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How To Improve Your Email Deliverability and Successfully Reach The Inbox

Are your emails consistently landing in people’s spam/ junk folders? 

Then improving your email deliverability should be your number one priority before anything else. If people aren’t even getting a chance to see your carefully crafted marketing emails in their inbox then you’re in trouble.

 

In this guide we have put together 9 tactics that you can use in order to improve your deliverability and help you avoid that spam folder:

 

1. Analyse Your Position: Begin by analysing your current situation and what you are looking to achieve. What’s happening to your emails, what percentage are actually being seen, what percentage are going into spam. By using an Email Spam Checking Tool you will be able to see these statistics. These tools are often built into your email marketing software, however if not there are plenty of free tools online that will help you check this score. 

Next there is Reputation Management and Monitoring Tools. These tools allow you to analyse your domain’s health and reputation. By using these tools you can see if your mailing IP is blacklisted by anyone and if your mailing IP is set up correctly.

Once you have understood your current situation you will be able to start taking actions in order to improve. 

 

2. Get Your IP Removed From Any Blacklists: The main reason for your emails ending up in the spam folder is Blacklists. Most email providers cross reference the more mainstream blacklists when emails are being sent and if your domain appears on one of these lists then it is unlikely that your email will reach the inbox successfully. 

If you find yourself on any of these blacklists then use your reputation management tool and contact the admin for information on how to get yourself removed from that list. 

 

3. Re-engage Inactive Contacts: Running a win back campaign is a great way to get inactive contacts engaged again.

The key factors to consider are:

  • Timing
  • Form
  • Incentive

Ideally you can have an automatic email sent out when a user reaches a certain period of inactivity. Once set-up then your systems should automatically send re engagement campaigns for you, if the campaign fails then you have two options, remove them from your email list or try again in a few months time

 

4. Prune Your Email List: Hygiene isn’t just an important trait in the office, list hygiene is an important part of email deliverability. In order to keep your email list hygienic you must: remove the deadwood and engage those who are active. Failing to keep up a hygienic list will ruin your data/ results and will waste your time and effort. 

 

5. Partner With A Reliable Email Service Provider: Realistically you should have done your research before creating your email account with an unreliable email provider, but who are we to judge? 

If your not sure whether your current platform is correct for you, then check if it:

  • Has relationships with all the major Internet Service Providers
  • Has set up feedback loops with all the key mailbox providers
  • Automatically handles bounces, unsubscribes, and spam complaints
  • Does not allow its users to upload purchased or scraped lists
  • Participates in all major ISP industry initiatives to prevent spam, like MAAWG, EEC, and ESPC
  • Is compliant with all the major regulations such as CanSPAM, CASL, GDPR, and

 

6. Make Unsubscribing From Your List Easier: Unsubscribers from your email list isn’t actually that much of a big deal. To experienced email marketers, people unsubscribing from their email lists are actually doing them a favour, by pruning their email list for them. Issues arise if the recipients start reporting your emails as spam and filtering them to their spam folder instead of unsubscribing. 

In order to make unsubscribing easier for your audience, make the unsubscribe button clear and obvious. If your contacts want to unsubscribe then you should be making this as easy as possible, remove any unnecessary steps and bring your unsubscribe link to the top of all your email communications. 

 

7. Improve Your Content: Improving the content of your email marketing and providing real value in your communications is no easy task. But successfully doing so will reduce the amount of your contacts who become inactive.

Writing engaging informative communications takes time and research as you should be looking to provide value to your customers at every possible opportunity. Providing useful, objective information that addresses common issues and pains your customers are likely to experience is a good starting point and once you get comfortable with this type of information that fits your company’s brand values, you will start to find it easy to supplement this info with sales messages that will be well received. 

 

8. Balance The Image To Text Ratio: Images, videos and fancy graphics can make your emails look professional and well produced, however when you overuse these elements and fill your emails with too many visuals, your emails start to lack substance and value. While many consumers have computers capable of loading lots of high definition images, videos and graphics, designing a campaign around these elements estranges the reader and makes the actual content seem irrelevant. 

We’re not saying dont use images, graphics and charts but use them where appropriate, utilise a ‘less is more’ approach. Don’t focus too much on the aesthetics of your emails, content always comes first.

 

9. Run A Reconfirmation Campaign: Finally, if all else has failed, then run a reconfirmation campaign. These campaigns are similar to re engagement campaigns with one big difference. After you’ve ran the campaign people either remain in your email list or you make the decision to remove them. 

For a reconfirmation campaign you select all the inactive people on your email list and send them an email asking if they would like to opt in again to receive your communications, you are not asking them if they want to remain in the list you are asking them to re-subscribe and reconfirm their interest in your business. This is one of the most effective ways to prune your email list and keep it hygienic. 

 

Wrap up

Now you have all the information you need to improve your Email Deliverability yourself. Remember one of the best things about email marketing is the amount of data created when you start sending campaigns, so be sure to utilise this data to your advantage and use it to improve and inform future campaigns.

If you are struggling with your email marketing and would rather leave it to the professionals, then feel free to contact Inboxx at:

Email: grow@in-boxx.com         Phone: 0161 543 4461