Ways to Improve Email Deliverability

What is Email Deliverability?
Email Deliverability refers to the rate at which emails are delivered to the targeted customers' inboxes. Not all emails are delivered to customer inboxes. When an email went to the spam folder or was blocked by the ISP is called Email deliverability failure.

How to improve email deliverability?
There are proven techniques to prevent failures and improve your email delivery rates for the long term. Some of the standard techniques to improve Email deliverability are:

• Authenticate your email domain with Anti-spam Technology
• Maintain proper IP allocation
• Use Double Opt-in over a Single Opt-in
• Avoid Spam Words in Subject Lines
• Provide Option to Manage preferences
• Clean up your Contacts List Regularly
• Avoid Spam Trap Emails
• Avoid Attachments and Embedded Videos
• Create and Maintain a Suppression List

1. Authenticate your Email Domain with Anti-spam Technology

Impersonation is not a form of flattery in the email world–it’s one of the quickest ways to tank your sender reputation.

• Sender Policy Framework (SPF) tries to discover whether an email coming from a domain has been sent by an authorized IP on that domain. It fights email spoofing.
• Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) is like a digital signature for an email, which allows the email sender to link their domain with the email messages they send. This shows that the emails are authentic.
  If you have not enabled SPF and DKIM, you risk falling victim to email spoofing and, as a result, experiencing poor delivery rates. Authenticating your email with SPF and DKIM proves that the email is not forged.

2. Maintain Proper IP Allocation

IP address plays an important role in email deliverability issues. If you send thousands of emails the first time from a particular IP, ISPs may treat that as spam and may block the IP.

You will have to “warm-up” new IP addresses. That means, you should start with a few emails, and gradually build-up to the desired quantity and frequency.

3. Use Double Opt-in Over a Single Opt-in

If you are sending emails to people who weren’t aware or didn’t agree to receive messages from you, they will mark your emails as spam and the ISPs will think you’re spamming everyone on your list.

The double opt-in is a process where the end customer gets a confirmation email after they’ve entered their email address into your form and clicked submit. They’re not subscribed until they click a link in the confirmation email.

Deliverability rates for contacts that use double opt-in are significantly higher than for single opt-in contacts. Their unsubscribe rates are also lower, and their open and click-through rates are higher.

4. Avoid Spam Words in Subject Lines

In general, the ISPs filter certain phrases and move the emails to the spam folder. You can avoid using common spam phrases in the subject line. Some of these phrases include:

• Eliminate your debt
• Risk-free
• FREE!!!

Avoiding the words in the subject line may not guarantee your email a place in the inbox. A one-liner subject lines force you to write in an active, succinct, and creative way. Below are a few guidelines for the subject line:

• Keep it short: Most recipients prefer and will be more likely to open a subject line when it’s three words.
• Make it specific and urgent: Think of the subject line as your first CTA or touchpoint with your recipient. If you don’t draw them in right away, you’ve lost them. To achieve this, try to use action verbs as much as possible.
• Experiment: You won’t know how your audience will react to your subject lines until you actually send them something. Consider sending two or more subject lines to different segments of your email target group. For example, one subject line may be a bold subject line that pushes the envelope while the other could be a more traditional and literal subject line.
• Don’t Overdo it with !!!!, ALL CAPS, and other frills: Avoid capital letters to emphasize something that may lead to losing the recipient. One exception to this rule is emojis. Emojis also allow you to use fewer characters. Depending on your industry, it works great for some campaigns.

5. Provide Option to Manage Preferences

If your recipients have agreed to receive an email from you, provide an option to change the preferences as well. By doing this you can reduce the unsubscribes and helps in keeping your customers happy. This happiness generally translates to better engagement. This means a better sender reputation which means more emails delivered, helping you meet your goals for conversions, leads, and sales.

6. Clean Up your Contacts List Regularly

The longer you keep inactive contacts on your email contacts list, the more you risk damage to your reputation and deliverability rates. It is also important to scrub your list on a regular basis so that your email list is healthy and only includes people who engage with your emails. Below are a few guidelines to keep the list clean:

• Purge hard bounces after one bounce: When an email message is sent to an email account that is closed or no longer exists is called a hard bounce. If you trigger too many hard bounces, the major ISPs (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail) keep track of these bounces and will start to suppress the delivery of all your emails. So keep your list up to date and remove hard bounces.
• Purge soft bounces after multiple attempts: When an email message is sent to an email account that is full, or temporarily unavailable for some reason is called a soft bounce. It is a good idea to remove those contacts from your list after 3 to 4 soft bounces to an email address.

7. Avoid Spam Trap Emails

Spam traps are email addresses set in place by ISPs to catch spammers from sending unwanted emails. If a sender ends up sending to a spam trap, it is immediately flagged and put on a blacklist.

Email marketers can avoid spam traps by keeping a clean list of engaging contacts.

8. Avoid Attachments and Embedded Videos

Do not include an attachment for the emails unless required. If you want your contacts to read a PDF or any other document, include a link to download it in the email. If you want to send a video, send an image that looks like a video, and link it to a page that automatically plays the video. Most of your contacts won’t notice the difference.

9. Create and Maintain a Suppression List

Create a suppression list that contains email addresses of inactive contacts or anyone to who you wish to permanently exclude from sending future emails. By doing so, you prevent these recipients from adversely affecting your email deliverability.