5 Ways to Immediately Improve your Email Deliverability
It's not a surprise that deliverability has always been a struggle for email marketers. You've probably come across many articles like this one with advice about how to improve your deliverability rates. The thing is, there are important steps you can take to increase your deliverability today.
According to Return Path, in 2017 one in five emails were missing the inbox. That means, on average, 20 percent of emails are not reaching their destination. It's a unviversal issue in the email marketing world. There are many ways to help improve deliverability, and we'll be providing some of the best ones in this article. Most importantly, we'll be giving you the key to ensure your deliverability rate improves.
But first let's step back, what is deliverability?
What is Email Deliverability?
It is the rate at which an email reaches the subscriber's inbox. So what does it mean when you have poor deliverability? Well, it's when your message fails to make it to the inbox, but rather hits the spam folder, junk mail, or is completely blocked by the ISP.
It's time to take action and improve your email deliverability. Let's take a look at the top 5 ways you can improve deliverability to send your next email campaign to the top.
How to Improve Deliverability with these 5 Tips
5. Content is King
In order to produce good content, it is best to have a plan. Having a detailed schedule of your email content in place will allow your business to look professional, organized, and knowledgeable to your audience. Having your content ready in advance saves a lot of time and energy. If you get creative with your content, target it towards different audiences, use national holidays, and even events going on in your industry. The most important advice to take is whether you are sending to a small or large list, make sure you eliminate the phrases that could come off as "spam-ish" content. This is one way your emails could be sent to the spam folder, or eventually your IP could be dinged and put on a potential blacklist.
4. Subject lines matter
Your subject lines are crucial, no if, ands or buts about it. This is the first part of the email your subscribers will see, the subject line determines if your subscribers will open your email or not. ISPs are becoming better at filtering certain phrases that look like spam content, which then leads to your subscribers junk box. Try to avoid subject lines with all caps or RISK FREE, FREE become debt free today, or even using to many exclamation points!!!! It's, all a big no no. If it sounds like spam, it is likely to be considered spam.
3. Target Audience & List Segmentation
Sending out mass emails is probably not a good idea. Without segmentation, your engagement rates will suffer, open rates will suffer, and you will start to see your unsubscribers rates increase. Sales will not increase if you're sending to mass list of disengaged people.
List segmentation can drastically improve your email marketing campaigns. Your audience is not all the same, and you know that. People have different likes and interests, so why target to them all the same if they're completely different?
Here are some ways you can segment your lists according to sleeknote.com,
Segment based on...
- Engagemnet History
- Subscriber interests and preferences
- Success Milestones of Subscribers
- Point of Sign Up
- Geography and Demographics
- Sales Funnel and Leads Score
- Level of Disengagement
2. Embedded Links
So far we've listed what to do to improve your deliverability, but let's talk about links in your emails and what not to do. According to Activecampaigns.com, here are a list of specific no-no's to avoid when it comes to using links in your email campaigns.
- Avoid use link shorteners. These are used heavily by spammers to mask their link destinations and are always listed on major blacklists.
- Avoid using a full HTTP link as the forward-facing text of a hyperlink. For example, this is what you want to avoid in your emails.
- Using a full hyperlink as the forward facing part of a hyperlink looks suspicious, because there's no guarantee it actually redirects to that URL- it could just as easily redirect to another, malicious page. Instead, use simple text such as "Click Here' and embed your link into that text. You can also include a button in your communication that links to your page.
- Don't try to use an HTML form or any Javascript in your email
- Don't include attachments
1. Email Hygiene
Email Hygiene is the most important key to keep in mind when it comes to improving deliverability. Yes, content, list segmentation, inside links, and your subject line matter, but if you're sending to inactive users, hard or soft bounces, or hidden email threats many things could happen to you. Most of them bad.
Email Hygiene is the process of identifying active and inactive email threats in your email data. Hidden threats such as spam traps, moles, bots, honeypots, seeded trackers and more. (Check out our recent intelligence report to learn more about the hidden threats in your emails).
People change jobs, pass away, and abandon old email address regularly, so it is imperative that you keep up with good email hygiene practices. There are even threats in your data like disposable domains, that are only temporary emails that can explode after a certain amount of time has passed. Spam traps are another threat, which are a type of tool used by organizations to identify spammers. If you have them in your list and send to them you could damanage your sender reputation, or permanently be placed on a blacklist.
Guess what? Verification alone cannot detect the spam traps either, this is why email hygiene is a must before you hit the send button on your next campaign. Email verification detects active threats, like bounces, But only Email Hygiene can detect inactive and fraudulent threats that can receive, open, click, and track your campaign.
Webbula cloudHygiene is the industry leading bundled solution that verifies email addresses and identifies potential threats using a combination of Email Verification and Email Hygiene. We not only want to validate whether an email is valid or invalid, but also protect your email reputation, increase ROI and conversions, all by identifying hidden threats with Webbula cloudHygiene.
The most important tip for increasing deliverability? Ensure your list is Webbula cloudHygiene clean and your emails will be landing in customer inboxes up to 95% more often.
Email hygiene, is the solution you need.
This Article is from Webbula.com
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