Tutorials

13 minutes to read

Sep 19 2023

Aiming at 100% Delivered Emails

Polina Bezrukava

In an age of marketing clutter and information overload, email remains a cornerstone strategy for savvy marketers, with a staggering 69 percent leveraging this channel to distribute their content. Far from being a relic of the past, email marketing offers a plethora of benefits that range from sending timely service updates to clients to fortifying security through confirmation emails. Yet, the efficacy of this potent tool hinges on one pivotal factor: delivery. If your emails are not landing precisely where they should—in the inbox and not the spam folder—then even the most brilliant content may go unnoticed. In this article, we delve into the crucial practices that govern email deliverability, equipping you with actionable tips to increase email deliverability of your marketing campaigns.

Delivery Overview

Understanding the basics of email delivery is crucial. Every day, billions of emails traverse the digital landscape. Only half of these are business-related; the rest are marketing emails, with around 50% being classified as spam. To figure out how to increase email deliverability and ensure email delivery guarantees, it’s important to understand how mail services differentiate between spam and legitimate correspondence. Thus, here is a step-by-step email journey:

Step 1: Crafting Your Email List

The cornerstone of any successful email campaign is the mailing list. Quality matters, so you’ll want to create a list that’s both comprehensive and well-targeted.

Step 2: The Sending Process

While it may seem straightforward, the sending process has multiple variables. Some emails may be blocked for various reasons, such as user opt-outs or spam recognition via tools like SpamAssassin. Services will check subscription statuses and content to determine deliverability.

Step 3: Understanding Bounces

Deliverability is not guaranteed, as indicated by ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ bounces. High numbers of hard bounces can damage your sender reputation, which in turn affects future deliverability. Therefore, keeping an eye on bounce rates is critical.

Step 4: Final Email Destinations

Although the ultimate goal is the inbox, emails sometimes detour into spam folders or get caught in spam traps. Understanding and avoiding these pitfalls is vital to maintaining a good sender reputation.

Step 5: Open Rates

Monitoring your email’s performance goes beyond deliverability; open rates are also essential. By incorporating tracking pixels, you can gather valuable metrics on user engagement.

Step 6: User Engagement

Click-through rates and other forms of interaction provide additional insights. These metrics inform you on how compelling your content is, giving you a clear direction for future campaigns.

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Key Players in Email Delivery

It’s essential to know the key stakeholders in the ecosystem. These pivotal players—senders, network gateways, and recipients—each play unique roles that influence whether your email ends up in the inbox or the spam folder:

Senders

Senders fall mainly into three categories: trusted organizations, certificate providers, and spammers. Understanding the specifics of each helps you navigate the complexities of email deliverability effectively.

Network Gateways

Network gateways serve as critical junctions in the email deliverability framework. These gateways, deployed by mail services both large and small, act as the system’s gatekeepers. Importantly, network gateways also include:

• Large Mail Services. The giants in the field whose deliverability standards you must meet to ensure easier interactions with smaller services.

• Small Mail Services. These often employ the same algorithms and processes as larger services, offering less stringent but equally important deliverability criteria.
• B2B Anti-Spam Systems. Custom-configured by each organization, making universal recommendations difficult. However, marketing subscriptions are rarely done via work emails in these systems.
• Registers of Untrusted Senders. Maintained by specialized organizations and used by large providers. Being on one of these lists can severely impact your deliverability rate.

Recipients

Recipients are, naturally, the ultimate goal. Internet providers invest a lot of effort into shielding them from spam and undesirable content. Therefore, adapting your strategy to meet the anti-spam criteria of various providers is vital for inbox placement.

This foundational knowledge will guide your strategies to ensure that your emails achieve their ultimate goal: landing in the recipient’s inbox.

Influence of Mail Services on Delivery Rate

Mail services have intricate anti-spam measures that can inadvertently affect your legitimate mailouts. Learning how to navigate these anti-spam policies can help increase email deliverability.

Volume Limitations

Providers set email send limits based on your reputation. Exceeding these limits can result in a “soft bounce,” delaying your emails. Planning and gradually increasing your email volume, especially 30 days prior to significant campaigns, can help avoid this.

Blocking

Getting blocked by a provider can stop your email sends entirely, often requiring direct negotiation to restore service. To avoid blocking, ensure your email list is clean and up-to-date, segment your list to only engage interested clients, and make the unsubscribe process easy.

Mass Blocking

Providers may send your emails to spam if you breach certain soft and hard bounce limits. Monitoring metrics like open rates can help identify this issue early on. Also, avoid using test addresses from a new IP, as it can harm your future deliverability.

Blacklists

Landing on a blacklist can halt your email sends until you resolve the issue with the responsible organization. Best practice is to improve your mailout process proactively to prevent blacklisting and taking care of populating mailout databases.

In order to get over spam polices without damage for your campaign you can employ a special software to increase email deliverability as it may be game-changer in this regard, significantly lowering the time you spend on this task.

Control Points for Mail Services

Email marketing delivery rate increase can be obtained by increasing the number of factors considered by mail services as positive and decreasing negative factors. Therefore, it is critical to distinguish control points for mail services.

When it comes to negative aspects affecting deliverability, the following factors can be mentioned:

• Undelivered Email. Hard and soft bounces hurt your reputation. The former often indicates poor list quality, while the latter signifies limit violations.
• Spam Complaints . Keeping these under 0.1% is essential, as providers aim to eliminate spam.

• Spam Traps. Having these in your email list signals you didn’t collect addresses properly.
• Inactive Addresses . Emails sent to addresses unused for 180-270 days can mark your list as outdated.
• Unread or Deleted Emails. If emails are not read or are deleted, it can flag your content as potential spam.

Meanwhile, positive factors for deliverability increase include:

• Address Book Inclusion. Having your sender’s address in the recipient’s address book boosts your reputation.

• High Open and Click-Through Rates. These indicate your emails are useful and engaging.
• Forwarding. Emails that are forwarded typically signal quality and relevance.
• Favorites . Being marked as a favorite implies your content is valued.
• Responses . A reply from a recipient shows engagement and adds positive points to your sender reputation.

Understanding these factors offers a roadmap on how do you increase email deliverability. Prioritize maintaining a clean list and producing engaging content to optimize your chances of inbox placement.

Optimal Open Rate

An optimal open rate is a critical to increase email deliverability rate. Providers generally regard an open rate of 20% or higher as good, and this can smooth the way for successful email delivery. On the other hand, open rates between 15-19% may sporadically lead to delivery issues. A consistent problem arises for senders with a 10-14% open rate, indicating the need for immediate action to improve. When the open rate drops to 10% or lower, it’s often a red flag signaling issues with the content or the email list itself. In summary, maintaining a high open rate is crucial for ensuring your emails reach their intended recipients.

Entities Under Senders’ Control

Senders have full control over a set of entities that have influence on the overall delivery rate. They can work and experiment with these entities to improve the result and increase email delivery rates. Below is the list of such entities:

• Database Quality. Essential when you’re starting with a new IP address or domain; it’s the only thing the provider knows about you initially.
• Mailout Frequency and Relevancy. Sending emails too frequently can be a red flag for providers. Segment your database to send relevant and personalized content, improving both client engagement and delivery rate.
• Client Preferences. Understanding how often your clients want to hear from you can optimize your mailing frequency. This can be done by directly asking your clients or using specialized marketing tools.
• Content and Format .Though not as critical as other factors, avoiding content that resembles spam is recommended.

• Sender’s Reputation. Extremely important for long-term success, but focus on it after you’ve optimized the other factors.

Senders can substantially improve their email deliverability rates by carefully managing these controllable elements.

Impact on Sender’s Reputation

Fluctuations in sender reputation are normal and can be influenced by how engaged your audience is. This reputation significantly impacts your email deliverability rate. IP address reputation plays a crucial role here; it acts as your ticket to the recipient’s server. Senders typically use either dedicated or shared IP addresses:

• Dedicated IP Addresses. Exclusively used by one sender, who bears full responsibility for maintaining its reputation. Mistakes can be costly, but on the upside, it’s easier to whitelist a dedicated IP. They’re an ideal choice for large organizations that have a high email sending volume.

• Shared IP Addresses. Utilized by multiple senders, meaning the reputation is collectively managed. While one sender’s mistake can negatively affect everyone using that IP, the benefit is that the volume limitation for sending emails is usually higher. Shared IPs are often better suited for smaller businesses that might not have the email volume to build a good reputation on their own.

Managing your IP address reputation—whether dedicated or shared—is critical for optimizing your email deliverability.

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Domain Reputation

Domain reputation is your golden ticket to a recipient’s inbox and is closely tied to your brand, unlike an IP address. This reputation remains consistent even if your IP or email service changes. It’s also influenced by the industry you operate in. Follow these actions to maintain or improve your domain reputation:

• Database Segmentation .Tailoring your emails to different segments of your audience not only boosts engagement but also improves your domain reputation.
• Database Hygiene. Regularly clean your database to remove inactive or irrelevant accounts to enhance deliverability and reputation.
• Adjust Frequency for Engagement. Reduce the number of emails sent to less-engaged segments of your audience to prevent negatively impacting your domain reputation.

Your domain reputation is a vital factor that opens the door to your customer’s inbox, making its management crucial for effective email marketing.

Rules for Database Segmentation

Segmentation means dividing all clients in the database into small groups called segments. After dividing the database into segments the letters are sent not to all clients, but to separate segments.There are some methods for segmenting the database that have already proven to be effective to increase email deliverability.

The data from the mailout service and analytics can be used to divide the database into segments in a better way. And here’s a streamlined approach:

1. Non-Subscribers . Never send emails to people who didn’t opt-in. This is not only bad for your reputation but also illegal in many jurisdictions.

1. New Clients (0-30 days). Ideal for welcome emails and high-frequency touchpoints, aim for 1-3 emails per week to capitalize on initial interest.

1. Passive Clients (31-90 days). Lower your email frequency. These are newer clients who haven’t engaged yet, but there’s potential to reactivate them.

1. Active Clients (>30 days, engaged). Maintain regular contact. This segment should make up over 40% of your list for a healthy email marketing strategy.

1. At Risk of Dropping Out (91-180 days since last engagement). Re-engage these clients with compelling, personalized content, but limit emails to 1-2 per week.

1. Dropped Out (>180 days since last engagement) . Clean these contacts from your list. They hurt your deliverability and could be potential spam traps.

1. Inactive (>90 days, never engaged) . Remove these contacts; they add no value and risk damaging your reputation.

By following these segmentation rules, you can discover the shortest way on how to increase deliverability email significantly and overall marketing performance.

Summary: DOs and DON’Ts

Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, this guide on the DOs and DON’Ts of email marketing aims to refine your strategy to increase email deliverability rates. Here is a simple list of DON’Ts and DOs to keep in mind:

DON’Ts

• Avoid Third-Party Lists. Purchasing or downloading email databases is risky and could violate regulations like GDPR.

• No Unwanted Emails. Sending to unsubscribed or non-opt-in users can trigger spam complaints, tarnishing your reputation.
• Skip Group Addresses. Mailing to addresses like info@ or sales@ can hurt deliverability, as they are more likely to mark your emails as spam.
• Purge Old Contacts: Inactive emails damage your metrics; remove any that have been inactive for over six months.
• Steer Clear of Spammy Language. Overuse of capitalization, exclamation marks, or clichés can flag your emails as spam.

DOs

• Register with Provider Tools. Services like Google Postmaster and Microsoft SDNS provide valuable insights into your email reputation.
• Clear Subscription Process. Implement a double opt-in and CAPTCHA to ensure authentic subscriptions and reduce the likelihood of spam complaints.
• Tailor Frequency by Engagement. Segment your list to tailor email frequency, sending more content to highly-engaged users.
• Content Moderation. Use tools to verify that your email content doesn’t resemble spam.
• Monitor Delivery Metrics . Track undelivered emails, complaints, and blocks to understand how providers perceive your campaigns.

• Cross-Platform Compatibility. Ensure your emails render well on all devices and browsers, keeping a 60:40 text-to-graphics ratio.
• Easy Unsubscription. Make it simple to opt-out to reduce the chances of being marked as spam.
• Personalization. Customized content based on past behavior and preferences enhances engagement, thus improving your reputation and revenue.

Effective email marketing isn’t just about what you send but about avoiding common pitfalls that can harm your reputation and deliverability. By adhering to these DOs and DON’Ts, you’re well on your way to maximizing your email marketing delivery rates and, ultimately, your ROI.

By choosing a reliable communication platform , businesses can reduce the likelihood of encountering potential pitfalls and make their campaigns significantly more effective, all while maintaining the highest email delivery rates. BSG is an experienced and reputable service provider in the market, offering a variety of tools and services to enhance the quality and effectiveness of the connection between you and your customers.

Consider implementing an email auto-dial tool that not only guarantees improved delivery but also provides essential data on client actions.This includes tracking actions such as email opening, link clicking, and more, all communicated via HTTP requests. Email auto-dial services use follow-up calls to assist clients in making choices and decisions in their favor. It is one of the surest and most effective ways to achieve high-standard email marketing results.