Lead generation and customer engagement are easily accomplished using a good email marketing campaign. This not only well known, but it’s likely one the reasons you’re reading this.
An email marketing campaign works when the recipients you send messages to are at least opening your emails. This is a proof of engagement with the content you provide. For this is critical that your emails actually do reach your recipient’s inbox. This is key for the success of your email marketing campaign and your business alike. If by any chance your email, or a big portion of them, are not reaching their destination, this can be considered a serious problem.
For a good email marketing campaign to take effect you have to focus on your open rates. This can be done in different ways, one of which is by putting a bit of extra effort in each mail subject line or maybe increasing the quality of your content. Despite this, it is time to address the crucial factor in your email marketing campaign. Your email deliverability.
Email deliverability is basically the ability to deliver emails successfully to your intended recipient’s inbox. Email deliverability can and will likely be affected by multiple factors, which in time will affect your email marketing campaign in a bad way.
Luckily for you, in this article we will be covering a brief guide on how to improve your email deliverability. Below you’ll find great tips and methods to help your email campaign be a success by increasing your email deliverability.
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Always keep present that most internet service providers do take make use of lots of regulators. In this particular case we mean spam filters and spam traps as regulators. These are always looking for bad email and since they’re automated if you happen to cross their way your reputation is likely to suffer.
Being caught in a spam trap can be a rather nasty business, one that is better to avoid at all cost. If you’re running an email marketing campaign one thing to take care of is your email list. If by chance one of the addresses in there happens to be a spam traps remove it immediately. Having a good reputation with email servers can only be beneficial for your email marketing campaign and your email deliverability.
In the other hand, you also want to use a proper format for your emails. One that won’t be recognized as a spam mail. Remember while spam traps are addresses that can be removed from your list, there are still spam filters and scans in most online addresses. Having a good reputation is a good sign for your ISP and makes your more trustworthy in their eyes.
One factor greatly affecting your email deliverability is your sender reputation. I’m sure that by now most of our readers know that your sender reputation works much like a credit score. Well ISP are like banks in this analogy, and they will not hesitate to reject your emails if you happen to be below a certain score of reputation.
Your sender score works in a scale of 1 to 100. Having your score as high as possible will give you and your emails more trust. This score can be affected by a great deal of things. From your open rates and unsubscribes to spam reports. Always keep an eye on your sender reputation to make sure is always in top shape.
A good tool to use comes from Return Path’s and is called “Sender Score”. This software provides accurate information about your sender reputation online. Remember this score reflects the way you’re perceived by the online community, have it as high as you possibly can.
Anyone that has spend long time handling an email marketing campaign knows that too many emails are a sure way to end up in the spam folder. Of course, nobody wants their effort and time go to waste, but this is just the way it is.
If you send too many emails you’ll be labeled as a spammer, but if you send too few people will lose interest. The solution can be said more easily than it is implemented, send the right number of emails.
Usually the right number of emails to send in a particular lapse of time can depend on various factors. The best way to find it for your subscriber list is just testing different models and seeing which works better. A safer approach is simply to stick to the benchmark and send one email per week, if that works, increase to 2 per week. Keep this up while always checking your metrics until the moment your number start to go decisively down.
Keeping up with the last tip, having you can send as many emails per week as your metrics allow you. However, now the problem is when to send them. Randomly sending emails can hurt your open rates and in time your email deliverability.
Having a clear and punctual schedule to send your emails creates a good effect of engagement with your subscribers. Since they know when your emails will arrive, they know to expect them. Incidentally this can also save your emails from the recipient’s spam folder.
The schedule in which you send your emails can depend on a number of factors, such as geolocation and profession. For the best results you can try to segment your email list based on these factors and then adapt to each’s group schedule.
If that last one sounds like too much work, you can always rely on big studies. Mailchimp did a study and found that the best days to send emails from an email campaign are Tuesdays and Thursdays. The best hour to send them is, however, dependent on your recipient.
Despite the benefits of double opt-ins, the most used method for opt-ins is the single opt-in. This method is fast and simple, requiring very little effort from your part. However, it does come with its negative side. From instance, people often make mistakes when typing their addresses in the signup form.
Using the single opt-in method can have you sending emails that will never reach their destination, and therefore hurting your email deliverability. The good news is that you can avoid this altogether by implementing the double opt-in method.
The double opt-in method basically consists in sending a confirmation email to the address of any newly subscripted person. Inside the email there’s a link that when clicked will authenticate the address and will added to the emailing list. This way you can get rid of any problem caused by bad addresses at the moment someone signup to your email campaign. This is a good way to protect your email deliverability in the long run.
By now this is not a surprise to anyone. If by any reason a bad address finds its way to the inside of your email list, then it’s time to clean your email list. In reality one or two bad addresses won’t require your immediate attention. A bunch of them, however, can endanger the success of your email campaign. Old lists are always filled with lots of addresses that are outdated and defunct, the best way to make sure to lower your bounce rates is simply to clean your email list.
List cleaning is a good habit to get into if you’re in the email marketing business. A bad address is not the only reason to clean your email list. Unengaged recipients, inactive addresses and potential defunct addresses are all subjected to cleaning. Remember these addresses are taking up a spot that could be filled with an interested person and they make your time and effort to go to waste. Getting rid of them is ultimately beneficial for your email campaign.
Most people are intimidated by deleting hundreds of email addresses. Remember that if they’re subject to cleaning then they weren’t accomplishing much to begin with. Having a clean email list can only be beneficial to your email campaign’s metrics.
Whenever you’re running contests, competitions or giveaways people are often tempted to enter more than once. They usually do this using multiple email addresses, whether real or fake. A good prize for some people can also be a good motivation to break the rules.
Offers, giveaways and competitions are a prime way for bad addresses to find their way inside your email list. If there’s something you definitely don’t want in your email list is a bunch of fake addresses or addresses from uninterested people. Prevent any situation such as this by applying a good filter and put these addresses in a list subject to the filter before adding it to the main list. One way to filter these emails is to use a professional service, one such as VerifyBee.com which is at the top of the field.
This is a good way to improve your open rate. Using your real name and position or an identification of your brand, in the from field, projects confidence and trust in your emails. It gives them a more official air to them. This will also reduce spam complaints. Both these perks will also improve your email deliverability.
People do trust more in the email the receive if they know who sent them. You should always avoid generic names with a “noreply” name. While they’re common for most of the email campaigns carried out, they do not reflect confidence.
This also makes the email more personal and engaging. This detail goes a long way when it comes to the success of your email marketing campaign. Once you implement this change the numbers in your metrics will make this case for us.
Take this more like an advice than a tip to increase your email deliverability. Whenever you experience delivery issues one thing that should cross your mind is blacklisting. This is all the truer if you had problems with being listed as spam. There are DNS-Based blacklist designed to protect users from IPs with a previous, or present, history as spammers.
You should always stick to good emailing practices and a clear format. Send emails to interested recipients and subscribers. Avoid anything that could get you labeled as spam. This is the only way to avoid blacklisting, and it is something you want to avoid at all cost. Once you get blacklisted there’s no coming back from that. Protect your email campaign and email deliverability and stick to a good email practice.
You might have great content in your hands, a clear format and a clean list. This guaranties nothing if you can’t get your emails delivered to your subscribers. This is just the way things work in this business.
All the effort you can put in your subject line and the content you provide can go to waste if you don’t take care of your email deliverability. The best advice we can give you is to consider all aspects of your email marketing campaign and make sure to keep an eye on your metrics. Remember they are the most important indicators that you have, and they will make apparent any problem with your campaign.
Do follow the tips provided here and make sure that your email campaign is a success thanks to your email deliverability.
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