Are your emails getting to the inbox?

Nowadays, email is among the most popular communication. However, ensuring your emails reach the intended recipients' inboxes can sometimes be challenging. Poor email deliverability can result in missed opportunities, reduced engagement, and even damage your sender reputation. To overcome these, it is vital to understand the key factors that influence email deliverability and implement best practices.

Understanding Email Deliverability

Email deliverability refers to successfully delivering your emails to recipients' inboxes without being marked as spam or bouncing back. Several factors contribute to email deliverability, including the sender's reputation, email authentication protocols, content quality, and engagement metrics.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF)

SPF is an email authentication protocol designed to prevent email spoofing and phishing attacks. By specifying which IP addresses are authorized to send emails on behalf of a domain, SPF helps receiving email servers verify the authenticity of incoming messages. To enhance email deliverability, you need to correctly configure the SPF records by including all legitimate email sources, such as your own servers or authorized third-party services.

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)

DKIM is another email authentication mechanism that adds a digital signature to each outgoing email. This signature ensures the integrity of the email message. By verifying the DKIM signature, receiving email servers can determine whether the email originated from an authorized sender and has not been tampered with during transit. Implementing DKIM can significantly improve email deliverability by increasing the trustworthiness of your emails.

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC)

DMARC builds upon SPF and DKIM, offering an additional layer of email authentication and reporting. It allows domain owners to specify how recipients should handle emails that fail SPF or DKIM checks. DMARC policies can instruct the recipient's server to either quarantine or reject suspicious emails, protecting both the sender's reputation and the recipient's mailbox.

Domain

Use a dedicated domain to send marketing emails. It is very common that these emails are sent on behalf of a member of the team. The problem here is that if something goes wrong, the reputation of the main domain and the sender address get damaged. With using a dedicated subdomain, like news.yourcompany.com instead of yourcompany.com, you can limit the potential damage to this domain, leaving your main one unharmed.

Content and Engagement

While email authentication protocols are important from a technical perspective, the content and engagement of your emails also influence their success. To avoid triggering spam filters, you need to create relevant, engaging, and non-spammy content. Avoid using excessive capitalization, misleading subject lines, or excessive use of promotional language. Additionally, maintaining a healthy engagement rate is crucial. Regularly clean your email list, remove inactive subscribers, and encourage recipients to interact with your emails by including clear call-to-action buttons or personalized content.

List Hygiene and Permission-based Marketing

Building and maintaining a clean and permission-based email list is another factor that influences deliverability. Avoid purchasing or renting email lists, as these often include stale or irrelevant addresses. Instead, focus on organic list growth by encouraging website visitors and customers to subscribe to your emails. Implement a double opt-in process to ensure that subscribers genuinely want to receive your emails. Keep your lists clean and remove inactive or bouncing email addresses.

Email Infrastructure and Reputation Management

Use a reputable and modern service to send emails. Good examples are Microsoft Office 365 and G Suite. Avoid using the email service bundled with your website hosting. These legacy systems often lack modern features and are misconfigured. Monitor bounce rates, spam complaints, and unsubscribe rates to identify potential issues.

Testing and Monitoring

Regularly test your email campaigns to identify potential deliverability issues before sending them to your entire subscriber list. Use email deliverability testing tools to check for potential problems with authentication, spam filters, and formatting. Monitor email metrics, such as open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates, to gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns and identify areas for improvement.

Implementation

Implementing most of these are well-documented and straightforward, but for the non-technical can be a bit challenging. As per usual, if you need a hand, not just tips and ideas, please get in touch.