10 Steps To Increasing the Deliverability of Emails in Marketing Communication

By sending Email newsletters, you should ensure their best deliverability. What does that actually mean? Deliverability is a parameter that indicates how many messages were finally correctly delivered to the recipients. This indicates whether our message has reached the client's mailbox at all. 

Below we have listed the most important factors in this area. Taking care of them is a key to gain effectiveness in this communication channel.

Try to use a dedicated IP server address and individual shipping infrastructure

When you choose a platform for Email communication, it’s worth recognizing whether it offers the possibility of using a dedicated infrastructure and your own IP server address. By choosing this option, you can be sure that the other customers’ shipments don’t affect your campaigns. Moreover you build the reputation of the sender yourself, and thus deliverability and efficiency.

When the campaign is mailing from a shared infrastructure, you never know who your immediate neighbor is and whether the communication by Email doesn’t cause underreport, which may have a negative impact on your mailing. 

Additionally, if you use an individual IP address, you have a guarantee of the highest bandwidth and, as we know, the time of delivery of the message to the customer is very important, especially in the case of transactional shipments.

Take care of properly configured SPF / DKIM / DMARC protocols on your domain

The major security in the marketing world is the SPF (Sender Policy Framework). A server that has been secured by creating an SPF record checks in DNS if the received message comes from a server authorized to send messages from a given domain. If the address is not authenticated, the mail won’t be accepted. Therefore, if you use an external mailing distribution tool, update your shipping domain's SPF entry accordingly. 

Send to an up-to-date list of contacts, take care of permission to communicate and work on keeping the base hygienic

As part of this factor, we can distinguish several activities that we should perform:

• Systematically remove non-existent addresses (hardbounce) from the database.

• Exclude addresses that have objected to the processing of personal data.

This is very important because recipients who don’t want to receive correspondence may mark your Emails as SPAM and this causes a reduction in reputation and can cause problems with deliverability.

• Send only to the base for which you have consent for marketing communication.

Email account providers will quickly find out that your Emails are not ordered correspondence and will start classifying them as SPAM.

• Segment users according to specific conditions.

Thanks to this, your offers will reach exactly those people who expect them.

• Periodically check the database and clean it from errors.

Take care of this element, especially when you enable entry to the database through a form in which the subscriber can provide any information.

• Use double opt in, i.e. double verification.

It consists in the fact that an Email with an activation link will be sent to the address that subscribed to the newsletter on the website, and only after clicking on it, it's added to the database. Then you can be sure that the address certainly exists and that it is actually operated by the person who had signed up. 

Enable to unsubscribe

Each marketing message should contain an unsubscribe link that will allow the mailing recipient to unsubscribe from the communication. If you use it, it's great, always check in the SMS message whether it is working properly before sending.

It’s better to allow the user an easy and intuitive way of unsubscribing than to face other less pleasant consequences, such as marking your emails as SPAM or deleting them without opening them (Gmail is particularly sensitive to this aspect). Both of these actions are a signal to Email providers that you don’t care properly for the hygiene of mailings, which may cause them to classify your emails as SPAM or simply not deliver them.

Communicate with your audience on a regular basis

If the subscribers found their way to your database, it means that you have a consent to communicate with them and most likely they expressed such a desire 😊

Therefore, when you conduct marketing activities by sending email, it’s worth building a permanent, strong relationship with recipients through systematic communication. Your messages don't have to - or shouldn't - be purely for sale. Communicate by providing various interesting information, of course related to the service or the product you offer (you can generate a series of training and educational e-mails informing about new products / services, guides, articles, etc.).

By taking care of the regularity of mailings, you build a bond with the customer and the desired reception of your brand in the eyes of the recipient.

Stimulate positive involvement of your recipients to get the highest OR / CTR ratio

This point is closely related to the sending of messages that are intended to arouse the interest of the recipient. Anyone who implements marketing communication has a group of so-called inactive users, i.e. those who don’t read your correspondence. It’s a natural phenomenon, but it’s worth working on making at least some of them respond positively to your mailings, i.e. open and click them. For this purpose, it’s worth testing various forms of mailings, e.g. by using personalization or emoticons in the title of the message, as well as attracting interest in the content of the Email, a clear action button or the use of graphics that attract attention, e.g. a clock counting down the duration of the promotion works great. It’s also worth performing the procedure of encouraging the recipient of the message by sharing this message with others - this situation is a clear message for Email account providers that this Email was worth attention and commitment. Sometimes, despite all efforts, it may happen that your newsletter will go to SPAM, if the addressee marks it as SPAM by transferring it to the main mailbox, we also gain a big plus in the assessment of anti-spam filters. Such a situation is possible when we build a group of loyal subscribers interested in what you want to convey to them.

All of the above actions are aimed at generating the greatest interest in your mailings, which will definitely help in overall deliverability, as it’s a clear sign that the communication you conduct is received by subscribers.

Take care of Email design

Anti-spam filters scan your message before delivering it to the recipient's inbox and one of the elements that is verified is the mailing content. It’s worth following a few rules in this regard:

• don’t use too large and heavy images (HTML code shouldn’t exceed 100kb)

• make sure that the mailing is displayed correctly on mobile devices

• pay attention to the ratio of text to graphics - good practice is about 500 text characters

• try to make your message as readable as possible, use catchy headlines, don’t go into details, it’s worth placing them directly on the page

• use a fixed message template (header, body, footer)

• use safe fonts such as Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana, Tahoma

• take care of the order in the HTML code.

Avoid phrases that are commonly considered "spamogenic"

The main task of anti-spam filters used by Email account providers is to catch messages that may probably indicate that they are so-called unsolicited correspondence. There is a certain set of words / phrases that are poorly rated and can negatively impact deliverability. Below there are some examples that should definitely be avoided in mass communication:

• Sex, porn, viagra

• 100%

• Ladies and Gentlemen

• Test

• Credit card

• Congratulations

• $$$

• The address comes from a public database

• This is not commercial information according to...

• If you are not interested, we apologize

• It does not constitute an offer within the meaning of...

It’s also worth limiting the number of exclamation points and capitalized words.

Use an anti-spam tool and correct any errors

The strict rules of Email providers make the sending of marketing Emails a very big challenge. If you have prepared a mailing and you are not sure if it meets all of the above-mentioned requirements, you can use our Email testing tool. Mailchecker.net in a simple way, from the browser level, allows you to evaluate emails, at the same time giving tips on what should be improved to ensure higher deliverability. 

Test emailing before shipping

Email tests are an obligatory point. Any tool will ever be able to notice some errors that we can see with the naked eye, by clicking the email in our own test inbox. First of all, it’s worth paying attention to whether the topic and preheader are displayed correctly, there are no typos, possible errors in personalization, whether the graphics are definitely displayed well and whether the links point to the right place on the page. At this stage, you can also see which tab the newsletter goes to. We encourage you to verify the test message also on a mobile device to minimize the risk of having a newsletter displayed incorrectly. 

As you can see, there are many factors that affect the deliverability of your Emails. Verify your actions in terms of the recommendations described above, try to implement them and we guarantee that the effectiveness of your mailings will increase by up to several percent 😊 Good luck!

If you have any questions about any facets of business communication, please feel free to reach out to us. We are here to offer the assistance you require. Contact us at contact@messageflow.com, and together, we'll ensure the successful delivery of your messages.