How Optimizing Email Deliverability Help Generate Leads?

Being email content marketers, we tend to spend hours and hours planning every big or small detail of the campaign and crafting each mail copy to be perfect with colors, fonts, images, and spacing. Such messages are the primary source of communication with our target audience.

With all this sweat, tears, and blood that goes into this complete process of marketing campaign, the most heartbreaking is when we come to know that the mail does not even make it to our subscribers. It makes no difference how well the campaign was crafted, designed, or developed; if it does not reach the subscriber, you will not be able to grow your user base or see an ROI.     

None of these marketers wants their efforts to end up in the junk folder. Because for them, email deliverability is a priority. So let us move ahead and learn more about this deliverability and how to improve it.

What is email deliverability?

Email deliverability is the rate at which messages get delivered directly to your subscribers' inboxes. Determining deliverability is quite a challenging task. Because it depends upon various elements like the sender's domain, email provider, mail frequency, IP reputation, quality of the sender's list, and email address reputation. 

It is essential to understand that email deliverability differs from the mail delivery rate. The mail delivery rate is the percentage of the messages that are received by your subscribers, be it in their inbox or spam folder. Meanwhile, the deliverability rate focuses on the inbox receiving indicator. It is possible that even if you have a reasonable delivery rate, there will still be issues with the delivery rate. 

Email deliverability is the rate at which the mail makes its way to the recipient's inbox. It gets lower when messags bounces or the messages are automatically filtered out to the spam folders. However, to decrease the email bounce rate, you can refer to the top email marketing software, SmartLead AI, and take tips from there.

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What is a reasonable deliverability rate?

It is difficult to state what a reasonable email deliverability rate is. Research has shown that just 79% of commercial messages just land in the recipient's inbox. The rest are sent to the spam folders or go missing.

The goal of every email marketer is to get 100% of their emails delivered to all their subscribers. Unfortunately, they do not achieve such a rate. To achieve such a rate, you should pay attention to the following metrics while tracking the deliverability rate:

• 95% or higher for an email provider is a reasonable delivery rate.
• The email bounce rate should not be more than 3%.
• The spam rate should not be more than 0.08%.

The email deliverability rate mainly depends on the platform for sending emails to subscribers. All mail providers have different rates, fluctuating between 88-99%.

Factors affecting email deliverability

Below are some of the factors that negatively affect email deliverability.

#1 A high complaint rates

If the mail seems unwanted, the recipients will mark it under the spam filters column. This is the primary factor that lowers the sender's reputation badly. Therefore, try to avoid as many spam complaints as you can.

#2 A high rate of bounce

This usually happens when your subscribers' email list is outdated, low quality, or has incorrect mail addresses.

#3 Low engagement

If the subscriber is receiving 50 messages a day, but he or she is not opening any, that means that the sender is not following the best practices. Because in such situations, saying "goodbyes" to inactive subscribers is always a good decision rather than waiting for them to unsubscribe.

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#4 Too many email campaigns

Even your engaged users can get annoyed if they receive too many campaign mails in a day, and they will end up marking your emails as spam. And some can even unsubscribe you. So try to maintain the ideal frequency of outreach messages 2-3 times a week.

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#5 There has been no increase in the number of emails sent.

If a sender initially sends mails to 10,000 subscribers and suddenly sends them to 1,00,000 recipients, then the service providers can send their mails to the spam folder. Because the inbox providers consider such spike in volume of spam mails activity or unexpected behavior. So if you wish to increase your recipients' list, make those additions slowly. 

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#6 Frequent changes in the email service providers

If you frequently keep changing the service provider, that will impact the sender's reputation badly. Because the inbox provider starts seeing such outreach messages as spammers only.

How to improve email deliverability?

After knowing all the deliverability rates, if you are one of those working on email campaigns, you would be thinking, “How can you make sure that your mail gets delivered directly into recipients' inboxes?" because landing in the primary inboxes is essential to having the best sender reputation.

Luckily, some proven techniques prevent failures and will help you improve the deliverability rate.

• Maintain appropriate IP allocation
• Perfect the opt-in process.
• Write non-spammy subject lines.
• Set and maintain subscriber expectations.
• Keep a clean list
• Easy unsubscribe options.
• Be consistent with your sender name.
• Send outreach messages that people love.
• Keep monitoring the performance. 

Maintain appropriate IP allocation

As you need to succeed in your marketing campaign, it is essential to remember that you should have a proper mail infrastructure to follow. So, firstly and most importantly, you should have a perfect IP address because if your IP address has a bad reputation, then your chances of delivering mails are significantly. 

So try to establish your IP’s creditability by slowly and gradually sending emails to your subscribers. Because once they start opening and acting on your mails, the service providers will start trusting your IP address, which will also improve the reputation of your IP address.

Have a perfect opt-in process.

To reduce the bounce rate and increase the deliverability rate, you have to be assured that your list has actual and correct email addresses. So the best option is to go for an opt-in confirmation. That means the first time you get an email address from a subscriber, send them an email asking them to confirm it. Because if you keep on sending outreach messages to people who do not know you or your campaign, they will keep spamming your inbox, which leads to a bad reputation.

Write non-spammy subject lines.

When creating your emails, the subject lines are the crucial piece of content in them as they are the first impressions of your outreach messages. So, try to avoid using common spam phrases or content for spam words such as:

• Risk-free
• FREE!!
• Pay off your debts.

Such words will make the ISPs forward your mails to the spam folders, so while writing the subject lines, focus on the genuine reason and value of that message without sounding pushy to the recipient. Because it is proven that 47% of the recipients open the mails based on the subject lines.

Set and maintain subscriber expectations.

Setting expectations at the beginning is a good starting point for developing a relationship with your subscribers. In your initial welcome message to your subscribers, mention the below:

• The type of message content you intend to provide
• How frequently will you be contacted?
• A sample of the content you intend to send

Below is just an example of a welcome email:

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So, once you have set that expectation with your subscribers, it improves your relationship with them, and they tend to trust you more. So this is an excellent way to grow and maintain your contact with an engaged audience.

Your mailing list is regularly cleaned.

Keeping a check on inactive contacts is the best way to decrease spam. Because the longer you keep the unengaged users on your mailing list, the more likely your reputation and deliverability rates will suffer.

If you notice or track that a few subscribers are not engaging with your mails, you should remove them from the list. Your mailing list should be reviewed and cleaned regularly so that you only have a healthy mailing list and subscribers willing to engage with you.

Easy unsubscribe options.

Allowing your subscribers to opt out or unsubscribe is not just a good practice to be followed; it is also a legal right of the recipients if they change their minds. Marketers are always advised to mention the unsubscribe option in their outreach messages. This also helps in making your mailing list updated and relevant. Below is an example for the same:

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Be consistent with your sender name.

Sending emails from one constant name helps subscribers understand and know more about your brand. And sending mails from various names has the opposite effect on the recipients. Because then they get confused about what they hear and whether that is useful for them or not.

So just keep things simple and try to use the company's first name as the sender's name.

Send emails that people love.

Your outreach messages should always hook the readers and offer some value to them. Because the more engaging your mail is, the more people will be waiting for your mail, and this is how you will see higher engagement. And these higher engagement signals to the ISPs increase the sender's reputation. You can also get ideas on creating effective marketing emails from SmartLead AI, as this is their forte.

Keep monitoring the performance 

Keeping track of the performance of your outreach mail campaign is the best thing to do. For that, you should do the below:

• Keep a check on the performance metrics like bounce rate, spam complaints, unsubscribes, and click-through data rates.
• Keep a check on the sender's reputation with the help of tools like Google
• Keep a check on the engagement level of the subscribers.

Email deliverability Don’ts

When you are focused on improving your email deliverability rate, there are a few things that you need to avoid, like:

• Buying any kind of mailing preferences
• Mail those recipients who have already unsubscribed from your list.
• Making use of a no-reply template
• Spamming the customers

When you purchase email lists, you are just taking yourself closer to getting spammed or unsubscribed because such email lists consist of spam traps. Never send your marketing mails to someone who is not even asking for them. Unwanted mails are enough to shut down your business.

It is essential to use an email address to which the recipient can reply. Because no one would like to feel that you do not wish to hear back from them.

Key Takeaways

The main thing about focussing on this deliverability is that it has ripple effects on engagement rates. So mail deliverability is a metric that is worth keeping an eye on. Implementing all the above-mentioned best practices will ensure your mails land in the customer’s inboxes.

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