate?
Email deliverability is a very abstract issue, as countless factors have the capacity to influence it. Improving your score could mean doing something as simple as making strategic messaging adjustments or as complex as conducting backend work on your domain. Ultimately, it’s never any single one of these changes that make all the difference – results always come from a combination of efforts.
Let’s take a look at some common best practices that can be used together in improving your email deliverability rate.
Authenticate Your Email Domain
Email domains distinguish who emails are coming from and serve as a way for mail providers to confirm the authenticity of messages. To ensure a secure and trusted connection between you and your recipients, make sure that your domain is authenticated with SPF and DKIM.
SPF, short for Sender Policy Framework, is an email authentication protocol that allows senders to specify which servers are allowed to send emails from their domain. It’s a crucial security measure as it helps to weed out possible phishing attempts and spoofing. DKIM, or DomainKeys Identified Mail, is another authentication method that uses cryptographic signatures to make sure messages have been authorized by their sender. Both of these methods help to ensure that your email content is trusted by recipients.
Optimize Your Content
The content and design of your messages can be a major influence on deliverability scores. Keep in mind that spam filters are sensitive to certain words and phrases (especially those associated with sales or promotions) as well as large images. To avoid getting your emails caught in these filters, make sure to keep your content concise and free of excessive imagery.
Warm Up Your Domain
Domain warming is the process of gradually increasing the number of emails sent from your domain over a period of time. When done correctly, this can help to boost your domain’s reputation and its standing with ISPs.
Mail providers view sudden bursts in email activity as suspicious and often equate it to spammy behavior. By slowly ramping up volume on your domain, you can significantly reduce the chances of your emails being sent to spam folders.
It’s important to remember that, like other aspects of email deliverability, domain warming is an ongoing process and one where precision matters. You may want to consult with experts or use automated warm-up services when implementing this strategy.
Clean Your Email List Regularly
When it comes to email deliverability, one of the most crucial things you can do is keep your contact lists clean and up-to-date. If a large number of your emails keep bouncing back to you, this is a clear indication that there are too many inactive or invalid addresses in your list. Addresses that have been inactive for a long period of time should be removed from your contact database in order to maintain good deliverability.
The Alternative: Email Deliverability Services
For those who don’t have the time or technical know-how to execute all of the above mentioned processes themselves, opting for an email deliverability service can be a great solution. These services are designed to automate the entire process and help ensure that your emails reach their intended recipients.
Email deliverability services usually come with a package of features, such as automated list-cleaning, domain warm-ups, real-time monitoring of your IP reputation, as well as access to expert advice and support.
Ultimately, improving your email deliverability takes effort and dedication – but with the right tools and strategies in place, you can ensure that your emails reach their intended recipients every time.
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