5 Steps to Enhance Email Deliverability
Unlock Better Email Deliverability with These 5 Tips
The internet is full of advice on crafting the perfect marketing email, but none of that matters if they never make it to your intended audience. The first step to effective email marketing is having a strong email deliverability rate. Crafting an email takes time, energy, and creativity, so why let all that effort go to waste by ignoring email deliverability?
The good news is there are ways to increase email deliverability and ensure email marketing campaigns reach your target readers. Follow these 5 steps and watch deliverability improve.
1. Pass security filters with email authentication
An email’s journey to the inbox is anything but straightforward. It has to get past phishing alerts, spoofing detectors, and fraud filters. With email cyberattacks like spear phishing affecting 88% of organizations every day, these security systems are implemented by email providers to protect users against these vicious threats.
To ensure your emails reach their destination, you must overcome these security checks first. The easiest way to start is by authenticating your emails. This process enhances your sender reputation and adds a layer of trust, making it more likely for your emails to bypass spam filters and reach the inbox.
Think of email authentication as your way of showing email service providers (ESPs) that you’re a trusted sender. Email authentication is a process that uses specific techniques to verify your identity and confirm that the emails really originate from your domain. This not only keeps imposters from misusing your name but also ensures your emails are delivered securely and avoid the dreaded spam label by their email server.
Email authentication isn’t as complicated as it sounds, thanks to protocols like DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). DKIM adds a digital signature to your emails, acting as proof of origin. When your email lands in the recipient’s inbox, their server validates this signature, confirming it’s authentic and helping to build trust with your audience.
Another critical email authentication protocol is the Sender Policy Framework (SPF). SPF lets you decide which IP addresses can send emails on your behalf, preventing unauthorized use. And then there’s Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC), which takes things further by allowing you to control how emails failing SPF or DKIM checks are managed. These email security protocols not only reinforce your credibility but also improve your email deliverability rate.
2. Don’t let your Sender Score slip
If your email marketing campaign isn't reaching your audience, your Sender Score could be the reason. Sender Score is a ranking between 0 and 100, calculated by Return Path, and reflects your email campaign performance on metrics like email bounce, unsubscribes, and spam complaints. A benchmark score of 96% or higher is your target. Focus on keeping your Sender Score high to improve your inbox placement and email delivery rate, circumventing the spam folder.
3. Stick to a consistent send schedule
Sending emails every day or even multiple times a week isn’t just risky—it’s counterproductive to your email deliverability rate. Nobody wants their inbox flooded with marketing emails from the same sender day after day. This can also make your IP address look suspicious to email providers. Their internet service provider (ISPs) might even flag you as spam, leading to blocked emails or worse—a denylist. A smarter approach is sticking to a manageable schedule, like weekly or monthly, ensuring your engagement or transactional emails offer real value. Keep your audience excited to hear from you, not eager to hit “unsubscribe.”
4. Keep only valid email addresses
One reason your emails aren’t getting through could be a low sender reputation. Sending to outdated, inactive, or incorrect email addresses—whether they’re typos or domains that no longer exist—hurts your reputation as a sender. They’re not doing you any good, so cleaning them out is a simple yet powerful step to increase your sender reputation as well as your inbox placement.
You can do this manually if your email list isn’t too long, but for larger cleanups, a paid service might be worth considering. These tools can help you purge invalid emails from your mailing list faster. Before launching any new email marketing campaign, take the time to clean up your email list. This is especially important if you’ve been growing your mailing list through contests or giveaways, which sometimes attract fake or invalid emails. It’s worth taking the time to filter these to ensure your emails reach the right people and avoid email delivery and deliverability issues.
5. Confirm subscribers with double opt-in
It’s tempting to collect as many email addresses as possible, thinking a bigger mailing list means better results. That’s why single opt-in is so tempting—just one click, and they’re subscribed. But single opt-in can backfire, as consumers who didn’t mean to subscribe might end up marking you as spam or unsubscribing. This includes buying email lists where people haven’t actively opted in. This can tank your sender reputation and hurt your deliverability rate. Quality over quantity is key here.
One of the secrets of good email deliverability is using double opt-in. This simply means asking users to confirm their subscription twice, ensuring they genuinely want to hear from you. By using double opt-in, you reduce the risk of high unsubscribe rates or spam reports, which can get you blocked. Some internet service providers (ISPs) will block senders after just a few spam complaints for every thousand emails. So, focus on building a genuine, engaged email client list to prevent an email deliverability issue.
If your emails feel random to your audience, they’re probably looking random to ISPs too. Unpredictable sending patterns can lead to spikes in activity that lower your sender reputation and Sender Score, putting your email deliverability at risk. A steady, predictable schedule that keeps you in good standing with ISPs is likely to achieve better email deliverability.
Improving your email deliverability is the first step to a successful email marketing strategy. These simple tips will help ensure your marketing emails are landing in your target recipient's inbox. Once that’s squared away, you can focus on building email marketing campaigns that drive engagement and surefire results.