Email deliverability explanations
Email deliverability explanations
In most cases, email marketers don’t bother about email deliverability metrics since there are far more crucial metrics than this. However, a significant number will show your campaign’s success.
In this article, you will learn:
What is a good email deliverability rate?
What affects email deliverability?
How to review email deliverability in Markeaze?
Steps to avoid and manage poor email deliverability?
What is email deliverability?
Email deliverability is the ability of an email to arrive in the recipient’s primary email inbox. Email deliverability is measured as a percentage of emails accepted by the internet service provider (or ISP for short).
Why is it important?
Email marketers use email deliverability to determine whether their emails reach their customers. Failure to do so reduces a marketing email's performance, which is why deliverability is critical to every business.
What is a good email deliverability rate?
A good email delivery rate is higher than 95%. You can use Markeaze to see the exact percentage of your emails that were delivered, opened, or bounced. 100% is ideal but unrealistic, so keep the email deliverability metric as high as possible.
What affects email deliverability?
Factors such as sender reputation, authentication, and being blacklisted are common reasons for low email deliverability. Being clear about the content you send and to whom you send it is essential to maintain a high rate. Let’s dive into these a bit more.
Email Sender Reputation
The lower your sender reputation score is, the less likely your email will reach an active subscriber’s inbox. This score is calculated based on many factors to determine whether the ISP should trust your email.
Your email deliverability is determined based on this sender score, as is where your email ends. While a slightly low sender reputation may mean you get sent to some subscriber’s junk folder, a meager score will drop your deliverability to zero.
Authentication is Important – Use SPF and DKIM
Email authentication allows ISPs to decide whether or not a sent email is legitimate. If there is some kind of “hidden actions” going on where the domain the email appears to be sent from is not the proper sending domain, deliverability will decrease. SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) tools are often used to authenticate an email. More about the SPF and DKIM you can find in this article.
How to review email deliverability in Markeaze?
To do that, simply navigate to the Campaign section on your upper bar.
Select an email campaign that you have already sent out. It should have a green icon next to it.
Inside the Statistics tab, review the Delivery rate, which shows your email deliverability.
Steps to avoid and manage poor email deliverability
There are many ways to fix and improve your email deliverability rate. You can avoid email deliverability problems by regularly cleaning your email list, sending high-quality emails, and implementing a double opt-in process. Here are a few ways how you can avoid poor email deliverability.
1. Test your email deliverability and reputation
Suppose you’re just starting or haven’t complained about your emails not reaching subscribers or ending up in the spam folder. In that case, chances are you don’t need to worry about testing your email deliverability and reputation.
2. Always send engaging content
The very first thing you should do if you start to notice your open rates, bounce rates, or deliverability rates suffering is to confirm that the content you are sending is high quality and what subscribers opted in for. If they don’t care about what you’re sending, they’re more likely to ignore the email or report it as spam.
If you’re sure that the content within the email isn’t the problem, the next step is to look into your subject lines. Be sure to use subject line best practices to create an engaging subject that makes your subscribers want to click and keep coming back each time you reach their inbox.
3. Make it easy to unsubscribe
There was a time when a less-than-ethical business could make it extremely hard to unsubscribe to an email list. Thankfully, times have changed, and now it is required that every email contains a way to unsubscribe. Remember that an unengaged subscriber who doesn’t open your emails reports them as spam and will hurt your sender's reputation.
4. Be careful of sending limits and volume
A consistent schedule is essential when it comes to both growing your list and keeping your deliverability high. However, there are times when you may need to send mass emails within a short period, such as a significant sale or promotion. A mail server may see this as a sign of spam if you increase your send too much. While there is no set number of emails to hit your sending limit, the best way to avoid hitting it is to slowly increase the number of emails you send leading up to the event.
5. Practice good email hygiene
Keeping your email list healthy is very much like keeping your teeth clean. If you keep up with regular maintenance, you’re less likely to develop a cavity or, in the case of your email list, low deliverability. You should review and remove inactive subscribers often to avoid high unopened and bounce rates. If your emails are continuously bounced back or remain unopened, your sender's reputation will suffer, followed by your deliverability.
6. Always get consent to send
You should never buy or rent an email list or use someone’s email address without their permission. That is one of the fastest ways to decrease your deliverability and become blacklisted. However, email addresses can come from many legit places but may still not be considered legit email subscribers. That is why it is always best practice to incorporate an opt-in system for adding new subscribers to your list.