5 Ways to Increase Email Deliverability
As a marketer, you might have found heaps of recommendations and guides advising you to invest considerable amount of time, resources and efforts for creating the ideal email messages. You have read all the guides recommending you to focus on the ideal ratio of text to images, an eye-catching font, line spacing, personalization in terms of content and audience segment, the best time and frequency of sending emails and similar other factors to deliver a successful email. But, how will you make sure that your emails will bypass the spam folder and reach only inboxes.
Luckily, there are various ways you can actually ensure email deliverability and improve email delivery rates for every campaign you launch. Here are5 tips that, when executed perfectly, will improve your email deliverability.
1. Validate the email domain
Marketers who are not using an authenticated email domain need to reconsider their approaches to prevent the risk of damaging their email sender reputation. If marketers are not activating Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) and Sender Policy Framework (SPF), they might run the risk of email spoofing and getting someone to gain control of the email domain which causes weak email delivery rates.
On the other hand, validating email with DKIM and SPF will help ISPs identify you and if the email domain is authenticated to send emails. Though email authentication can be complicated, but the practice is well worth it to ensure email delivery.
2. Keep up good IP allocation
When the email marketing program starts growing, marketers need to remember that they require good email infrastructure when your email campaign starts scaling. As a brand starts sending 30,000 emails on day-to-day basis, they need to send emails using a dedicated IP address. When a brand will opt for a dedicated IP address, they need to set it up properly before starting to send emails to the email list so that the company can gain trust with recipients’ ISPs which will not block you when emails sent from a dedicated IP.
3. Improve email opt-in process
Marketers need to pay attention to how they are amassing their prospects’ email addresses as it plays a vital role in making or breaking the email deliverability rates. A perfectly chosen opt-in method will guarantee that the collected contacts are going to be engaged and interested users. If marketers are sending emails to recipients who were not made aware or have not expressed their interest to receive communications from the brand, then sending emails to them might make them mark your emails as spam. As a result, their ISPs will see your IP as the one that is spamming their customers and all the recipients on the email list, including those who have actually wished to receive email messages. We always recommend our clients to use double opt-in method as it involves two-step verification process to enable contacts to confirm their interest. Thus, double opt-in process is proven more effective in building an email list with engaged subscribers.
4. Write more compelling subject lines which prove brand as non-spam
Marketeers who are aiming at improving their email deliverability rates need to take serious consideration of email subject lines as theysubject lines play a critical role in determining if the subscriber will open emails. Recipients’ ISPs are growing to be more refined in IP filtering systems and can spot certain phrases which will mark or prevent emails from the spam folder automatically. We recommend our clients to not to include these phrases that are usually get marked as spam, such as “Eliminate your debt”, “FREE!!!”, “Risk-free” etc. Though there is no such strict rule of not using these phrases, but it is advised to exclude these phrases to ensure your emails get arrived in subscribers’ inbox. Instead of using these words, it is better to focus on providing proper value to your prospects without sounding aggressive or salesy.
5. Build an email preference center
As soon as your contacts express and confirm their interest to get communications from the brand, marketers need to build an email preference center to enable their contacts to decide the topics and how frequently contacts want to receive email communications from a brand. Preference centers or subscription management centers will give recipients the control they need to choose how and what messages they will receive and will also keep prospects happy with the content and the email.
In addition to these five techniques of guaranteeing email delivery to users’ inboxes, marketers should also consider other essential best practices. They must consider regular cleaning of email lists to remove inactive, invalid, duplicate or inaccurate contacts. Also, email marketers can avoid spam traps by maintaining a clean email list consisting of engaged subscribers and avoid purchasing an email list.