Building a beautiful, compelling email does nothing if it doesn’t make it to the inbox. That’s why building an effective email marketing strategy starts with understanding email deliverability and how to achieve a good email reputation.
In this article, Campaigner will cover the best practices to help you achieve just that.
Make sure your email domain is authenticated
Authenticating your email address helps reassure ISPs that you are the business you claim to be. This makes them more inclined to trust you and reduces the chances that you will be flagged as spam.
There are four things major authentication factors that you should have:
- Sender Policy Framework (SPF).
- Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM).
- Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC).
- “From” name and email addresses.
IP reputation
IP reputation is critical for your email delivery. Your Internet Protocol address might be shared or dedicated. The IP address refers to the unique address that will identify your device on the internet. Depending on your IP reputation your email might be reaching the inbox. You must remember here that even landing in the spam folder would mean the email at least reached the recipient. Sometimes, emails might not even get delivered. To maintain IP reputation here are the best things to take care of.
1. IP warm-up
After a certain number of emails, businesses should opt for a dedicated IP address. When you first get the address, the IP doesn’t have any reputation at all, so you have to work to build that up which is known as warming up your IP.
Warming up your IP is simply a way that you can build up that reputation and earn trust with ISPs. To do this, send small batches of emails every day and keep increasing the number. Make sure the content is engaging and strike up conversations with your customers.
2. Have a quota for sending every day
Once your domain is authenticated, and your IP warmup is done, you can send bulk emails but keep the number of emails sent consistent. If you send too many or drastically change the number of emails you send, then you risk ESPs flagging you as spam.
3. Beware of blacklists
Domain and IP blacklists are lists of IP addresses and domains that ESPs have blacklisted. You should check these lists regularly to see if you have been blacklisted. There are tools to check these lists. If you find yourself in these blacklists, you will need to start fresh and from scratch, which is not too difficult, but you will lose out on time.
4. Collect feedback
Getting feedback (especially when people unsubscribe) can help you improve your campaigns and make your content more engaging. In turn, this will keep your subscribers happy, and reduce the likelihood that people will mark your emails as spam in the future.
5. Verify email addresses
Sending to an email address that hasn’t agreed to hear from you is one of the main reasons that an IP address can become blacklisted. Even if you are only emailing to addresses that have signed up to your list, you can still run across this problem. If someone misspells their address, that can lead to this issue. When they first sign up, send them a welcome email that asks them to confirm their interest in receiving emails.
6. Clean your contact lists frequently
It’s natural for an email list to have unengaged subscribers or email addresses that begin to bounce. Some amount of soft bounces is okay, but if you start to see many soft bounces in a row it might be time to remove them. If you have hard bounces in your list, those should be removed since hard bounces usually mean a long-term problem.
7. Unsubscribe link
Make sure every email has an unsubscribe link at the bottom and that the process is easy. Not only do you need this to abide by anti-spam laws, but if a subscriber finds it too difficult they will be more likely to report you as spam.
Email content
1. Compelling subject line
A subject line gives your audience an idea of what to expect in the email. If it is not interesting, they won’t even open it. Worse, some words are considered spammy like “cheap,” “credit,” “earn,” “work from home,” “biz opportunities,” “earn” – that work as red flags for ESPs and can cause your email to be marked as spam. Instead, avoid words that might suggest clickbait and keep it precise and meaningful.
2. Links
Like images, links have a similar problem; having one or two might be great, but more than that will make it look spammy, and it might just get lost before reaching the inbox. To be in the good books of ESPs, be careful while adding links.
3. Personalisation
The more relevant the content is, the less likely a subscriber will mark it as spam. Building out quality content that is engaging is vital. That’s why personalising content can be so powerful. Whether you’re adding a few small details such as the subscriber’s name or building out hyper-personalised product recommendations, this tool will help you not only increase deliverability but improve the overall success of your campaigns.
Ultimately, the best way to maintain good deliverability and build it up is by making sure you’re following spam guidelines and that you’re delivering quality content to your subscribers. By following these best practices, you’ll be on your way to improving your results and making it to the inbox.