ReportWire

Tag: Email deliverability

  • This One Thing Is the Secret to Higher Email Open Rates | Entrepreneur

    This One Thing Is the Secret to Higher Email Open Rates | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    By next year, people around the world will send and receive 376 billion emails every day. Inboxes are jam-packed, so capturing your customers’ attention is only getting harder. Want to stand out and get more clicks? Stop obsessing about your subject lines. Instead, focus on email relevance and quality.

    A ZeroBounce report suggests that 47% of people open a brand email not because of the subject line but because they always get relevant messages from that brand. Subject lines come second in enticing someone to open an email, the report shows, based on a survey of American and European email users.

    So, how can you make your emails better, deliver constant value and boost your metrics? Here are eight habits to adopt today.

    1. Make sure people recognize you

    Since email open rates often hinge on trust in the sender, you must be instantly recognizable in people’s inboxes. Make sure your “From” name is consistent across all the different types of marketing emails you send. For instance, if your sales team contacts prospects, their “From” name should reflect your brand, such as “Paul from Entrepreneur” instead of “Paul Jones.”

    Related: 11 Common Email Marketing Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)

    2. Show up for your audience

    The value your emails deliver carries the most weight, but it will only make an impact if you send those emails regularly. To determine your sending schedule, be realistic: How many emails can you commit to? If all you can send is one newsletter a month, that’s fine — as long as you show up in the inbox like clockwork.

    3. Segment your email list

    Sending the same email to all your subscribers is unlikely to drive engagement. Your customers are in various stages in their journey with your business. Some may be new sign-ups yet to make a purchase, while others are regular customers. Use filters to create separate groups and reach out with emails that make sense to each segment.

    4. Personalize each message

    Segmenting your email list is the first step to email personalization. But if you want to build further trust in your brand, make every subscriber feel as if you wrote that email just for them. Address their pain points and provide easy ways to alleviate them. Offer fresh ideas and content that caters directly to their needs. This approach fosters a deeper, instant connection.

    5. Listen to your audience

    Want to improve your email content overnight and increase engagement? Dive into your customer support tickets, social media channels and industry forums to find out exactly what people are discussing. If you host webinars, save all the questions people ask in the chat. Gather all this info in a document, and you’ll have a steady stream of relevant topics in your emails.

    Related: 5 Things You Can Do to Improve Your Email Marketing

    6. Keep your emails short

    28% of the email users ZeroBounce surveyed said the length of an email doesn’t matter as long as that email is tailored to them. Once again, we see how important segmentation and personalization are. However, 66% stated they prefer short emails, so if you can make your emails both relevant and short, you’ll get higher open rates. Bonus: you’ll probably spend less time on your email marketing.

    7. Infuse warmth into your tone

    Before you send your next email, take a moment to read it out loud. Ask yourself, does it sound like a conversation you’d have with your customers in person? Corporate jargon can be a communication barrier. Consider toning it down and infusing your emails with more warmth and personality. In the age of AI, sounding more human helps you stand out.

    8. Make unsubscribing easy

    Allowing subscribers to leave your email list easily isn’t just sensible; it’s also a critical email deliverability rule. Recent sending requirements from Google and Yahoo emphasize that people should be able to unsubscribe from emails with just one click. Consult with your email marketing platform and test your unsubscribe process. If you don’t follow this rule, you may see a spike in spam complaints, which can relegate your emails to the spam folder.

    Bonus tips: ensure your emails arrive in the inbox

    Adopting the good habits above will give you a boost in clicks, but imagine putting all this effort into your emails only for them to land in spam. To help them go to the inbox, remember to:

    • Remove invalid contacts and avoid bounces – your bounce rate should never exceed 2%.
    • Authenticate your emails to comply with Google and Yahoo‘s requirements.
    • To prevent spam complaints, avoid emailing people who haven’t given you permission.

    Finally, sending emails from a reliable platform is critical to your email deliverability. Choose a trustworthy company and get expert advice if you suspect your emails aren’t landing in the inbox.

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    Liviu Tanase

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  • Google Is About to Delete Inactive Accounts. Here’s How to Avoid A Massive Gmail Bounce Rate. | Entrepreneur

    Google Is About to Delete Inactive Accounts. Here’s How to Avoid A Massive Gmail Bounce Rate. | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    “If a Google Account has not been used or signed into for at least two years, we may delete the account and its contents,” Google announced in a blog post, and that time is coming soon. In December, the tech giant will begin removing inactive accounts along with their content across Google Workspace, which includes Gmail. The policy applies only to personal Google accounts — but for businesses like yours, that may result in a spike in bounces.

    Why Google will start purging abandoned accounts

    Google’s decision to weed out inactive accounts is another step the company is taking to prevent security threats like spam, phishing and account hijacking.

    “If an account hasn’t been used for an extended period of time, it is more likely to be compromised,” Google’s VP of Product Management Ruth Kricheli explains. Abandoned accounts have weaknesses bad actors could exploit. Old passwords and a lack of two-factor authentication make them vulnerable and “a vector for unwanted or even malicious content, like spam,” adds Kricheli.

    How to prepare and avoid a massive Gmail bounce rate

    For businesses like yours that use email to connect with customers and prospects, Google’s move is a high bounce rate alert. With Gmail being the largest email provider in the world, your email list likely contains many personal Gmail accounts, especially if your business caters to consumers.

    Email providers consider a bounce rate under 2% acceptable. But once you’ve crossed that threshold, your emails can start landing in the spam folder. Bounces tarnish your sender reputation, which is a 0 to 100 score Internet service providers (ISPs) use to determine whether you’re a legitimate sender or a spammer. The closer to 100 your score is, the more ISPs trust you as a sender – and deliver your messages to the inbox. Lower scores mean your emails could be spam.

    So, how can you prepare beforehand and avoid emailing addresses that may bounce? Being proactive is much easier than fixing the damage.

    Related: 5 Simple Tweaks for Better Email Deliverability

    Remove inactive subscribers

    Many businesses hold on to subscribers longer than they should. Having a sizable email list can give you a wider reach. However, in email marketing, engagement trumps such vanity metrics. Also, if someone hasn’t opened your emails in more than six months, what are the chances they’ll ever start engaging again?

    So, segment unengaged subscribers and try to win them back with an enticing offer. Make sure you put it right in the subject line and preview text so they can’t miss it. Then, remove non-openers and keep only prospects who click. Before Google starts deleting them, it’s best to prune these accounts yourself to avoid any bounces.

    Validate your entire email list

    Observing how your inactive subscribers react to a targeted campaign gives you useful audience insights. But inactive subscribers aren’t the only risky types of contacts you could have on your list. Abuse emails, for instance, belong to individuals who tend to report many emails as spam. To avoid potential spam complaints, some email marketers prefer to weed them out using an email verifier.

    There’s also the issue of temporary email addresses, which many people use to avoid giving out their real address. Temporary emails self-destruct and cause your emails to bounce, so deleting them from your database is good prevention.

    On average, almost a quarter of your database goes bad yearly, according to ZeroBounce’s Email List Decay Report. The upcoming Gmail purge will only add to this natural data decay, so validate your list again to ensure it’s safe to use.

    How Google will delete inactive accounts

    While Google’s policy took effect in May 2023, it won’t affect inactive Gmail users until December. The tech company will delete abandoned accounts in several phases, starting with those people created and never used again. Could you have any such email addresses in your database? Check your email marketing reports. If any subscribers signed up for your emails but never opened your messages, remove them immediately.

    Related: How to give your email marketing a boost ahead of the holidays

    Abandoned accounts are hurting your email marketing

    As a business owner trying to reach your customers’ inboxes, you must always be aware of your sender reputation. Bounces and spam complaints affect it dramatically, but so does poor engagement.

    When people don’t react to the emails you send, ISPs interpret that as an indication that your content isn’t helpful. As a result, your emails are more likely to go to the junk folder. That’s why email marketing best practices involve regularly pruning unresponsive subscribers. Their mere presence on your email list hurts your email deliverability. And when they’ll start bouncing, the damage will be even more severe.

    So, reevaluate the health of your email list so that your newsletters and campaigns can make it to the inbox. The Gmail purge is the best reason to look into the quality of your contacts today.

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    Liviu Tanase

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  • 5 Steps to Fuel Your Email Marketing Efforts Before the Holidays | Entrepreneur

    5 Steps to Fuel Your Email Marketing Efforts Before the Holidays | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    People spent $1.14 trillion online and $270 billion in the U.S. during last year’s holiday season. For businesses like yours, the coming months have the highest sales potential — and for that, you need a reliable strategy.

    Email marketing is competitive 365 days a year, but the last quarter? It all comes to a head. With so many companies fighting for attention and dollars, you can’t afford to have anything go wrong.

    From figuring out the right offers to preparing your email list, here are five steps you can take today to get better holiday email marketing results.

    Related: 8 Simple Email Marketing Tips to Improve Your Open and Click Through Rates

    1. Create different offers for each audience segment

    Your customers’ journey with your company can be wildly different. For instance, a repeat customer will have different needs compared to a prospect who just created an account on your website. So, when you and your team brainstorm holiday email campaigns, you must take these details into account and segment your audience.

    If the effort of splitting your list intimidates you, stay focused on the benefits. Open rates are 14% higher for segmented campaigns, which means you’ll have higher chances to convert.

    2. Verify your customers’ email addresses

    Now that you’re clear on the offers for each customer segment, it’s time to check the health of your email lists. Looking at your most recent email marketing reports is a good place to start. For instance, if your bounce rate exceeds 2%, you know it’s time to run your databases through an email verifier. Otherwise, your email deliverability will suffer. This is not a time when you can risk having your emails go to spam.

    After verifying more than six billion email addresses in a year, ZeroBounce found that only 57% of them were valid and safe to keep. Your email list decays monthly, so remove obsolete data and also check every new address you gather.

    Related: 11 Common Email Marketing Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)

    3. Run an email blacklist check

    Have you noticed a steep decline in your open rates and clicks in the past few months? Your IP or domain could be blacklisted. Mailbox providers (like Yahoo or Gmail) and anti-spam organizations maintain email blacklists to block senders with a history of spam-sending. However, even senders with good intentions can land on a blacklist if they don’t maintain healthy email lists and follow best practices. In most cases, emails from blocked senders never make it to their recipients.

    Email blacklists are updated in real-time. The best way to find out if your IP or domain is flagged is to use a blacklist checker. Such tools run tests against hundreds of blacklists and alert you if there’s trouble.

    4. Part with subscribers who never click

    Every email list has its devoted fans, who open every email, and subscribers who rarely or never click. While these email addresses don’t bounce, their lack of interaction sends Internet service providers (ISPs) the wrong message about you. If a large segment of your list doesn’t open your emails, are you relevant enough to be in the inbox? Unengaged subscribers may cause your campaigns to go to spam, so if you haven’t removed them in more than six months, now is the time.

    You may be nervous about reducing your email list right before the holidays, but you’ll enjoy more engagement. Since they haven’t opened any of your emails in months, those subscribers weren’t likely to convert anyway.

    5. Send a gift to boost engagement

    To increase engagement ahead of the holidays, start warming up your prospects a few weeks before launching your campaigns. An effective tactic is to create a series of educational emails to relieve some of your customers’ pain points. Whether you run a B2B or a retail business, think of free content offers to create your emails around. A free e-book, infographic or useful video can go a long way in building trust and standing out in people’s inboxes.

    Remember: healthy engagement feeds your email deliverability, showing ISPs that your content is relevant. Nurture your audience with outstanding emails before you go for the hard sell.

    Related: 5 Things You Can Do Now to Improve Email Marketing

    Bonus tip: keep sending those great emails

    Aside from sending compelling content, sending it regularly is what helps your email marketing the most. If throughout the year you’ve been inconsistent, now you want to gradually ramp up volume. You’ll build a stronger connection to your customers, and your email deliverability will benefit.

    Avoid sudden and drastic volume increases, as ISPs can flag that behavior as suspicious. The more predictable you are, the better chance you have of getting your email campaigns in the inbox.

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    Liviu Tanase

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  • 7 Things You Need to Do to Make Your Email Marketing More Lucrative | Entrepreneur

    7 Things You Need to Do to Make Your Email Marketing More Lucrative | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Did you know that 49% of consumers say they’d like to receive an email from a company every week? Email is a marketing channel you can rely on, but results can sometimes feel hard to achieve. Also, even when your emails get good reactions, you can still maximize every campaign with just a few simple tweaks.

    So, let’s get into the seven things you should checkmark to ensure your email marketing is set up for success.

    Related: How to Start Using Email to Market Your Small Business

    1. Be protective of your email list

    Your database is your main email marketing asset, and how you maintain it has a dramatic impact on your results. First, you must build it the right way, but gathering subscribers responsibly isn’t enough.

    A significant segment of those subscribers’ contacts will decay: On average, 20% of email addresses become invalid every year. Poor data quality is a prevalent reason for low click rates, as bounces cause email deliverability problems. To avoid that and land your campaigns in the inbox, validate your database every quarter.

    2. Create different emails for target segments

    Sending the same email to your entire audience isn’t a good way to go about increasing your engagement. Your customers and prospects are in different stages of interaction with your company, and each stage requires a different approach. Segmenting your database and targeting those groups with specific messages can give you a 14% higher open rate. While email list segmentation can seem daunting, once you set it up, you’ll be able to refine your strategy and see better clicks.

    Related: How to build your email list the right way

    3. Set up a welcome email

    As an entrepreneur in the email space, I subscribe to many company newsletters and I’m surprised to see how many of them don’t send out a welcome email. If you haven’t set up one, you’re missing out on the opportunity to connect with your new subscribers right away.

    Welcome emails are so popular that most people expect them. So don’t leave your new audience hanging – send out a short email packed with great resources or just a “thank you” for allowing you in their inboxes.

    4. Refine your subject lines

    Before you hit send on your next marketing email, ask yourself if the subject line does it justice. Does it convey your message succinctly while enticing people to click? It pays to spend more time polishing up your subject as 64% of people say they judge an email by its subject line. Also, if your email provider allows it, make sure to follow the subject with a compelling preview text. Sometimes, that short copy can carry more weight than the subject line itself.

    5. Adjust your sending frequency

    Sending emails regularly has two benefits: It builds brand awareness and helps your email deliverability. For instance, if you have an email newsletter, it’s best to send it out on the same day of the week or month. However, there’s something to keep in mind with marketing emails that aim to sell – such as drip campaigns. Such email sequences can be overwhelming for some of your subscribers. Your content may be high-quality, but if people can’t keep up with the number of emails you send, they won’t engage.

    To test whether your audience is experiencing this fatigue, consider sending fewer emails for three months. Any improvement in your performance will steer you toward the right sending schedule.

    6. Test your design and email deliverability

    We all test our emails to check whether they look good on both desktop and mobile. Design issues can cause your audience to abandon your email within seconds, not to mention the poor impression it leaves.

    Aside from design, you can also test your email deliverability to find out if your email will land in the inbox. Using an inbox tester, you can even get detailed results on your performance with different email providers. Thus, if your email goes to spam, you can try to fix the issue so you can reach your subscribers successfully.

    7. Run email blacklist checks regularly

    Email providers (like Google or Outlook) and anti-spam organizations maintain lists of IP addresses and domains that have engaged in spam sending. While the purpose of email blacklists is to block spammers, legitimate senders can end up blocked, too. The tricky part is finding out whether your IP or domain have been flagged.

    If your clicks suddenly plummet, it’s a sign your emails aren’t reaching your customers. But instead of guessing and worrying about it, use an email blacklist checker to get a real-time status assessment. If you find out you’re blocked, you can make changes and follow the protocols to get off that blacklist.

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    Liviu Tanase

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  • 5 Simple Tweaks for Better Email Deliverability | Entrepreneur

    5 Simple Tweaks for Better Email Deliverability | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    More than 4.6 billion people will be using email by 2025. For businesses like yours, email remains a critical communication channel. Not only is it most reliable for transactional messages, but it also allows you to boost revenue through newsletters and marketing campaigns.

    So many pieces make up the puzzle of effective email marketing. Compelling copy and beautiful design help you stand out. But first, you have to make sure your emails are going to the inbox. Email deliverability isn’t guaranteed — your campaigns can easily go to spam.

    Related: 8 Simple Email Marketing Tips to Improve Your Open and Click-Through Rates

    To boost email deliverability, improve your sender reputation

    So, why do certain emails land in the inbox while others go to spam? It boils down to your sender reputation, a score that allows Internet service providers (ISPs) to determine whether you’re a legitimate sender. From the types of emails you send to the engagement they get, your entire behavior as a sender influences your score.

    Here are five simple tweaks to consider for your email marketing strategy to give your score — and inbox reach — a quick boost.

    1. Prune your email database

    Outdated and unengaged contacts hurt your email deliverability. When you email fake or non-existent addresses, you’re very much acting like a spammer, so don’t be surprised if your emails land in spam.

    A good rule of thumb is to pay close attention to your metrics, especially your bounce rate. When more than 2% of your emails bounce back, it’s a sign that your database needs pruning. Another good practice is to run your contacts through an email verifier every quarter. Keep in mind that about 23% of the average email list deteriorates yearly. Email decay is natural, but it isn’t something you can ignore if you want your emails to arrive in the inbox.

    Related: 3 Simple Things You Can Do to Build A Healthy, Thriving Email List

    2. Segment your audience

    As your engagement plays such an important role in your sender score, increasing your metrics is essential to your email deliverability. Email list segmentation will help you do just that, allowing you to target subscribers with campaigns that matter to them.

    Many business owners are intimidated by list segmentation. It entails going through your system and splitting your customers and prospects into specific groups. Using filters such as location, gender, interests or past purchases, segmentation allows you to see where each person is in their buyer’s journey – and send them content that pushes them forward.

    Although email list segmentation can take a lot of work to set up, it pays off. On average, open rates are 14.31% higher for segmented, personalized campaigns. This key metric, along with better click rates, fosters healthy email deliverability.

    3. Ask questions

    Marketers ask questions in their emails because they want to strengthen their relationship with their audience. But asking questions and getting people to reply to your messages also helps your email deliverability. Inbox providers see it as a sign of trust. If someone writes you back, they’re encouraging further communication. Hence, your emails should be in that person’s inbox — and in other inboxes — in the future.

    So, in your next email, how can you spark conversations with your subscribers? The best questions come from genuine curiosity, so think about a topic both you and your audience care about. Ask a question and don’t forget to tell people to hit reply and answer it.

    4. Get on a schedule

    Having a set email-sending schedule is another simple change you can make that has multiple benefits. First, being present in your prospects’ inboxes builds awareness and familiarity for your brand. When they need your product, those prospects will be more likely to buy it from you, simply because they’ve been hearing from you regularly.

    On top of that, sending emails on a schedule helps your reputation. Unlike spammers, who send emails erratically, you have ongoing communication with your audience. While your marketing approach can be surprising in order to stand out, your schedule should be predictable.

    Establishing a sending schedule doesn’t have to entail writing more emails. However, if you send a weekly or monthly newsletter, try to send it on the same day and even at the same time. You’ll be helping both your engagement and email deliverability.

    Related: 4 Ways to Stop Your Emails From Going to Spam

    5. Scan every email for potential spam triggers

    A spammy word in your subject line, too many images and too little text, link shorteners or broken links can result in your email landing in your recipient’s spam folder. So, before you hit send, scan your email to make sure it doesn’t look like spam. Ask your team to take a look, too.

    You can go a step further and test your email deliverability with the help of an inbox tester. Reliable inbox testers pinpoint potential deliverability issues so you can fix them before it’s too late. It takes only minutes to test your email and get access to these insights. Sometimes, a simple tweak will pull your campaign out of spam and ensure it lands in the inbox.

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  • 5 Things You Can Do Now to Improve Email Marketing | Entrepreneur

    5 Things You Can Do Now to Improve Email Marketing | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Is your email clickthrough rate not what it used to be? The reason could be poor email deliverability.

    The average click rate, across all industries, is 2.62% according to Mailchimp. If your rate is way below this benchmark, it’s worth taking another look at your email marketing strategy.

    While reaching the inbox entails a whole set of best practices, there are a few simple tweaks you can make to avoid the dreaded spam or junk folder.

    What is email deliverability?

    Email deliverability comes down to the number of emails that reach the inbox successfully. As opposed to strict email delivery, the deliverability benchmark doesn’t count the emails that land in spam.

    To connect with their audience and increase revenue, email marketers focus on helping their emails get to the inbox. That’s where they have a chance to connect with customers and prospects — and also boost conversions.

    Let’s examine some of the best practices successful email marketers use to get their emails into the inbox.

    Let go of prospects who never click

    A big email list equals a big ROI, right? This is one of the most common email myths out there, and it’s hurting many companies. Of course, as your list grows, you may see more purchases coming in. However, that’s only true if your database is healthy and engaged.

    Holding on to subscribers who never click on your emails sabotages your email deliverability. The message they send to mailbox providers is that your content is irrelevant, so why should it be in the inbox?

    Every three to six months, reassess your engagement rates and segment dormant subscribers. Next, try to re-engage them with a powerful offer or remove them from your list entirely.

    Related: How to Build Your Email List the Right Way

    Fix your bounce rate

    Bounces are one of the most common reasons that emails get filtered as spam. A high bounce rate makes you look careless, even unlawful and will send you down the spam route in an instant. What’s more, ignoring bounces can cause your email service provider (ESP) to suspend your account. ESPs (like Mailchimp, Constant Contact or AWeber) don’t want a tainted reputation, so these companies will enforce rules against spam-like behavior.

    If more than 2% of your campaigns bounce back, it’s time to re-evaluate your email list. There’s no point in keeping outdated contacts in your systems — delete them and your email deliverability will see a boost. Then, to prevent another increase in bounces, consider cleaning your list regularly.

    Identify other bad data you may be using

    Invalid contacts are the most prevalent types of emails lurking in databases and affecting email deliverability. They’re not the only ones, though.

    In 2022, ZeroBounce identified more than five million disposable email addresses across all the databases it processed. Disposable emails have a high bounce risk; many of them self-destruct within a short time.

    Also, email lists can acquire many role-based email addresses that are also risky to your email deliverability. Role-based contacts, such as contact@companyname.com, belong to a group of people within an organization. Some of these people may mass delete emails and even report them as spam, so it’s not a good idea to keep them in your list. Instead, use an email verifier to detect and remove them (and other undesirable data, too).

    Stick to the content you promised

    When trying to fix email deliverability, you might overlook the importance of content. But the content of your emails plays a dramatic role in your engagement — ensuring its relevancy is key.

    First, scan through the emails you’ve sent in the past three months. Are they what you promised upon signup? Also, are you sending them regularly? It’s best to stick to your niche and to a sending schedule. If that’s not the case now, revise your approach.

    Another thought worth pondering: How can you make your content even more compelling? Consider interviewing experts, infusing your copy with more testimonials, embedding videos and GIFs and even tweaking your design. Engagement and deliverability go hand in hand, so anything that gets people to interact is worth pursuing.

    Related: 3 Tricks For Getting More Email Clicks

    Consider a different email service provider

    What you do as an email sender has the most impact on your email deliverability. However, your ESP shares some of the responsibility, too. Once you decide on an ESP, you’ll be sharing its reputation, so make sure you pick a reputable company.

    Before you sign up for a paid plan, consider taking advantage of a free trial. That way, you see what it’s like to run a campaign on the new platform and whether that makes a difference in your metrics. Also, don’t hesitate to ask your new provider what it does to ensure the highest email deliverability. Lastly, reading a few reviews before you commit can help you make the best decision.

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  • Almost 25% of Your Email List Has Gone Bad in the Past Year. Here’s How to Fix It. | Entrepreneur

    Almost 25% of Your Email List Has Gone Bad in the Past Year. Here’s How to Fix It. | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    By 2025, more than 4.5 billion people worldwide will have at least one email address. Email is a profitable marketing channel because it provides a direct and personal line of communication with prospects. But it only works if your emails land in the inbox and allow you to connect with your target audience.

    Many obstacles will prevent an email from reaching the inbox, but the most common one is an outdated email list. And email lists tend to decay quickly. Within just one year, almost 23% of the average database becomes obsolete. The percentage may be higher for B2B companies, with people changing jobs more often in the past three years.

    This rapid degradation of email data causes poor email deliverability, missed opportunities and a decrease in conversions. Let’s see some of the reasons why – and how you can always have a healthy email list.

    Related: 3 Tips and Tricks You Can Use to Drive Email Deliverability During The Holidays

    How the quality of your list affects email deliverability

    Reaching the inbox is closely tied to your sender reputation, also known as your sender score. Internet service providers assign this score to every sender so they can automatically determine whether your emails belong in the inbox or in the spam folder.

    Everything you do as an email sender – from the content you send, to how often you send it and how much people engage with it – builds your sender reputation.

    Your email list quality plays a vital role here. For instance, if you get many bounces (more than 2% per email) or too many spam reports (more than one for every 1,000 emails), your sender score takes a hit. That means your email deliverability is at risk as your behavior begins to resemble that of a spammer.

    While data decays quickly, there are proactive steps you can take to always keep your email list fresh. Here are a few key habits you will benefit from.

    Start by verifying your email list

    With 22.71% of an email list going bad yearly, this is the best place to start. You want to run your database through an email validation service and see how many of your contacts are still safe to use. This may cause your list to decrease in size – but it will increase in effectiveness. Removing potential bounces and other obsolete emails repairs your sender score and gives you an email deliverability boost.

    Prune out dormant subscribers

    Nothing impacts the health of your list like invalid and fake addresses, but dormant subscribers can cause your campaigns to land in spam, too. They affect your engagement rates (opens, clicks, forwards), thus telling inbox providers that your content is irrelevant. Furthermore, some of these subscribers may not even be using those addresses anymore. So not only will they not click, but those emails may start bouncing as they get deactivated. The best way to avoid that is to remove disengaged subscribers every three to six months.

    Related: 8 Simple Email Marketing Tips to Improve Your Open and Click Through Rates

    Handle complainers with care

    Like bounces, spam complaints have a negative impact on your sender score. To Internet service providers, they’re a clear signal that your emails aren’t just irrelevant – they actually bother people. Spam complaints alone can be reason enough for your campaigns to start going to the junk folder.

    To prevent that, make sure to remove complainers right away. Emailing those subscribers again will only make things worse. Additionally, you could use email verification to detect users who have a history of reporting many emails as spam. Taking them off your list allows you to mitigate the risk of spam complaints and protect your sender score.

    Bonus tips to keep your list engaged and boost email deliverability

    A healthy database is key to good email deliverability, but it’s not the only factor that contributes to your sender reputation. To keep your emails landing in the inbox, try to:

    • Send your subscribers the content they signed up for. Whether you promised great discounts or educational emails, keep your promise and strive to over-deliver.
    • Avoid long breaks from sending emails. You’ll see higher engagement when you’re present in people’s inboxes consistently.
    • Invite people to reply to your emails. Replies are the best kind of engagement – to inbox providers, they indicate a highly trustworthy sender.
    • Reassess your email service provider every year. Could there be a better one for you out there? Always go with a reputable company that ensures high deliverability.
    • Install real-time email verification software on your registration and sign-up forms. That way, you block bad data at the source and keep your email list fresh for longer.
    • Be flexible with your copy. Test your subject lines, tone and email length and notice the patterns that tend to get more clicks. The more people react to your content, the more trust you build with inbox providers.

    Email lists degrade fast. To increase your deliverability, make sure to follow these tips and get the most out of the emails you send.

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