In the evolving digital landscape, email remains a significant means of communication. However, sending an email doesn’t guarantee that it will reach the intended recipient’s inbox. Email deliverability plays a crucial role in ensuring the success of your communication efforts.
Alongside this article, Rob Amos, Product Marketing Email Lead at Upland sat down with Ken O’Driscoll, Head of Deliverability, and author of “Email Deliverability Explained”, to record eleven bite-sized explainers around key deliverability topics – watch them here.
Email deliverability plays a vital role in successful communication by building trust, maximizing reach and engagement, avoiding compliance issues, and enhancing the overall customer experience. To improve deliverability, organizations should focus regularly monitoring metrics and following best practices which will be covered here.
Let’s start with some definitions and benchmarks. With Upland Adestra, these metrics are readily available in your reporting dashboards.
Delivery Rate – Percentage of messages which were accepted by receiving email servers. Ideally 98%+.
Bounce Rate – Percentage of messages which were refused. Ideally low, between 1-3%. High bounce rates can indicate blocks and/or invalid addresses, which can influence sending reputation.
Complaint Rate – Percentage of messages which generated complaints. Ideally low, between 1-2%. High complaint rates can indicate unsolicited email campaigns or poor segmentation, which can influence sending reputation.
There are some basic email marketing best practices that can promote good deliverability and are worth spelling out here for completeness. If the recipient did not opt-in to receive your email, chances are they will quickly opt out and mark the message as spam, which can influence sending reputation. Likewise, when recipients cannot easily unsubscribe, they may mark the email as spam instead. Practice good email hygiene by maintaining a list of subscribers that have not previously unsubscribed, complained, bounced, or become inactive. Don’t re-subscribe contacts.
As well as improving engagement, segmentation is a good practice when it comes to email deliverability. Rather than sending mass emails to your entire subscriber list, segment and make every send relevant to the recipients in that segment. This will increase engagement and reduce the chance of recipients unsubscribing or marking the messages as spam.
Always disclose what the email address will be used for in any sign-up process. Not doing so may increase complaints and encourage people to provide invalid or throw-away addresses.
Avoid bots and fraudulent sign-ups by using Captcha or other confirmed opt-in mechanisms to reduce the risk of fraudulent signups, which can impact sending reputation. This can also include sending a double-opt-in email directly after sign-up and only after clicking on this link will be email address become subscribed. Quality over quantity.
The goal of an email is to convert, driving the recipient to take an action. With that, high open and click rates are good for your reputation. For example, increase engagement rates by sending to those who have interacted in the last 30 to 60 days.
Lurking in the shadows are blocklists and spam traps, and to be avoided. Spam traps are booby-trapped email addresses operated by blocklist operators and mailbox providers. They never sign up for any service, so if they are on your list, it means you may have a data quality issue. Providers sometimes also turn abandoned addresses into spam traps. Spam trap hits result in you being added to a block list. Consistently contacting inactive recipients increases the risk of hitting a spam trap.
The domains used in your links have a reputation associated with them. Be aware of the links in your email – ideally, they should all be linking to the same domain as the sending email address or at least a domain you own. Avoid shared domains (e.g., Google Drive) in links, and always try to use domains you control. For example, an email from example@uple25.wpengine.com should have links to uplandsoftware.com.
The most complex part of email deliverability is email authentication. There are three protocols to consider. The SPF protocol is used to identify legitimate sources of messages, meaning the email servers used to send your messages. Next, the DKIM protocol is used to associate a message with a domain. Finally, DMARC is designed to prevent unauthorized use of a domain in the “from” address of a message. Together, these protocols can help distinguish your messages from those of a spammer trying to spoof your brand. When dealing with email authentication, it’s best to work with a team of professionals, and with Adestra you’ll get access to a trusted team that’s here to support you and your email goals.
Prioritizing email deliverability not only increases the chances of reaching the inbox but also boosts engagement levels, strengthens relationships, and drives growth in the competitive email marketing landscape.
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