Best Practices for Increasing Email Deliverability Rates

Jun 30, 2022

Email remains one of the strongest marketing tools for reaching your audience and personalizing your message. When you have a healthy email contacts list, you will be able to segment recipients based on their activity, position, demographics, purchase history and more.

However, if your emails don’t get to the right place, they aren’t worth much. According to EmailToolTester, around 11% of emails never reach the inbox because of deliverability issues.

That means that for every 10 hard-earned contacts that opt onto your list, you will have one that never gets your email. However, there are some things you can do to improve deliverability rates and reduce the chances of bounced emails.

Best Practices for Increasing Email Deliverability Rates

Email providers are always trying to keep spam out of their inboxes. Providers will try to assess your email and determine if it is legit before letting it pass through. The best practices for email include using tactics that prevent your email from looking like spam to the provider.

Stay Away From Buying Contact Lists

While buying lists might seem like a shortcut to help you get your email marketing off the ground, it’s a surefire way to get yourself in trouble as a spammer.

Best practices for email deliverability means growing your email list organically and always requiring a double opt-in to prove recipient interest. You can use offers to increase the appeal of joining your list.

Make it Easy to Manage Preferences

Once your email subscribers are on the list, make it easy for them to get off or reduce how many emails they get from you. Offering a simple “Manage Preferences” link at the bottom of the email means they can get off your list without reporting you as spam.

43% of users mark emails as spam when they can’t find an easy unsubscribe button.

Offer options to only receive certain email types or to receive one email a month alongside the option to unsubscribe—the goal is to reduce how many get off your list completely by giving them more control over the contact.

However, it’s important to remember that unsubscribes won’t hurt your deliverability rate, while spam reports will.

Segment Your Emails

Target your audience based on their interests, location, point in the buyer’s journey, professional title, industry, history with your brand and more.

Segmenting the audience and sending out customized messages increased law firm’s open rate to 50%!

Segmenting your list allows you to provide content your audience is likely to be interested in. You want to provide value to your users so they appreciate your emails and look forward to seeing them.

Clean Your Email List Regularly

Remove contacts who are not opening emails and haven’t been engaged with your brand in the past 12 months. Send out a gentle prompt explaining they will be removed from the list due to their lack of interest. This prompt can sometimes spur them to action and should have an option for them to opt in to stay on the list. But, if they don’t respond, take them off your list within a few days or weeks of the prompt.

While removing contacts from your list might seem counterintuitive, you apply a scarcity mindset by pulling subscriptions of those who aren’t active members of your brand community. This will also help keep your email lists clean, increase open rates and allow you to target your most engaged contacts.

Authenticate Your Emails

It’s not a good idea to use a mail service you don’t own, like Gmail or Yahoo. If you are using a service that takes care of the authentication details for you (like MailChimp, HubSpot or Constant Contact), then you don’t have to worry about this part. But, if you are sending emails from your own brand server, you need to verify the authentication settings, including:

  • DMARC: Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance
  • SPF: Sender Policy Framework
  • DKIM: DomainKeys Identified Mail

Keep Emails User-Centric

Finally, avoid looking like spam by avoiding spammy things.

  • Keep your emails interesting and limit the offer language (FREE! Act Now! Hurry! Etc.)
  • Don’t use misleading subject lines
  • Condense images to avoid slow loading times
  • Use mobile-responsive design so emails adapt to screen size
  • Always use the full link address (no shortened links)
  • Always anchor hyperlinks to relevant images or text (never use exposed URLs)

Your emails should center around the wants and needs of your audience. Improve your deliverability rate by writing for your customers and buyer personas.

If you need help formulating an effective email strategy, our team of knowledgeable experts can help. Strategic 7 Marketing is an award-winning, full-service marketing agency ready to help brands like yours build awareness through better outreach strategies. Contact us now to get started.

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