6 Ways to Enhance Email Deliverability

With over 4 billion daily email users, email marketing has proven to be a real gold mine for many businesses – both digital and in-store, as statistics show that for every $1 spent on email marketing campaigns, businesses generate up to a $42 ROI. Apart from its cost-effectiveness, 85% of businesses use it as part of their customer acquisition strategies, while 74% report to increase their customer retention metrics, according to a recent study.

However, email deliverability has always been a challenge that marketing teams battle with often, with statistics showing that 1 out of 5 emails (20%) are never delivered. What if there were ways to improve email deliverability? 

In this blog, we wanted to share insightful tips on how to enhance deliverability in your email campaigns. But before that;

What Decreases Email Deliverability? 

High Bounce Rate 

A high email bounce rate could be as a result of a misspelled email address, outdated domain, or sending very long messages. It's basically a ratio of the number of bounced emails to the total emails sent. A bounce rate of less than 2% signals a successful email campaign, but something above that requires attention. 

Spammy Content 

Email Service Providers (ESPs) have sophisticated algorithms that detect and flag emails that violate the defined standards. They use spam traps to monitor spam emails. If an email ends up in a spam trap, the email ID is flagged and put on a deny list. For instance, link shorteners can make the content look spammy because it hides the nature of URLs. The spam filters block such emails even if the link is legitimate.  Spam emails can significantly undermine your reputation, deliverability, open rate, CTR, and your overall ability to succeed with your email marketing campaign. Luckily for you, the iwinBACK platform has a spam rating designed to ensure your message gets through! 

Low Sender Score 

Sender Score is an important metric that shows the reputation you build with ESPs over time. According to Return Path, 83% of the emails that fail to reach recipients' inboxes are due to low sender scores. It is evaluated based on domain reputation, IP address, industry blocklists, spam complaints from recipients, etc. 

The 6 Ultimate Ways to Improve Email Deliverability

1.  Build a Strong Sender Reputation 

According to Statista, approximately 14% of emails are flagged as spam due to poor reputation. But simple strategies such as monitoring the reputation of an IP address and authentication protocols can help build a strong sender reputation. Senders' reputation profile plays an important part in email deliverability. But how can you improve and build a strong domain reputation?

• Having a consistent email campaign schedule
• Avoiding spam trigger words or poor content
• Avoiding buying contact email list
• Using valid email addresses
• Keeping emails short or sending them in small batches
• Adopting a warmup schedule before going full-swing

2.  Send Relevant Emails

Successful email marketing involves targeting the right recipients with relevant content. The more relevant the email content is, the higher the chances of subscribers opening, reading, and clicking links in the email. 

Email segmentation has proved to significantly boost email deliverability. A 2019 study showed that marketers who focus on segmented email campaigns drive up to a 760% increase in revenue! That's particularly because of the power of personalization.

While sending emails based on preferences can be time-consuming, email deliverability tools and platforms like iwinBACK have simplified the job today. They help create targeted profiles based on past purchases, age, location, etc. This can result in:

• Increase in open rate
• A boost in click-through rate
• Higher conversions over time
• Driving more traffic to your site
• Lower risk of your emails finding their way into spam folders

3.  Have a Consistent Sending Schedule

Building good customer relationships requires trust. An effective way to achieve this is by showing up consistently for your audience because customers love to hear from brands they love and trust. Waiting too long to send emails can make them forget about the brand, and they may end up unsubscribing or deleting the emails without opening them. 

However, sending emails more frequently can annoy your subscribers, or the emails may be flagged as spam. The ideal frequency of sending emails is 3-4 times a week, but it all depends on the quality of content you are sharing, past relationships with customers, and the nature of emails. Coupling consistency with a warmup strategy, especially for cold outreaches, can significantly improve deliverability.

Speaking of the nature of emails, a news site, for instance, may send daily updates without being flagged as spam because they probably have a higher reputation with ESPs. However, a slow-moving business could have a limit, so having a low-frequency schedule would work best. Ultimately, what matters most is consistency. 

The mailing day also matters. Statistics show that Friday has the best open rate of 20.58%, while Tuesday has the best click-through rate of 2.33%, so paying attention to such metrics could also help enhance deliverability.

4.  Keep Track of the Email Engagement Metrics

Monitoring engagement metrics such as bounce rate, open and click-through rate, and unsubscribe rate can help determine the campaign's success.  One of the most effective ways to monitor these metrics is using specialized email deliverability tools. For instance, knowing your open and click-through rate helps you identify weak points, strong points, and how best to retarget your strategies to improve email deliverability. 

5.  Create Engaging and Personalized Subject Lines 

Subject lines are vital aspects of email marketing, especially in regard to deliverability. While it is important to have catchy, teasing subject lines, exaggerating to have misleading words not only hurts your brand reputation but also lowers deliverability metrics when flagged as spam. Avoid that by keeping off from generic statements and instead focus more on personalization to make your audience curious about what to truly expect. 

Remember also to keep them short and precise. B2B email subject lines could go up to 80 characters, but B2C emails are best when maintained below 50 characters.

6.  Clean Your Email List Regularly 

Statistics show that 30% of email subscribers change their addresses once every year. That means the inactive emails end up being the spam traps you want to avoid. With most emails going to invalid email addresses, service providers perceive that as junk. 

So if the spam trap captures your emails, it signals to the ESPs that the sender is not following the best email marketing practices, which affects your reputation and eventually increases the bounce rate. A high bounce rate can cause the service providers to block your IP address, and that's the last thing you ever want to have. 

How do you clean your email list?

• First scrub the most active in your email list
• Identify and remove duplicate emails
• Use spam filtering tools to easily remove spammy emails
• Remove those who unsubscribed
• Identify and correct obvious typos. For instance, @gmial.com instead of @gmail.com

Final thoughts 

Email deliverability is the very first measure of success for any email marketing campaign. It's the entry point to engaging with your potential and existing customers. Therefore, leveraging the tips we just shared can significantly help deliver emails to your subscribers' inboxes with minimal hassle.

If you are looking to create an effective automated email marketing campaign, we have a platform that can help you achieve your business goals seamlessly. Our iwinBACK omnichannel solution can help you ensure deliverability to capture new leads and nurture the existing ones for a better customer experience while driving more returns. Book a demo to learn more!