E-mail Deliverability

Every marketer understands the importance of creating and maintaining e-mail lists to send out e-mail campaigns regularly to their prospects. However, the success of every e-mail campaign is governed by the senders’ reputation and e-mail deliverability rate. To ensure that your e-mails are successful in establishing your relationship with your recipients, you have to first make sure that your e-mail reaches its destination i.e. the recipients’ inbox.

Of the thousands or millions of e-mails sent out, it is not unusual that around 10% of the recipients don’t get your e-mail. This is where e-mail deliverability plays an important role. Though the concept of e-mail deliverability may sound simple, the process can be complex.

To ensure optimal e-mail deliverability here are some best practices that every marketer should be well aware of.

Permission – It is a good practice to get confirmation from your e-mail recipients to be included in your e-mail list. This will ensure that your e-mails are not blocked or unsubscribed by uninterested recipients.

E-mail content – Recipients look forward to significant and relevant content. The more relevant and meaningful your e-mail is, better it is received by the recipient.  Avoid using typical spam phrases and too many images to evade your e-mail from being flagged as spam.

One to one marketing – It takes more than to simply insert the recipient’s name in an e-mail body or the subject line to personalize it.  An advanced marketing automation system like MindMatrix’s AMP will enable you to personalize every graphic and text in the e-mail going out of the system. Moreover, it will also allow you to customize e-mails based on the contact’s past behavior.

Plan your campaigns – Sending too many e-mails in close intervals will result in more bounces or unsubscribed rates. But too little can also lead to no results. Hence it is important to make sure that you send out e-mails at least once every 90 days.

Option to unsubscribe – Make it easy for the recipients to opt out of the e-mail list and all future e-mails by providing an unsubscribe button in the e-mail body.

Request to white list – You can request the recipient in your e-mail to add your e-mail address to their ‘Safe Senders’ list. It is advisable to use only one e-mail address to send out the e-mails every time.

Testing – Many recipients may block images in the e-mails they receive. Hence, it is always better to test your e-mail before mass sending them to check whether your e-mail communicates the message without displaying the images.

Bounce management – Handling bounces is very vital for better e-mail deliverability.

E-mails sent to recipients may bounce back for many reasons. It could be because of wrong e-mail address or it could be due to technical glitch.

Monitoring e-mail campaigns – Every e-mail sent out needs monitoring to ensure maximum deliverability. Reports on open rates, click thru rates, bounce rates, unopened rates will help you to know how well your e-mail has performed and also help you to device a better e-mail campaign to be sent out next.