Email Deliverability Issues Explained

This is literally one of the worst things that can ever happen to a business.

I had the pleasure of working and fixing deliverability issues for businesses with large email lists and I could see how much they lost in revenue since the issues with deliverability hit them.

Today I wanted to share a little bit about this issue, elaborate on how to avoid it, what to do to fix the issue and most importantly explain what causes it to happen in the first place.

Spotting Email Deliverability Issues

The easiest way to spot deliverability issues is by checking your emails open rate. If it’s below 15% you should consider implementing some of the tips I will be sharing here.

Understanding Email Deliverability

A long time ago, anyone could send emails, it was a free for all, similar to what we see with SMS.

As the technology evolved, many people were able to send mass emails and with that, we had an increase of spam and phishing and online frauds.

In an attempt to protect their customers, most of the top email providers, created spam filters and algorithms that verify individual emails and check not only the content but the links inside of it.

In addition to that, authentication methods are used to prevent emails from being spoofed and modified between the time they were sent and received.

Understanding HOW most of these work, will give you a very good insight into what you should do to avoid having emails landing at the recipient’s spam folder or promo tab or sometimes not even delivered.

HOW TO FIX IT

# Understanding the signals

In the image attached to this post, you will see the signals received by the email providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft and so on).

Every time there is a Negative Signal, you are losing points. The more points you lose, the worst your deliverability will be.

Negative Signals:

• Unopened Emails are deleted, Opted-out, moved to the spam folder

Positive Signals:

• Email is opened
• Email reply
• A link was clicked inside of the email
• Email address was added to the address book

# Understanding the technology

I won’t bother you with all the technical side of things, however there are three items you need to configure to avoid issues.

For the most part, you can contact your email autoresponder support and ask them to help you set it up.

• SPF: Authentication method designed to detect forging sender addresses during the delivery of the email.
• DKIM: authentication technique that allows the receiver to check that an email was indeed sent and authorised by the owner of that domain
• DMARC: Email authentication protocol. It is designed to give email domain owners the ability to protect their domain from unauthorised use, commonly known as email spoofing.

# Engagement

If you have engagement, in other words, if your contacts are opening your emails, replying back to you and clicking on links you send them, you should be fine.

# Broadcast

Broadcasting emails to a large number of contacts can be very harmful if the audience isn’t engaging with the emails you are sending to them.

It’s better to segment the audience and create email sequences, where contacts will constantly get emails without the need of a single email broadcast.

# Maintenance

Clean your list at least once a month. Get rid of emails that bouncing and also contacts that are not opening your emails within a space of 30-45 days.

IF ALL GOES WRONG

You should contact a professional that can help you with the issue. Sometimes you need to “reset” your domain reputation, get your domain excluded from “blacklists” and start a process called “warming up the sending”.

Honestly, Prevention is the best medicine:

• Configure SPF, DKIM and DMARC appropriately
• Ensure the audience is engaging with the emails you send
• Limit broadcast to a minimum and have a well-defined strategy to send emails
• Segment your contacts, this will make it easier for you to personalise your emails
• NEVER send emails to contacts that unsubscribe to your list
• Make it easy for contacts to unsubscribe, as much it hurts, it is better than having an even lower open rate that will continue to damage your domain reputation and email deliverability

MOST IMPORTANT TAKEAWAYS

The bigger your list is, the more you need to take precautions to avoid issues in the future.

If you don’t understand any of what I said, the most important thing you need to remember is one single word: Engagement.

If your contacts are engaging with you, opening your emails, replying and clicking on links inside of it, you will be fine!

Any questions?

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