Nailing email deliverability: 5 practices you should know before you hit ‘send’

If you notice your marketing emails have low open and click through rates, there’s a good chance your communications aren’t landing in your audience’s inbox. 

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So…how can you avoid this?

Fear not—here are 5 practices you can follow to ensure email deliverability and prevent your content from going unnoticed by your audience.

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Pick a strong, customer-focused ESP

An ESP (Email Service Provider) is a service that, among other features, allows marketers to send emails to their entire subscriber base. Some popular examples are Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, and HubSpot.

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Contrary to popular belief, ESPs are not solely responsible for fixing issues and making sure deliverability is 100% successful every time. Instead, the sender also has a big role in determining the outcome.

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Think of the ESP as a director and the sender as an actor (aka you).

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The director constantly monitors activity on the stage, and lets the actor know how they’re performing. If any changes should be made, the director makes them known. 

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However, if the actor doesn’t notice the director’s cues and doesn’t follow through, the performance won’t get any better.

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This is why picking a strong, customer-focused ESP is important: they constantly coordinate with your audience’s ISP (Internet Service Provider) to maintain an ideal inbox environment for recipients.

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Even if you as the sender don’t follow best email practices and tarnish your sending reputation, the ESP will still have the competency to help you get back on track. At the end of the day, it really is a team effort.

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Use the same IP address (aka ‘Dedicated IP’)

Simply put, an IP address is a string of numbers assigned to anything that uses the internet to communicate. From devices to websites and servers that websites are hosted on, IP addresses are essential for data and information delivery.

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To minimize the impact of bad behavior from one sender, ESPs will send your emails on a shared IP address. In other words, your emails are likely coming from an IP address shared with other users. Unfortunately this means your email deliverability is impacted by someone else not following email best practices. 

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On the other hand, dedicated IP addresses are assigned to individual accounts, devices, websites, etc. When high quality emails are consistently sent from a dedicated IP address, it makes that host seem credible and legitimate. Therefore, spam filters are less likely to be triggered and the IP address is less likely to be blacklisted. As a result, deliverability will likely improve and become more consistent as well.

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(Note: If you get a dedicated IP, make sure to ‘warm it up’ before sending a high volume of emails)

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Authenticate your emails

The three most popular methods for email authentication are:

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• SPF (Sender Policy Framework)
• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)
• DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance)

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SPF is a list of all the legitimate IP addresses (from servers) that have permission to send emails from a certain domain. Mail servers check incoming emails against these records to verify that those servers are allowed to send them.

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DKIM is the equivalent of an electronic signature. When mail servers receive emails claiming to come from a specific domain, they can refer to DKIM records to see if they were actually sent by the domain owner. 

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DMARC is kind of like the final boss out of the three. For example, let's say that an email server determines that an email has failed SPF, DKIM, or both. DMARC can respond by either quarantining the message, or completely rejecting it from being delivered to the inbox.

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These  methods are so important to use because they add a layer of security to your email communications. On top of that, they  also prove to mail servers that the emails you send are 100% legitimate and 100% coming from you. With this secure backbone, your sender reputation and email deliverability rates are bound to reach ideal levels.

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Keep an eye out for blacklists, and monitor them

Blacklists are lists of IP addresses and email address domains that have been proven to send spam. As a result, anything sent from one of those blacklisted locations is instantly blocked and never reaches the inbox.

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In fact, users and spam filters have a high input on what ends up on these blacklists.

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If someone marks your email as spam or it’s singled out by a filter, your IP address and email domain are automatically investigated. Additionally, your ESP is alerted and they can consider placing a restriction on your outgoing emails as well.

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If enough complaints are made, you will most likely end up on the blacklist.

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However, the system isn’t perfect– there are plenty of instances where a legitimate email is accidentally put on a blacklist. By closely monitoring them, you can see if you’ve (mistakenly) ended up on one of them or not, and take the appropriate actions in order to fix it.

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Optimize your email content and avoid the spam folder

Every email server has spam filters that scan all incoming emails and identify those that are “unwanted” or “potentially dangerous”. If you send enough marketing emails or have participated in enough campaigns, trust me, you’ll become all too familiar with them. 

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Here are some ways you can optimize your email content to avoid these filters and successfully land in the inbox:

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• Use less images – Emails that have way too many images (attachments in general) are more likely to stand out. The solution is the age-old saying, less is more. You don’t have to omit imaging entirely, but just be specific and intentional with your selections instead.

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• Watch out for wording and language – The written content of any email is just as likely to be checked for spam content. Using a bunch of promotional jargon is bound to set off alarms, so try to keep your messaging personal and concise.

• Make CTAs crystal clear – CTAs are just links, which means that they’re less likely to be flagged as spam. As a result, marketers can keep their emails short and sweet, but use CTAs to potentially bring in more content. By making them as clear as possible, the recipient is more likely to follow them through.

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• Mobile optimization – It’s so important to make sure that email content looks clean across many devices– especially phones. This brings a professional look to the email, which encourages engagement and provides an ideal user experience. All of this can help reduce potential spam complaints from recipients and encourage successful deliverability.

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Parting thoughts

It takes effort to uphold a good sender reputation, make engaging email content, and avoid spam folders.

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 Luckily for senders everywhere, there are countless services, programs, and methods that can turn deliverability rates around when you hit a bump in the road. Hopefully, following the tips we went over today ensures that your emails go straight to your audiences’ inbox every time. 

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