Email Deliverability: What Entrepreneurs Need To?Know?
Alright! This is my most favorite subject in Email Marketing. When it comes to Email Deliverability, I have seen most of the brands, marketers & entrepreneurs either get worried or just ignore or wonder, “What the heck is this? How do I get 100% deliverability? Why should I care? Deliverability is not my responsibility, my email service provider will take care of it!”…
And, that makes me laugh all the time ;)
Source: Google
Well, if you’re thinking in this way, then you’re absolutely WRONG! Being in the email space for quite a long time, I can say from my experience that if you are not focussing on email deliverability and following the right blueprint, then you’re just wasting your efforts, time and money in delivering results from your email strategy. There are certain things to be done in a certain way.
And, if you’re just starting with email marketing, your starting point is to focus on deliverability. If you feel you don’t know how to do it, then I’m just a call away. Book a free email discovery call with me and I will lay down the email strategy for your business.
If you’re doing email marketing already (that’s awesome!) but facing challenges in reaching your customer’s inboxes (that’s sad!), then you have got 2 choices:
- Sit back, take a deep breath, analyze all the data points, re-wire your entire email strategy and deploy the recommended deliverability practices from the scratch (keep reading till the end. I’m sure you will learn at least something.) OR
- Find a deliverability doctor who can help you improve your deliverability and increase your reach to your loving customers’ inboxes
Coming back to the point…
Well, Email deliverability creates the foundation for email marketing. At a base level, you are paying an ESP to send emails on your behalf but how you end up building your email list, managing & nurturing it and running right email programs will determine whether or not the email is placed in customers’ inboxes.
Email generates the highest return on investment (ROI) for brands, entrepreneurs & marketers, with a 4400% ROI and $44 for every $1 spent.
In today’s digital marketing landscape, Email clearly remains the king of all online revenue & customer engagement (Read more about the top reasons why you should invest in email marketing) and has the potential to be a highly lucrative marketing avenue when done right & strategically.
Entrepreneurs & marketers spend much time and effort crafting the perfect email and this effort is certainly worthwhile. Having the ideal ratio of text to images, considering the spacing, using an eye-catching font, personalizing the content for the target audience, and selecting the optimum sending time and frequency are all key factors in a successful email strategy.
However, all that effort is wasted if the intended audience never opens the email because it never arrives in their inbox. Frustrated, right!
Can somebody tell me where’d my email go? (Source: Google)
Whether you’re constantly tracking your KPIs or you’re just too busy in doing email marketing in your own way, remember that even the best email campaigns cannot be successful without following deliverability best practices. You could say that deliverability is the make-it-or-break-it of email, if not done and followed RIGHT!
First, let’s jump in with the basics.
Email Delivery vs. Email Deliverability
Though they sound nearly identical, “email delivery” and “email deliverability” are two different metrics. Unfortunately, many marketers & entrepreneurs use the terms interchangeably, which only adds to the confusion. I have faced such arguments with many entrepreneurs, marketers and business owners in the past why my open rates are low when my delivery is 99% and all. I can start demystifying these concepts first by defining them:
Email delivery is when an email is successfully delivered to the receiving server.
Email deliverability is when an email successful arrives in the person’s inbox.
It’s possible to have good email delivery because that’s what ESPs shows on their dashboards, but poor deliverability, because the email landed in a person’s spam folder rather than their inbox.
Delivery
Email Service Providers (ESPs) will be provided some information why a message was rejected (bounced), based on the details the receiving server sends back in the error message. I don’t want to get into technicalities of bounce messages and errors (maybe I will write in the upcoming series)
Basically, there are 2 bounces — Hard & Soft. Examples of bounced emails include a temporary delivery error (soft bounce) because the server is unavailable, or a permanent error (hard bounce) because the email address is no longer valid. You can read more about bounce management here.
Deliverability
Delivery, however, is only the first part of the email’s journey to successfully arriving in the inbox. Email Deliverability is the set of processes responsible for placing an email into your customer’s inbox. Inbox placement and delivery is a complex subject. Many factors are taken into account by mailbox providers before placing an email into your customers’ inbox.
Bounce rates (tracked by the ESP), open rates, unsubscribe rates, click-through rates, and spam complaints will give you insight as to how people react to and engage with your emails. It’s important for every marketer and entrepreneur to monitor these metrics closely as it can reveal the signals towards your audience behavior and engagement.
When we talk about Email Deliverability, it all boils down to “Engagement”. It stands out as the most important factor in email deliverability since it directly impacts your sender reputation (both for the marketer/entrepreneur and the ESP). Better domain reputation is a key to great email deliverability.
Before diving further into how to work towards great email deliverability, it’s important to consider why email deliverability is critical to effective email marketing and why it should matter to you?
Why should you care about email deliverability?
Source: Google
Here are the two important reasons:
Reason #1: You want your customers to read your emails
I know this one is kind of obvious. Of course, you want your customers to read your emails! No matter how great your product or service is, how beautiful your email is, if you fail to reach your customer’s inbox, you’re done! Because a big chunk of it has to do with email deliverability.
It’s highly suggested for you to monitor the positive & negative signals you’d be getting from your email performance simply, by monitoring your customer’s behavior, KPIs, deliverability metrics and alike. If you don’t pay careful attention to the things that can impact your deliverability, the objective of email marketing success will dissolve.
Your email reputation? It’s not easy as it sounds :)
Source: Email Monks
Email marketing success depends 50% on ESP & 50% on Sender, which is determined by a number of factors, such as how many emails you send, your complaint rates, your bounce rates, engagement, how many times you’ve landed in the spam folder, how many inactive/old addresses you have and more.
Fortunately, there are simple ways you can prevent getting flagged as spam or hitting the spam folder. Sending an email with content relevant to your customers, setting clear expectations about your emails from the start and not buying email lists are good places to start. Respecting your customers’ inboxes as if they were your own is essential to keeping your deliverability strong.
Reason #2: You don’t want to be known as a “spammer.”
Not everyone wakes up each morning and thinks, “I want to send spammy emails today.” Unfortunately, however, many send spam or engage in spammy behaviors without even realizing it.
Do you know about 14.5 Bn spam emails sent every day, only 15% of the global email volumes are legitimate?
Source: Talos Intelligence
If your customers mark your emails as spam, that’s really not a good sign for your reputation and deliverability. When that happens, any future emails you send to other subscribers might end up in the spam folder too.
Not sure if you’re sending spam? But, if you are following the right framework and industry acceptable recommended practices, email deliverability will give you amazing results in your email strategy & business revenue.
To put it in simple words, if you want to avoid sending spam, set clear expectations for your customers about the email content you send. Then, deliver on that promise and drive value & engagement.
Key influencers of Email Deliverability:
Bounces
There are two types of bounces
– Hard Bounces — Invalid Recipients/Unknown User Attempts and are indicative of list hygiene issues and may lead to bulking or blocking
– Soft Bounces — are email addresses that are refusing mail temporarily
Spikes in hard bounces or complaint rates signal deliverability problems
– Hard bounces are a predictor of spam trap hits; this means distribution contains many old addresses
– Less than 3% recommended overall bounce rate (soft bounces and hard bounce combined)
– Less than 2% is the recommended hard bounce rate, abnormal soft bounce rate spikes (over typical averages) may indicate reputation-related bulking or blocking
Complaints
– Indicate end users are not expecting to receive your messages, are fatigued, or were not properly opted-in
– 0.01% is the recommended overall complaint rate or lower
*Complaints are based on abuse reports received from the ISPs currently offering feedback loops
Feedback Loops (FBLs)
– A feedback loop is a system in which the ISP provides us feedback from their users who no longer wish to receive future mailings; users click the “Spam or “Junk” button, which generates feedback.
Volume & Consistency:
– ISP filters are configured to automatically monitor for any unusual activity to protect their users from spam
– Sending inconsistent volumes and/or irregular volume patterns over time can trigger spam filters and damage overall deliverability
– Senders must deliver at least 150k messages per month in order to establish and maintain a sender reputation on a dedicated IP
Spam Traps:
– Spam trap hits can be one of the most damaging issues for email deliverability and maintaining proper list hygiene is very important to avoiding spam traps.
– This requires monitoring engagement levels and removing inactive subscribers. At the very least remove all subscribers who have not opened or clicked within the past 12 months.
– Beyond 12 months, many ISPs will invalidate inactive addresses, or convert them to spam traps directly. Some ISPs will convert inactive addresses to spam traps after as little as 6–9 months of inactivity.
Engagement
Positive Signals:
– Clicking through links
– Adding a sender address to their address book
– Enabling images
– Opening and/or scrolling through the message
Negative Signals:
– Reporting as spam
– Deleting the message
– Moving the message to trash
– Marking messages as read
– Ignoring messages
Implement these 9 fundamental deliverability tips to reach your customers’ inboxes:
Split your promotional, transactional & triggered emails: Promotional emails are much more likely to get blocked due to spam complaints, filters, or traps. Separating your promotional, transactional and triggered emails between different, dedicated IP and subdomain/domain combinations will ensure all mission-critical emails get delivered. I strongly recommend using the sub-domain of your main domain with unique dedicated IP pool set for each category.
Email Authentication: The most important framework yet ignored by many entrepreneurs and marketers when it comes to email deliverability. Trust is an important aspect of every email message which tells ISPs where it’s coming from. The two most common authentication methods are Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) and Sender Policy Frameworks (SPF). SPF is an email-authentication technique which is used to prevent spammers from sending messages on behalf of your domain (Read more about SPF here). DKIM is an email authentication technique that allows the receiver to check that an email was indeed sent and authorized by the owner of that domain. This is done by giving the email a digital signature (Read more about DKIM here). There is also a third authentication tool called DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) which works by equipping email recipients with the ability to determine if an email has originated from a legitimate sender. DMARC is an email validation system designed to protect your company’s email domain from being used for email spoofing, phishing scams, and other cybercrimes (Read more about DMARC here). Correct authentication is an important starting point for establishing a positive reputation with the ISPs.
Setting up the right DNS & Email Setup: Consistency in domains in email headers gives a strong positive signal to ISPs about the brand and sender. Inconsistency in the domains (Sender domain, Link, DKIM, DMARC) leads to filtering at ISPs. That’s why it’s important to set up your DNS and email configuration right from the start. I recommend using sub-domains of your main domain (abc.yourbrand.com) as your sender domains (keeping promotional, transactional & triggered separately)
Email Link Whitelabel: Email link white labels allow all of the click-tracked links to be from your domain instead of ESP. You may white-label links to use your custom domain by setting up a custom CNAME DNS record to point to links.youresp.com. Historically, suggested prefixes like “link,” “click,” etc. but you may use any subdomain you would like to use. In short, custom links are much better for deliverability and contribute positively to your reputation (You can read more here).
List Acquisition & Hygiene: Poor list acquisition & handling practice leads to poor deliverability. If you opt for purchased or rented lists, you will always face deliverability issues (but still most entrepreneurs and business owners get into this trap because they are impatient and just want to drive income). Using confirmed opt-in is where a person receives a confirmation email after subscribing. From there, they confirm that they do in fact want to subscribe to your email list. While using a single opt-in or even a pre-checked box to subscribe may be tempting because of the volume of subscribers you’re likely to generate, it can hurt your long-term deliverability rate. Why? Because it can generate spam complaints, which are the kryptonite to your deliverability rate. Confirmed (double) opt-in give 25% higher opens from single opt-in. And, there are some other major advantages associated with confirmed opt-ins including lower bounce rates, higher open rates, higher-quality leads, more engagement and lower unsubscribe rates.
Using a confirmed opt-in (double opt-in), it’s a great way to maintain high email deliverability. But, it’s not guaranteed that even if you have a double opt-in framework (but if you lack on engagement), ISPs will notice and you’d see fluctuations in your deliverability. As a matter of fact, an opt-in strategy will always help to improve your sender reputation and will prevent your emails from ending up in your subscriber’s spam folders. Depending on your business and subscriber base, you could choose to implement Single Opt-in, Double Opt-in or Confirmed Opt-in process. If you’re doing email marketing but wants to migrate to a better email platform, as a thumb rule, make sure the unsubscribe, spam complaints and bounce data is kept in sync during the transitionary period of using the old platform and your new one via webhooks, APIs, segment export, etc. Based on my expert opinion, a spam complaint of 10/100000 or 1/1000 emails could cause significant reputation damage and particularly as you are rebuilding your reputation.
Domain & IP Warmup: This is the most critical step in ensuring trust and reputation with ISPs. Domain reputation is the new deliverability metric which ISPs are now more serious about along with other ones. And, driving engagement is extremely crucial in the initial warmup phase and I recommend sending small targeted campaigns to your most engaged customers (a segment of customers who have clicked more than 2–3 times and active on your website in the last 30 days). You can gradually scale up the volumes and also start including other customers (preferably more than 2–3 times openers but non-clickers).
You can refer the standard warmup & ramp-up plan but this may vary depending on your sending volume, data size, quality & health
If you mess up during your warmup phase due to any reason, then deliverability will become a bottleneck for you and then you have to restart everything from the start.
Week 1 Daily Volume
Day 1 200
Day 2 500
Day 3 1,000
Day 4 2,000
Day 5 5,000
Day 6 10,000
Day 7 20,000
Week 2 Daily Volume
Day 8 40,000
Day 9 100,000
Day 10 250,000
Day 11 500,000
Day 12 1,000,000
Day 13 2,000,000
Day 14 5,000,000
NOTE:
During weeks 1–2 send to the most active subscribers (opened at least once in last 30 days)
During weeks 3–4 send to 60-day active subscribers
Do not send to subscribers that have not opened in the past 90 days during the first 45 days of warm-up
If warming over 5M, do not send more than double the previous volume
Email Content: Personalize your content. Use a good ratio of text to images. Standard practice is to maintain a balanced 60% Text: 40% Image. Avoid using single image-based emails because ISPs & spam filters treat such messages as less trustworthy. Have fewer URLs in the email. Don’t use short URLs (Bit.Ly or Tiny.Ly). Place URLs on only the most clicked areas. Avoid using unclear or spam flagging subject lines. Educate your customers and subscribers to whitelist your From email address, include an “Add us to your address book” link in every campaign you send. Include email preview link in your headers. Always place your unsubscribe link prominently by highlighting the word Unsubscribe. Include physical mailing address for your business in the footer of your template.
*Gmail Tip: Do test on multiple seed mailboxes and use Mail-Tester. Do pay attention to the message from Gmail when test emails land in your spam folders. Because Gmail reads everything :)
Stick to a Consistent Schedule: It’s super important to establish some level of consistency with your emails because being erratic is a good way to get them sent to spam. I’d say, bombarding subscribers with emails is never a good idea. But on the other hand, sending them too infrequently isn’t good for brand awareness. So ideally, you’ll find a nice balance where you’re supplying your subscribers with fresh, interesting content and effectively nurturing your leads without overdoing it. To find this balance requires a bit of experimentation on your end. What I suggest is trying out a few different frequencies over the course of a few months to see what’s working best. For instance, you may try just sending just one email during one month, two emails the following month and four emails the month after that. Pay close attention to the reaction you get and adjust your frequency accordingly. Once you find what’s working, stick with it.
Deploy a Sunsetting Policy: Recipient engagement is extremely important and can affect reputation. Having a sound sunsetting policy can go long ways in maintaining your reputation. Identify which recipients have not opened in more than three months and potentially unsubscribe them (six months is the longest you should send to a non-engaged email address). Alternatively, reduce sending frequency to less-engage recipients. Sending mail to recipients who are not opening or clicking your messages is one of the quickest ways to damage your reputation. A reasonable benchmark for abuse complaints is 0.01%, which means 10 out of every 1,00,000 people reported your campaign as junk.
*Best Resource: Gmail Bulk Sender Guidelines
Need help with your email marketing & deliverability?
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Father of 2 beautiful daughters, husband to a super-cute wife, singer turned Email Marketing Expert, turned Affiliate & Digital Entrepreneur. And, I help entrepreneurs & startups grow their online revenue using the “Power of Super Emails”, by doing it in the ‘Right’ & the ‘Pro’ way.
Mohsin Farooqui
Email Marketing Expert | Affiliate & Digital Entrepreneur