What exactly is email deliverability and how to improve it?

Most marketers spend a lot of time?writing the right wording, ensuring the email is designed perfectly (using branded email templates), and crafting?the best subject lines that get open and click-through rates skyrocketing.

But before hitting send, have you considered whether your subscribers will even get the opportunity to read your email, or will your email end up reaching the spam folder?

Email deliverability is the ability of an email message to arrive in the recipient’s main email inbox. An email deliverability rate can be lower when an email bounces or gets automatically filtered into a spam folder.

Maintaining good email deliverability would mean that all of your emails are sent and delivered. Bad email deliverability means that something alerted a spam filter and sent that email directly to the spam folders.

No matter how legitimate of an email marketer you are, there are a lot of things you may not even know about that can prevent your email from ever reaching someone's inbox. These include strict laws and increasingly sophisticated spam filters. Having said that, there are things that can be done in order to improve your email's deliverability.

The first step in improving email deliverability will be to run a test to see if you are encountering any issues. If your email platform doesn't offer enough deliverability analytics, you can use other tools that can help you test for delivery issues before your message goes out to your mailing list. To name just a few: Mail Tester.com, mailtrap.io, Spamcheck, and many many more.

Now, let's talk about the do's and don't's...

Don'ts ?

• Don't buy lists - sending emails to lists means that you are sending emails to people who actually don't know who you are, and most probably don't even want to get emails from you. The result of that is that they will mark you as Spam. We didn't even mention the fact that by doing that you aren't exactly following the GDPR guidelines...
• Don't scrape sites for email addresses - not only it isn't legal in some countries (the united states for example) it is really bad for your business.
• Don't send emails to previously hard-bounced addresses - hard bounces are the result of an invalid, closed, or non-existent email address, and these emails will never be successfully delivered. A high percentage of hard bounces hurt your reputation as an email sender and you might be blocked by your internet service provider (ISP).
• Don't use all caps in your subject lines - using all caps in a way of "yelling" at a person. This definitely not the message you want to convey when sending an email to contact. Instead, try personalizing your emails, establishing relevancy, and using catchy and delightful language
• Don't use exclamation points - this is another great way to look spammy or unprofessional. 69% of email recipients?report email as spam based solely on the subject line. So you definitely want to avoid triggers like this as much as you can.
• Don't use video, flash, or Javascript in your email - most email clients don't allow the ability to view rich media as Flash or video embeds. Instead, use an image of your video player (with a play button) that links to the rich media on a website page. As for JavaScript and other dynamic scripts, even if a spam filter allows your email through, most email clients won't allow these scripts to function -- so avoid using them altogether.
• Don't embed forms in your email - forms are usually not supported in most email clients, mainly due to security reasons. Instead, you can use Call-To-Action (CTA) button to link to the landing page with the form.
• Don't include attachments - using attachments in your emails is a safe way to make sure your emails are blocked by spam filters. To avoid that, upload the files you want to send to your website and use CTAs that link to that location. This'll minimize the chance of being blocked by spam filters?and?decrease the load time of your email.
• Don't use spam-triggered words in your subject line - if it sounds like something a used car salesman would say, it's probably a spam trigger word. Few examples: "free", "guarantee", "limited-time", and so on...
• Don't use irregular fonts in your emails - red fonts or invisible text are a sure way to be categorized as spam. In addition, people don't like irregular fonts, sizes or colors. In a recent study conducted by the Radicati Group, over 60% of respondents considered it unacceptable for email marketers to use different font sizes, irregular fonts, and different font colors.?Nearly 70% of respondents prefer fonts to be one size.
• Don't forget to use the spell checker - according to the same study 80% of all respondents find spelling and grammatical errors the most unacceptable email offense. But not only they are considered unprofessional, but they're also actually a spam trigger.
• Don't overuse keywords - Google gives a lower rank to webpages that are stuffed with keywords. Why? because it's harmful to the user experience. No one wants to read content that's optimized for a robot. Copywriting that makes people want to take action is both simple and compelling. To make your writing sound more personable and relatable, use casual language, colloquial expressions, and even personal anecdotes.
• Don't use too many images - using one large image as your entire email, or too many images, in general, tends to end up in recipients' spam folders. You'll also want to make your image file sizes as small as possible without losing their visual integrity to prevent long email load time.

Do's ?

• Keep your email lists clean and current - this means avoid sending to unengaged contacts, or invalid emails. keeping your email lists current and clean, you'll decrease the likelihood that people will flag your emails as spam. You can identify inactive subscribers and expired email addresses with metrics such as opens, clicks, or website activity.
• Check the option of reengaging inactive or infrequently active subscribers - "Graymail" refers to email people technically opted in to receive, but don't?really?want, leading them to become less active or inactive altogether. Sending emails to these people can damage your deliverability. Instead, you should keep track of your inactive and infrequently active subscribers, and?develop re-engagement campaigns?for contacts who have stopped engaging with your messages. For example, you could set conditions such as the length of time since their last form submission, website visit, or email click, triggering the email when it's been a while since a contact last engaged with you. These emails can include for example an exclusive offer or a survey asking for their feedback.
• Use double Opt-in - this means that after someone subscribes to your email list, you send them a follow-up email with a confirmation link ensuring they actually want to receive email communications from you. By doing so you achieve 2 things: making sure the email address that was provided to you is valid and making sure that this contact is really interested in communicating with you. The outcome is a qualified list of contacts.
• Ask subscribers to add you to their email addresses book - when subscribers add you to their address book, spam filters will back off.
• Include the unsubscribe link and address in the footer - allowing people to unsubscribe is not only important for list hygiene, but it's?also illegal?to not have a way for your recipients to easily unsubscribe in many countries, including the United States. In your marketing emails, you must include a way for folks to unsubscribe from your email list, either by simply sending a reply email or by clicking no more than one level deep to reach a page from which they can unsubscribe.

• Remove your unsubscribers from your mailing list - once someone unsubscribes, they must come off your email list. It's the law.
• Use a familiar sender's name - because people are so inundated with SPAM, they hesitate to open emails from unfamiliar senders. Make sure recipients can recognize you in your sender by using your brand name. Better yet, send the email from a real person. Recipients are typically more likely to trust a personalized sender name and email address than a generic one.

• Use personalization in your subject line and in the "To" - this way, spam filters know that you do, indeed, know your recipient.

• Offer recipients both an HTML and a plain text version of your emails - By offering both a plain text?(emails void of any formatting) and?an HTML version of a single email, you're not only indicating your legitimacy to ISPs, but you're also making your emails more reader-friendly. In most email marketing tools you can easily create plain-text versions within their email editor. HubSpot allows you to do so directly via the email settings.

• Allow people to view your email in a web browser - even after every step is taken to assure proper email design, an email client can?still?display an email poorly. Include a link in every email to view the email as a web page.
• Include alt text in your email images - many email clients block images. This means that when someone opens your email, the images won't load unless they click a button to show them or change their default settings.?Adding alt text to your images?helps recipients understand your message even if they can't see the images.
• Keep your emails short - too much copy is another red flag for spam filters. Not only that, but people generally like concise emails better. Remember; you need to write just the way you speak. By doing so, you make your content feel much more approachable and relevant. If you do have to write a lengthier email, then break it up into multiple paragraphs. Giving visual breaks and composing the email with a clear introduction, middle, and conclusion will make it much easier for your reader.
• Test your emails before sending them - people can read your emails from various devices, using various email clients. It turns out?each of these clients displays emails differently. If your email marketing tool lets you, go ahead and preview what your email looks like in different email clients and devices that are popular with your audience. You should also send out a test version of your email before you send out the real deal to ensure it's working properly.
• Get an email sender accreditation from a third party - sender accreditation is a third-party process of verifying email senders and requiring them to follow certain usage guidelines. In return, you'll be listed in a trusted listing that ISPs reference to allow certain emails to bypass email filters.
• Monitor the reputation of your sender's IP address - your emails' deliverability depends largely on your IP address' reputation. If you're sending emails from an IP address with a poor reputation, your emails are far less likely to be successfully delivered to senders' inboxes.

Last but not least, always stay up-to-date on changes in email sending laws, ISP behavior, and spam filter technology. Email marketing is constantly evolving, and staying in the know helps ensure you’re always following best practices and the law. Responsible and legitimate email marketers make a point of regularly reading up on email sending laws, ISP behavior, and spam filter technology.