What is Email Deliverability?
Email deliverability refers to an email’s ability to reach the recipient’s inbox without being blocked, filtered, or marked as spam. Email deliverability rates measure how many emails are successfully delivered to recipients’ inboxes.
Better email deliverability means that more of your emails reach their intended recipients. In contrast, high bounce rates, or emails sent to the recipient’s spam filters negatively affect your email deliverability.
What Are The Key Components of Email Deliverability?
Deliverability depends on various factors, including the sender’s reputation, email content, authentication methods, and compliance with anti-spam regulations. Effective email deliverability ensures that emails are not only delivered but also seen and read by recipients.
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Sender Reputation
Sender reputation is a score that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) assign to an email sender based on their sending practices. A high sender reputation increases the chances of emails being delivered to the inbox, while a low reputation can lead to emails being blocked or marked as spam. Factors influencing a sender’s reputation include:
- Email volume: Consistent and predictable sending volumes.
- Bounce rates: Low rates of undeliverable emails.
- Spam complaints: Minimal complaints from recipients marking emails as spam.
- Engagement: High open and click-through rates.
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Email Authentication
Email authentication verifies the legitimacy of the email sender. Common authentication protocols include:
- SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Specifies which mail servers are authorized to send emails on behalf of a domain.
- DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Adds a digital signature to the email, verifying the sender’s identity.
- DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance): Aligns SPF and DKIM policies to protect against email spoofing and phishing.
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Email Content
The content of the email plays a big role in deliverability. Factors to consider include:
- Relevance: Personalized and relevant content for the recipient.
- Avoiding Spam Triggers: Avoiding words and phrases commonly flagged by spam filters.
- HTML and Text Balance: A proper balance of HTML and plain text versions of the email.
- Image-to-Text Ratio: Maintaining a good ratio of images to text to avoid being flagged as spam.
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Regulatory Compliance
Adhering to email marketing regulations and laws is essential for maintaining good deliverability. Key regulations include:
- CAN-SPAM Act (USA): Requires clear identification of the sender, a valid physical address, and an easy way to opt out of emails.
- GDPR (EU): Protects the privacy of individuals and mandates explicit consent for email marketing.
- CASL (Canada): Requires explicit consent for sending commercial emails and provides guidelines for content and unsubscribe mechanisms.
Why Does Email Deliverability Matter?
Reach and Engagement
High email deliverability ensures that emails reach the intended recipients, increasing the chances of engagement through opens, clicks, and conversions. Poor deliverability can result in emails being filtered out or ignored.
Reputation and Trust
Maintaining high deliverability helps build and sustain the sender’s reputation. Consistently reaching the inbox fosters trust with recipients and ISPs, enhancing the overall communication effectiveness.
Return on Investment (ROI)
Effective email deliverability maximizes the ROI of email marketing campaigns. Reaching the inbox ensures that marketing messages are seen by potential customers, leading to higher conversion rates and revenue.
Compliance and Avoidance of Penalties
Adhering to email deliverability best practices helps comply with legal requirements, avoiding penalties and legal issues. Compliance also prevents damaging the sender’s reputation and deliverability rates.
How to Improve Your Email Deliverability
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Maintain a Clean Email List
Regularly clean and update your email list to remove inactive or invalid email addresses. This reduces bounce rates and improves engagement metrics.
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Engage with Subscribers
Send relevant and engaging content to your subscribers. High engagement rates positively impact the sender’s reputation and deliverability.
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Monitor Email Metrics
Track key email metrics such as bounce rates, open rates, click-through rates, and spam complaints. Use this data to adjust and improve your email campaigns.
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Use Double Opt-In
Implement double opt-in for new subscribers to ensure only interested and valid email addresses are added to your list. This reduces the chances of fake or mistyped addresses.
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Authenticate Your Emails
Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication protocols to verify your email’s legitimacy and protect against spoofing.
What is a good email deliverability rate?
Ideally, your email deliverability rate should be 100%. This means all your sent emails are arriving successfully in the recipient’s inbox. However, this is generally considered unrealistic.
Most email clients use spam and promotion filters, and it’s almost impossible to avoid them all when sending a high volume of emails.
A realistic target should be around 85%. This means your reputation and email content is deemed acceptable for most email clients. However, a deliverability rate below 70% should be a serious red flag and a sign that your email marketing campaigns need significant improvement.
How to check Your email deliverability
There are several tools you can use to check your email deliverability score. Popular options include:
These tools assess the factors influencing email delivery, such as your sender reputation, content quality, and adherence to industry best practices.