Email deliverability is a term that refers to everything connected to the ability of your emails to turn up at the recipients’ inbox.
Email deliverability directly influences the effectiveness and reach of your campaign: no one can view an undelivered email or click an unseen link. That’s why good email deliverability is vital to the success of your email marketing campaigns.
The main pitfalls in email deliverability
1.Bounced emails
Bounced emails can’t be avoided. Whether the address has been deleted, domain expired, or mistyped from the start, bounced emails will hinder your list development at all times. Correct them as you go, because ISPs will likely think that you are a spammer
2.Spam filters
Spam filters usually check for content quality, senders IP and reputation. So it’s important to keep your reputation in good condition. Even more importantly, always think about what you are writing in your message body. As there is more spam traveling around the world than actual marketing related emails, it is important you are aware of words not to use in emails not to be identified as spam. You can read more about avoiding spam filters and words not to use in this article.
Spam filters usually act in favor of the user, but can cause your email to land in the spam folder.
Note that most email service providers (ESPs) have built-in spam check options that offer you to check spam-rating of your emails before you send them.
3.Invalid HTML
Most emails sent today are not W3C compliant and invalid HTML emails are likely to be blocked, just because email spam senders sometimes use standard-ignorant HTML to their advantage. Use the W3C validator for keeping your emails standard compliant.
How to ensure deliverability (or at least better it)
1.Send targeted emails
Most of the errors in deliverability are caused by using low quality email lists, or not having email lists targeted enough. Blast an email to too broad of an audience and you will get unhappy readers because of wrong interests.
Targeted emails aren’t simply ones with the recipient’s name in the email.
The content of relevant emails is relevant to the user’s interests, isn’t overly sales-oriented, and doesn’t contain misleading information, links, etc.
2.Use ESPs for sending email.
Although you are the one who’s responsible for proper delivery, ESPs can help you deliver more emails than by going solo.
First of all, ESPs act on the basis of permission email marketing, which is actually the only legal way of sending commercial email in the U.S. and most countries around the world.
ESPs also have ongoing relations with internet service providers, and employ a significant amount of tools (bounced email removal and logging) for making your life easier.
3.Be honest to your subscribers
This one usually goes without saying, but telling half-truths is lying — at least in email marketing, anyway. Tell your users about when, how often, and about what you’ll be sending emails. You can’t exploit the email because somebody signed up for your company newsletter a while ago.
In a nutshell
Send targeted emails, probably with the help of ESPs.
Personalize emails for better delivery results, and practice honesty to your subscribers.
There is no ‘magic pill’ for bettering email deliverability, but honest, transparent campaigns will be delivered to more recipients than the ones that reek of email spam.
There are equally many clients who ask “advanced” questions about e-mail marketing as there are clients who ask “beginner” questions. You know, there’s no harm in being new to something.
You’ll love the difference!
