Every email marketer's goal is to engage their audience, drive conversions, and achieve email campaign success. But what happens when all that hard work doesn’t pay off because the emails you send don’t even reach your audience? This is the harsh reality of poor email deliverability. The good news is that you can turn things around and improve your email deliverability and inbox placement by focusing on the right metrics. This article will explore inbox delivery (or placement) and why it matters. Then, we’ll share tips to help you improve your inbox delivery rates for your email campaigns. 

Table of Contents

• What is Email Delivery and Why It Matters

• 14 Tips for Effective Inbox Delivery

• 11 Best Email Testing Tools for Optimized Delivery

• Start Buying Domains Now and Setup Your Email Infrastructure Today

What is Email Delivery and Why It Matters

Email delivery is the process of ensuring emails reach recipients’ mail servers successfully. That means if your email is sent to an address that doesn’t exist or gets blocked, it won’t matter if it gets to the inbox or the spam folder. Delivery rates focus on the percentage of messages the receiving mail server accepts. If you send out 1,000 emails and 900 of them reach the intended recipient’s server, your delivery rate is 90%. 

How Email Delivery Impacts Open Rates and Campaign Success

Email delivery is significant for maintaining your sender’s reputation. The higher your delivery rate, the better your reputation. The better your reputation, the more likely you will land your emails in the inbox, which will be opened and read. For example, if you send out an email newsletter to 1,000 subscribers but only 300 get delivered, your open rates will be abysmally low, and any goals you had for the campaign will be out the window. 

Suppose you have been sending frequent emails with low delivery rates the next time you send an email. In that case, your reputation will be damaged, and you will likely reencounter the same issues, even if you have changed the content of your emails significantly. 

What Is Email Deliverability?

Deliverability, or inbox placement, refers to where that message ends once it’s accepted. In other words, the inbox, spam folder, or another folder. When understanding the difference between delivery and deliverability, ask yourself: Can a receiver accept your message? Does it get to the inbox?

Can a Receiver Accept Your Message?

At its core, delivery refers to whether or not a receiver accepts your message. This comes before the spam folder is ever considered. Does the domain or email address exist? Is your IP address blocked? Imagine your email is a busy business traveler going to a conference. Successful delivery would mean that the traveler arrived at the correct airport.

She then proved her identity with a ticket and passport, and airport security verified that she could pass through security to her departure gate. Similarly, when an email is successfully delivered, it makes it to the intended recipient’s mailbox, which could be in the inbox or the spam folder.

Did Your Email Get to the Inbox?

Also known as inbox placement, deliverability refers to where that message ends once it’s accepted. Did it get to the inbox? Let’s return to our travel metaphor. Our traveler has made it through security to the correct gate and needs to reach her destination. Deliverability is akin to where the traveler’s flight ultimately arrives. While most travelers safely get to their departure gate (delivery), weather or other mishaps may reroute them, for example, from Dallas to Houston (deliverability). 

Deliverability consists of three parts: 

Identification 

This is the set of protocols that prove you are who you say you are when you send an email, such as: 

• Sender Policy Framework (SPF)

• DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)

• Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC)

These terms function like your passport, license, or background check. Are you Jane Doe, the hard-nosed lawyer from upstate New York? Or Jane Doe, the collegiate swim coach from southern California? Your ability to get on the correct flight to your intended destination hinges on your identity. 

Reputation

Your sender’s reputation is a score that signals your trustworthiness. Each organization and internet service provider (ISP) might have different scores for you. Generating positive subscriber behavior, like engaging with your email or marking you as a trusted sender, is the best way to boost your sender reputation—which you can do by sending relevant, personal emails to your subscribers. 

Content

• Is your message appropriate for your audience? 

• Is it relevant? 

• Are you combining copy like “Make money fast!” and “Work from home” with poor sending practices like buying an email list (noooooo!) or preventing unsubscribes? 

Using excessive exclamation points, weird formatting, and URL shorteners can all impact your email’s deliverability based on your previous sending patterns. Think about it from your subscribers’ perspective. If you receive an email with the subject line, “MAKE MONEY TODAY!!!!”, will you open it? 

Tailor your message to what your subscribers care about to make the most impact. Identification and reputation account for most of the reasons an email lands in the inbox or the spam folder. 

Common Causes of Email Deliverability Issues and How to Fix Them

Think about waiting in line for an airport security screening. You won’t make it past the first desk if you don’t have a ticket. And if you’re on the no-fly list, you’re not going anywhere. Delivery issues mean that something may be wrong with your infrastructure, you’ve got faulty email addresses on your list, or you’ve received enough negative user interaction to warrant a block. 

Deliverability issues indicate that your sending and permission practices might need to be in order, or your email list could be more interested in your content.

Related Reading

• Why Are My Emails Going To Spam
• Email Deliverability Rate
• Email Monitoring
• Email Deliverability Issues
• Email Quality Score
• Bounce Rate in Email Marketing
• How To Avoid Email Going To Spam
• Why Do Emails Bounce
• SPF or DKIM
• How To Check If Your Emails Are Going To Spam

14 Tips for Effective Inbox Delivery

1. Your Sender Score: A Credit Score for Your Emails

A sender score is a credit score that tells email providers and spam filters how wanted and trustworthy your emails are. It can range from zero to hundreds. This score changes every day. Checking this score daily is important to avoid any deliverability surprises and email delivery tests. 

2. Why You Should Send Emails From a Dedicated IP Address

A dedicated IP address can help land emails in your inbox, increasing your deliverability rates. Switching to a dedicated IP address is advisable when your email send rate reaches a specific volume. This can help you gain control over your reputation and subsequently help you get high email delivery and delivery confirmation emails.

3. Optimize Your Emails for All Devices

Marketers must design email programs and check email delivery services that can be read on multiple devices. A responsive email template ensures good rendering on mobile devices, too. Also, ensure you send a text-based email; these emails render pretty well on any mobile device.

4. Identify Problematic Reputation Metrics

Mailbox providers look into various signals; they are not just content to determine if your email should be sent to the inbox or the spam folder. These parameters include: 

• Complaint rate

• The number of non-existent addresses you send emails to

• Blacklists

• Spam traps, and many more

Find the factors you must address before your next email campaign. We request a customized report to give you an idea of your email metrics. You can use these services- mail-tester, MXtoolbox, Multirbl, Hetrixtools.

5. Give Your Subscribers the Option to Unsubscribe

Give your subscribers the option to leave when they sign up for your updates. This is an essential factor in keeping your audience. Make sure your outgoing email campaign has an unsubscribe link. Also, make sure that the email campaign has Link-unsubscribe in the header. This enables subscribers to unsubscribe from emails quickly.

6. Make Unsubscribe Buttons Visible and Functional

It is a law to have a working unsubscribe link. CAN-SPAM requires unsubscribes to be valid and working and unsubscribe requests must be honored within ten business days.

7. Authenticate Your Sending Domain

To protect your brand from fraudsters, consider authenticating your domain of sending. Authenticating helps to identify ownership of your mailing domain. Your sending domain should have proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records implemented. You should follow this guide for proper implementation. Using these records escalates the reputation of the sending domain, thus, in turn, helping you achieve high email delivery and delivery receipt.

8. Attend to Customer Complaints

Every time a subscriber marks your email as spam or you get a request for an unsubscription, act on it. Receive a report and act on the complaints. This should be observed as a priority, and the reporting emails should never be included in the list of emails where a new campaign is being sent.

9. Monitor Email Sending Reputation From Google Postmasters

You should configure your sending domain name with your Google Postmasters account, then watch the domain reputation and IP reputation tab. High domain and IP reputation in Google Postmasters ensures high email delivery. Feedback Loop and Delivery Error are other important options you should consider closely.

10. Know the Devices Your Subscribers Use to Read Emails

Knowing the devices on which your subscribers read emails can be beneficial in crafting your overall email marketing campaign. Knowing about the mail opening activity on the different devices; you can focus on proper email template optimization according to the campaigns being opened on different devices.

11. Segment Email List for High Email Delivery

Segment your email list according to your subscriber engagement. It would help you to avoid falling into mail traps. Mailbox providers usually use engagement spam filters, content, and reputation filtering to determine and block your incoming emails.

12. Double Check if All URLs are Working

Use an automated URL tester and blacklist checker to run your URL’s and discover potential issues before you hit send. A non-working link inside the email causes a very bad reputation in front of the subscriber. Also, this raises suspicion to the mailbox provider and decreases the email delivery to the inbox.

13. Ask Users to Add You to Their Contact List

This method helps target high email delivery and ensure emails enter your customer’s inbox. Microsoft mailboxes prioritize this before enabling emails to land in the subscriber’s inbox, like:

• MSN

• Live

• Outlook

• Hotmail

14. Send Test Emails Before Sending to the Main List

Sending test emails can help you determine the reactions of the subscribers beforehand. These test emails could be sent to a small group to test if you land emails in the inbox. The program could be changed easily if a failure occurs, ensuring lower damages. You can also send a test email to the mail-tester.com service, enabling you to check for potential issues with your campaign simultaneously!

Related Reading

• DMARC vs DKIM
• Importance Of DMARC
• What Is a Soft Bounce Email
• Email Deliverability Checklist
• What Affects Email Deliverability
• Why Is Email Deliverability Important
• Email Bounce Rate
• Fix Email Reputation
• Improve Sender Reputation
• Email Hard Bounce
• Email Deliverability Tools
• Email Deliverability Best Practices
• Best Email Domains

11 Best Email Testing Tools for Optimized Delivery

1. The Next Generation of Email Infrastructure: Inframail 

Inframail is an email infrastructure tool that provides unlimited inboxes at a flat rate to streamline cold email outreach. You get dedicated email servers for each user, backed by: 

• Microsoft for high deliverability

• Automated technical setup

• Priority support

Inframail targets to help them reach more prospects and scale cold outreach: 

• Agencies

• Recruiters

• Sales development representatives 

Key features of Inframail to help users with technical issues include: 

• Automated SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setup

• Dedicated IP addresses

• 16-hour priority support 

Unlike traditional email providers, which charge per inbox and require technical configurations, Inframail streamlines the entire process. We handle the complex infrastructure setup so you can focus on reaching more prospects. 

2. Create Beautiful Email Templates With Stripo 

Stripo is an email design platform that allows teams to design responsive emails with little or no HTML skills required. It has a comprehensive drag-and-drop editor, and basic blocks allow users to create real-time content with no coding skills. Stripo was one of the first email builders to implement AMP for Email technology. Stripo will enable you to reuse and save email modules across different email campaigns. It comes with: 

• Automated processes

• Custom modules

• Libraries

It provides a host of personalizations, like the ability to embed custom HTML code to create interactive elements. It provides users with over 1000 free, ready-to-use responsive email templates that are mobile optimized. Stripo comes with over 100,000 stock images and the opportunity to personalize and export emails and then track conversions afterward. 

Stripo can be integrated with over 60 ESPs/CRMs tools. This provides users versatility and functionality flexibility, for instance, by pushing emails to automation systems with only a click of a button.

3. MailTrap: The Best Tool for Email Testing in Staging Environments 

MailTrap is an online tool for safe email testing in development and staging environments. The tool is a fake SMTP server to: 

• Catch test emails

• View them in virtual inboxes

• Debug them before they are sent to real users

MailTrap allows you to efficiently test and iterate over new emails to avoid sending them mistakenly to clients and other employees from dev environments. It can be integrated via API or as an SMTP server and offers numerous features, including Bcc testing. Most email testing tools do not support Bcc, as it is not a regular SMTP header like To or Cc. 

MailTrap displays all Cc’ed addresses and can verify whether they remain invisible to the primary recipients. It also provides a customizable email address for each inbox, allowing you to run tests in a production and a development environment.

4. Email On Acid: The Best Tool for Testing Email Accessibility 

Email on Acid is an email platform specializing in quality assurance and pre-deployment functionality. It enhances organizations’ ability to deliver error-free emails that maintain brand reputation and boost marketing ROI. Email on Acid strives to provide consistent visual email rendering across different devices and platforms, ensuring generated emails are displayed as intended. 

How Email on Acid Enhances Deliverability and Streamlines Campaign Testing

It streamlines the email testing and pre-deployment process with campaign prechecks, URL validation, image optimization, etc. Email on Acid allows you to run checklists that matter like UTM validation and ADA compliance. Email on Acid improves email deliverability rates with spam checks in addition to providing access to blacklisted domains. 

This allows developers and email designers to verify their email list against over 20 popular spam filters while also testing IP addresses against popular block list services. Email on Acid comes with an editor for building templates and team collaboration tools for better efficiency.

5. MailTester: The Best for Ease-of-Use Email Testing 

MailTester is a cloud-based email verification solution that helps businesses verify the domains and syntax of emails. The tool is an effective first line of defense for email testing and provides an easy-to-use user interface, allowing accessibility to users lacking technical knowledge. 

MailTester offers an extensive toolbox that includes Spam Trap Removal (searching for spam trap emails in your email lists) and Syntax Verifier (catching emails containing invalid syntaxes and deleting them). It allows manual and automatic email verification using API and allows you to download segmented results.

6. Litmus ESP: The Best for Integrations 

Litmus ESP is an email marketing tool that helps you build, test, and analyze all email service providers (ESPs). Litmus allows you to chart the specific reasons why an email may fail to deliver and see the time taken to load an image and access real-world processing into inboxes. Litmus’s user interface provides fast-loading screenshots of all current email clients, organization of emails within one folder system, preview testing of email conten,t and a Builder for checking and testing various code against different email clients, allowing you to streamline your processes. 

The user interface also allows for team commenting and editor functionality. Litmus connects with various ESPs and other services, including: 

• Acoustic Campaign

• Adobe Campaign Standard

• Adobe Market

• Hubspot

• Oracle Eloqua

• Oracle Responsys

• Pardot

• Salesforce Marketing Cloud

• SAP Marketing Cloud

7. Wormly: The Best for Email + Web Monitoring 

Wormly is a website uptime monitoring solution that tracks site uptime, CPU usage, and SMTP server testing for new mail servers. Adding a few details to an on-page form allows you to access SMTP testing and remote ping testing for free through their site. Wormly provides detailed website and app uptime reporting and runs on all major operating systems, including Windows and Linux. 

In addition to email testing, Wormly offers a website monitoring service that continually monitors your website infrastructure and will alert you if a failure is detected. This allows you to act quickly and minimize downtime. The tool also offers sensors to monitor TCP/IP services to their full extent, allowing you to see your infrastructure availability and uptime.

8. MailChimp Transactional Email: The Best for Marketing Automations 

Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing platform with a robust content creation suite, marketing analytics, and add-on options for advanced email testing features. Mailchimp is AI-powered and provides user-friendly tools on an intuitive user interface, offering accessibility to users who lack deep technical knowledge. Mailchimp delivers comprehensive reporting on: 

• Deliverability

• Open rates

• Click-throughs

• Conversions

Mailchimp provides marketing automation features to manage transactional deliveries and automate tasks and communications. The tool is scalable, allowing you to send many emails at once. Mailchimp also offers website hosting and design, making it easy for the user to create landing pages from various basic templates (or code your own from scratch).

9. MailSlurp: The Best for End-to-End Email Testing 

MailSlurp is an “email as a service” tool with: 

• Email sandbox APIs

• Deliverability dashboards

• Auto-forwarding

• Webhooks

• Inbox routing 

Trivago, Ring, and Panasonic use it. Using REST API, the tool allows you to programmatically test transactional emails and fundamental user engagement by sending actual emails to real email addresses for your application. Mainly used by developers and QA testers, MailSlurp allows you to create actual inboxes on demand, send and receive emails and attachments in code, and tests using a variety of frameworks and languages, such as Selenium and Jest. 

Leveraging MailSlurp for Scalable Email Sending and Comprehensive Tracking

MailSlurp uses a custom SMTP MailServer and AWS SES to send and receive your emails at scale. You can: 

• Send contact group email design templates

• Track the number of times an email has been opened using actual email addresses

• Test user authentication

• Forgotten passwords

• Email verification and more

10. GlockApps: The Best for Spam Testing Email Campaigns

GlockApps is an inbox delivery and spam filter testing tool that allows users to fix email deliverability problems before hitting send. GlockApps provides a one-stop-shop for all email delivery tools, including a “Reputation Check,” which will enable you to audit your IP address and domain you are sending from against industry blacklists. You can also access DMARC Email Analytics to monitor, capture, separate, and or/reject any email pretending to be you. 

Glockapps provides detailed spam and blacklist reports to allow the user to troubleshoot and fix problems that improve email deliverability. This feature is handy should you wish to test marketing campaigns and the deliverability of email marketing providers. The report shows all IP addresses that were used to send emails and details whether they are on any blacklists, allowing you to get an overall view of the email campaign’s performance.

11. MailCatcher: The Best Free Email Testing Tool 

MailCatcher is an email testing tool designed to intercept all mail from any web or mobile app and store it for display. MailCatcher runs a fake SMTP server and shows HTML and CSS emails, Plain Text emails, and Source versions of messages as applicable. It also rewrites HTML, enabling the display of embedded images, and can open links in a new window. This allows you to effectively test all aspects of your email and check the formatting before it goes to your client. 

MailCatcher mail appears instantly if your browser supports WebSockets; otherwise, it updates every thirty seconds. It also offers command-line options to override the default SMTP/HTTP IP and port settings, allowing you to manipulate your testing best for your practice.

Related Reading

• Email Monitoring Software
• Soft Bounce Reasons
• Check Email Deliverability Score
• Soft Bounce vs Hard Bounce Email
• SalesHandy Alternatives
• GlockApps Alternative
• MailGenius Alternative
• MxToolbox Alternative
• Maildoso Alternatives

Start Buying Domains Now and Setup Your Email Infrastructure Today

Inframail revolutionizes cold email infrastructure. The service provides unlimited inboxes for a single flat rate, making it an affordable and efficient email delivery option. Inframail aims to take the stress out of cold emailing by providing the following: 

• Microsoft-backed deliverability

• Dedicated IP addresses

• Automated technical setup
  
  It scales its cold email outreach efforts efficiently:

• Agencies

• Recruiters

• SDRs  

Why is Email Deliverability so Important?  

Email deliverability defines the percentage of emails sent that successfully reach the recipient's inbox. The higher the deliverability rate, the better. Emails with low deliverability rates are often marked as spam or don't reach the recipient. Low deliverability rates hurt cold email campaigns by reducing the number of prospects that receive your emails. 

Not only does Inframail’s infrastructure improve deliverability rates, but it also helps users avoid the spam folder altogether. When you use Inframail infrastructure to send cold emails, your prospects will receive emails that appear to come from a dedicated server with little to no history. This helps establish trust with the recipient’s email server and improves the chances that your emails will land in the inbox.