Why is Email Deliverability Important and Tips to Improve It
Why is Email Deliverability Important and Tips to Improve It
Why is Email Deliverability Important and Tips to Improve It
Dec 19, 2024
Have you ever wondered why your carefully crafted email campaigns seem to vanish into thin air? Sure, they look great, and you’ve probably obsessively tested them to ensure they work, but what good would they be if no one ever saw them? Inbox delivery is like the gatekeeper that decides whether your emails get to the recipients’ inboxes—or the spam folder (or worse, oblivion). In this article, we’ll unpack why email deliverability is crucial for successful email marketing and how you can improve yours to reach your goals.
Inframail helps you enhance your email deliverability with a robust email infrastructure. With our solution, you can optimize your email-sending process, build and maintain your sender reputation, and achieve your objectives, such as consistently delivering emails to recipients’ inboxes, maximizing engagement, and achieving a higher ROI from your email campaigns.
Table of Contents
What is Email Deliverability, and Why Is It Important?
Email deliverability is the ability of emails to reach recipients' inboxes rather than being filtered into spam or rejected. Not all emails sent are delivered. Email delivery, often confused with email deliverability, refers to the number of incoming emails that reach the subscriber’s inbox, not the junk folder. One of the main goals of every email campaign is to have higher deliverability, as only then would other metrics, such as opens, clicks, etc., matter.
Difference Between Email Delivery and Deliverability
Deliverability of your email campaigns rests with inbox providers like:
Gmail
Outlook
Yahoo
If emails meet the protocols placed by inbox providers, they will land in the primary tab, keeping deliverability high. Often, marketers confuse email deliverability with email delivery, but there are some differences. MetricEmail DeliveryEmail DeliverabilityDefinitionNumber of emails not bounced backPercentage of emails reaching the recipient’s inbox, excluding spam.Calculation(Sent Emails-Bounced Emails / Sent Emails) x 100(Inbox Emails / Delivered Emails) x 100InterpretationIndicates the overall success in reaching the receiver serverProvides insights into how healthy emails perform in reaching the inboxNotesIt doesn’t account for spam or promotion folder placementConsiders placement in spam or promotion tabs
What Happens When You Hit Send?
Before we discuss the nitty-gritty of email deliverability, it’s essential to understand what happens after you click send. When an email is sent from the sender’s server, it must clear the email gateway and the spam filters, which act as the gatekeepers of the recipient's mail server.
These filters assess the email for different factors, such as the legitimacy of the sender, authenticity of the email content, and domain reputation.
How to Ensure Your Emails Avoid the Spam Folder and Reach the Inbox
Emails that pass all the checkboxes are delivered to the recipient's server in the inbox or promotion tab (applicable for Gmail users only). Many get stuck in the process and are either rejected by the recipient's server or sent to the spam folder. So, if your emails are making it to the inbox, Voila! With that in mind, let's discuss the most asked question.
What Is a Good Email Deliverability Rate?
Globally, the average inbox placement rates (IPRs) were just below 85 percent in 2022, meaning one of every six messages failed to reach the inbox. - Validity's Email Deliverability Benchmark Report 2023. Per our State of Email Report 2023, average inbox placement rates across industries typically range between 70% and 100%.
Industry Benchmarks for Email Deliverability Rates: What to Expect
While exact industry-specific deliverability rates can vary and may not always be publicly available, many industry reports and benchmarks provide insights into average deliverability rates for various sectors. Here’s a general overview of deliverability expectations in multiple industries.
IndustryRangeSaaS90%-95%Retail85%-90%Finance80%-85%Healthcare85%-90%Nonprofit70%-85%Technology80%-90%
Note: These ranges are indicative and can fluctuate based on specific practices and recent changes in email service provider algorithms and filtering technologies.
What Constitutes a Good Email Deliverability Rate and When to Investigate Issues
So: a reasonable email deliverability rate varies from industry to industry and is context-dependent. Maintaining email deliverability above 70% is a good practice, and striving to exceed the industry average can help ensure effective email communication. If it goes below 70%, it might be worth looking into email deliverability problems.
Factors That Affect Email Deliverability
To send an email, several technical steps happen behind the scenes.
You compose an email using a service like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, or a platform like Mailchimp.
You click send, and the message is uploaded to a simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP), which passes the email between servers. The SMTP communicates with a domain name server (DNS). A DNS operates like an online address book, telling the SMTP where the recipient’s mail server is. If the DNS cannot find the relevant server, it will send you a “mail undelivered” message.
Once the DNS locates and contacts the relevant server, the SMTPs pass messages to one another. The recipient's SMTP then decides where the email belongs—whether that's in their inbox, spam folder, or not delivered. But what influences whether the SMTP sorts your email into a contact's inbox or spam filter or blocks it altogether?
Engagement
If you achieve regular engagement, this demonstrates that your audience finds value in your emails, and that increases deliverability. The secret to engagement?
Segment
Understand
Keep your audience interested
Sender Reputation
This is a score assigned by an ESP to a sender. It's based on data—similar to how search engines rank a webpage. Your sender reputation is based mainly on your audience's engagement with your emails. It also factors in the quality of the content, the frequency of your messaging, open rates, and authenticity. A poor sender reputation will result in ISPs automatically blocking an email or sending it to the spam folder.
Your Domain Reputation
Like IP reputation, domain reputation measures the trustworthiness of your sending domain. Email providers assess the history of emails sent from your domain to determine whether they are likely legitimate or spam. Factors like engagement rates, spam complaints, and adherence to email best practices all contribute to your domain reputation. A good domain reputation can improve email deliverability even if you change IP addresses.
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
• Email Sender Reputation
Why Is Email Deliverability Important?
Impacts on Your Sender Reputation
Email deliverability is crucial as it directly impacts your sender’s reputation with inbox providers. A good sender reputation increases the likelihood of your emails being delivered to the recipient’s inbox rather than the spam folder.
This reputation is built over time based on factors like the number of spam complaints your emails generate, the frequency of your emails landing in spam traps, and the overall engagement your emails receive. Maintaining a stellar sender reputation is essential for ensuring that your email campaigns are effective and that your messages reach your audience.
Helps Your Emails to Avoid the Spam Folder
Effective email deliverability strategies help your emails bypass the spam folder, a critical aspect of any email marketing campaign. When your emails are consistently delivered to the recipient’s inbox, it reduces the risk of being labeled as spam by email service providers. This is particularly important as landing in the spam folder diminishes your email’s visibility and can harm your sender’s reputation.
Avoiding the spam folder means your emails have a higher chance of being read and acted upon. If you send a lot of content (e.g., transactional emails) and have a high email frequency, things can quickly spiral out of control, and your email engagement metrics can tank.
Affects Your Campaign Inbox Placement
Inbox placement is a key metric in email marketing deliverability. It refers to the ability of your emails to be placed directly in the recipient’s inbox instead of the junk or spam folder. When an email bounces, this is not a good look for you as a sender. This placement is influenced by various factors, including:
The quality of your email content
The health of your email list
Your sender reputation
High inbox placement rates indicate successful email deliverability, ensuring your intended audience sees and engages with your content. Otherwise, a high email bounce rate could imply that you’re sending malicious emails, and your spam scores can skyrocket.
Maximizes Email Open Rates
Email deliverability is a significant factor in maximizing email open rates. When emails are successfully delivered to the recipient’s inbox, the chances of them being opened and read increase dramatically. One of the generative AI use cases can be crafting and personalizing emails to increase email open rates. This is crucial for the success of any email marketing campaign, as open rates are a primary indicator of subscriber engagement and interest. Good deliverability practices, such as maintaining a clean email list and adhering to email service providers’ guidelines, are essential for high open rates.
Increases Conversion Rates
Email deliverability is pivotal in increasing conversion rates in email marketing campaigns. When emails are successfully delivered to the recipient’s inbox, it significantly boosts the likelihood of your content being seen and acted upon. This is crucial for driving conversions, whether a product purchase, a sign-up for a webinar, or any other call-to-action.
Good email deliverability ensures that your carefully crafted messages and offers reach your audience promptly. This enhances the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts and directly contributes to higher conversion rates, which becomes increasingly important with a high volume of email messages.
Maintains List Hygiene
Maintaining list hygiene is critical to email deliverability. Regularly cleaning your email list by removing invalid email addresses and unsubscribed users helps reduce bounce rates and avoid spam traps set by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and mailbox providers.
This practice improves your sender reputation and ensures that your email campaigns reach genuine and interested recipients. Effective list hygiene practices are essential for email marketers to ensure their campaigns are efficient, targeted, and compliant with email service provider guidelines.
Strengthens Customer Trust
Effective email deliverability is key to strengthening customer trust. When your emails consistently land in the recipient’s inbox, it builds reliability and confidence in your brand. This is particularly important as frequent appearances in the spam folder can lead to customer complaints and diminish your brand’s credibility.
By ensuring that your emails are delivered successfully, you demonstrate respect for your subscribers’ inboxes, which fosters a positive relationship and strengthens their trust in your brand and email program.
Enhances Data-Driven Decisions
Good email deliverability is essential for enhancing data-driven decisions in email marketing. When emails are delivered effectively, the data obtained from email campaigns are more accurate and reliable, such as:
Open rates
Click-through rates
Conversion rates
This accurate data allows email marketers to make informed decisions about their:
Email content
Design
Overall strategy
It also helps identify trends, understand subscriber behavior, and tailor future campaigns better to meet the needs and interests of the audience. Since your emails land where they should, this improves email marketing efforts' overall performance.
Prevents IP and Domain Blacklisting
Effective email deliverability is crucial in preventing IP and domain blacklisting. When emails consistently land in spam folders or trigger spam complaints, it can lead to blacklisting by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and email service providers. This blacklisting can severely impact your email delivery rates and sender reputation.
By adhering to best practices in email deliverability, such as sending relevant content and avoiding spam triggers, you can maintain a good sender score and IP reputation, ensuring your emails are successfully delivered to your audience’s inboxes.
Facilitates Effective Audience Segmentation
Good email deliverability practices facilitate effective audience segmentation in your email marketing campaigns. When you are confident that your emails are being delivered successfully, you can focus more on segmenting your audience based on their interests, behaviors, engagement levels, and interactions with your emails.
This segmentation allows for more targeted and personalized:
Email campaigns
Improving engagement
Conversion rates
Effective segmentation depends on reliable delivery rates, as it ensures that your tailored messages reach the right audience segment.
Ensures Compliance with Email Regulations
Maintaining high email deliverability is essential for ensuring compliance with various email regulations, such as:
GDPR
PAIR
These regulations often require adherence to specific standards in email marketing, such as:
Obtaining consent (double opt-in)
Providing clear unsubscribe options
Ensuring the privacy of recipient data
By focusing on email deliverability, you ensure your email program adheres to these legal requirements, avoiding potential fines and legal issues and maintaining trust with your audience.
Improves Brand Image and Reputation
Email deliverability has a direct impact on your brand image and reputation. When your emails are consistently delivered to the recipient’s inbox, it enhances the perception of your brand as reliable and trustworthy. On the other hand, poor email deliverability, leading to emails landing in spam folders or not being delivered at all, can harm your brand’s reputation. Ensuring that your emails are delivered successfully improves the effectiveness of your email campaigns and positively influences how recipients perceive your brand.
Related Reading
• DMARC vs DKIM
• Importance Of DMARC
• What Is a Soft Bounce Email
• Email Deliverability Checklist
• What Affects Email Deliverability
• Email Bounce Rate
• Fix Email Reputation
• Improve Sender Reputation
• Email Hard Bounce
• Email Deliverability Tools
• Email Deliverability Best Practices
• Best Email Domains
Tips for Improving Email Deliverability
Build Email Deliverability by Starting Slow and Sending the Right Amount of Emails
To improve email deliverability, start by sending a limited number of emails. Sending a high volume of emails when you begin a campaign can alert internet service providers (ISPs) to your activity, making your IP address look like a spammer. Instead, it's best to start with small batches and gradually increase the amount you send over time.
Managing Email Send Rates to Protect Deliverability and Sender Reputation
For instance, if you have 10,000 subscribers, you should begin by sending 100 emails and then pause to monitor engagement metrics and sender reputation. Take it further and ensure you aren't sending out emails daily. Over time, ISPs will identify patterns in send rates and adjust their metrics accordingly. A significant change, like a sudden, substantial rise in the volume and frequency of emails sent, will alert the ISP to the possibility of a spam virus from this sender, which could result in being denylisted or blocked.
Send High-Quality Content to Improve Email Deliverability
The next step to improving email deliverability is to send high-quality content. Even if your audience has opted to receive your emails, unwanted or irrelevant content runs the risk of being flagged as spam, which lowers your sender’s reputation and can land your emails in the spam folder. Avoid this by sending high-quality, relevant content that won't be considered “spammy” or triggering spam traps, those fake email addresses ESPs use to identify who is sending spam.
The Role of Valuable Content in Boosting Email Deliverability and Retention
By providing valuable content to your audience, you'll keep your messages out of the spam folder and maintain a low unsubscribe rate, another important factor in email deliverability. Email service providers constantly refine their algorithms to protect users from unwanted emails, so staying focused on quality content is crucial for long-term success.
Increase Opens and Clicks to Help Email Deliverability
Another way to improve email deliverability is to increase opens and clicks. The more opens and clicks your emails receive, the better your sender reputation becomes, directly impacting your inbox placement. When your emails drive actions like clicking through to your website, it shows the ISP that your audience values your emails. This engagement can help you maintain good email deliverability, as internet service providers are likelier to place emails from senders with high engagement rates directly in the inbox.
Focusing on increasing opens and clicks can help you identify and manage inactive subscribers. Monitoring which subscribers consistently fail to engage with your emails allows you to implement re-engagement campaigns or consider removing them from your list.
Keep the Conversation Going to Increase Email Deliverability
It's also a very positive signal to ISPs when your contacts reply to your emails. For that reason, you should monitor replies and respond promptly. Moreover, avoid sending emails from an email address that cannot receive replies.
Build and Manage Your Audience Wisely to Improve Email Deliverability
Keeping a clean and engaged audience is vital to maintaining a good sender reputation. Ensure your audience is free of spam traps used to identify and monitor spam senders. Even one spam trap in your list can damage your sender’s reputation if you unknowingly email it. Regularly remove unengaged subscribers, unknown users, and contacts who still need to give you explicit permission to email them. Maintaining a high-quality email list will help improve deliverability rates and keep you out of the spam folders of engaged subscribers.
Avoid Hard Bounces to Maintain Good Email Deliverability
Hard bounces occur when you email an address that doesn't exist. ISPs factor hard bounces into the sender’s reputation because it can signal poor audience management. Soft bounces, on the other hand, happen when an email address has a temporary issue, like a full inbox. If you're experiencing a lot of bounces, you may need to change how you grow your audience.
For instance, you could install a double opt-in signup method to help validate your new contacts. This method requires users to submit their email addresses and receive an email asking them to confirm them.
Make Sure Your Emails Look Legitimate
All of your email content—including imagery and links—will be reviewed by ISPs to:
Determine whether or not it's spam
A phishing attempt
Any other malicious email
Watch out for broken links, misspellings, missing email headers, or omitting unsubscribe options. These mistakes increase the odds that your email will be perceived as spam.
Authenticate Your Emails to Improve Deliverability
Email authentication is critical to deliverability. This vital step proves that your emails are genuinely from your brand. Maintaining a secure email and website infrastructure is also critical to building trust with ISPs.
Use a Reputable Email Service Provider
Choose an email service provider with a reputation for deliverability. Reputable providers have established relationships with ISPs and sophisticated spam filters, which can significantly improve your chances of reaching the inbox. They often offer tools to help you deal with complex spam filter algorithms and improve your email performance.
Monitor and Manage Your Sender Score
Your sender score is a metric ISPs use to determine whether they should deliver your emails to the recipient's inbox or spam folder. Regularly check your sender score using the available tools and take steps to improve it if necessary. This may include cleaning your email list, improving engagement rates, and following best practices for email content and frequency.
Segment Your Email Lists for Targeted Sending
Segmentation allows you to send better, relevant content to specific groups within your audience. Tailoring your communications to the interests and behaviors of different segments can help you improve engagement rates, positively impacting your deliverability. Segmented lists often see higher open rates and lower unsubscribe rates, which contribute to a better sender reputation.
Use a Custom IP Address to Improve Deliverability
Consider using dedicated IP addresses for your email campaigns. Unlike shared IPs, dedicated IP addresses give you complete control over your sender’s reputation. With dedicated IP addresses, other companies’ sending practices don’t affect your deliverability. Using your IP address can benefit high-volume senders or businesses with strict deliverability requirements. Maintaining a good reputation on a dedicated IP requires consistent sending practices and volumes.
Regularly Clean Your Email List
Maintain a high-quality email list by regularly removing inactive subscribers, bounced email addresses, and addresses that have marked your emails as spam. Include a clearly and easily accessible unsubscribe link in every email that lets recipients opt-out if they no longer wish to receive your communications. This process complies with anti-spam laws and helps maintain a clean list of engaged subscribers.
Perform Deliverability Tests Before Sending Email Campaigns
Before sending out large campaigns, conduct deliverability tests to identify potential issues. These tests help you spot problems with your email content, formatting, or sender authentication that might trigger spam filters. Many email service providers use built-in testing tools you can use to simulate how your emails will perform across different email clients and devices.
How Deliverability Tests Can Prevent Common Email Issues
A deliverability test typically involves sending a sample of your email to various test email addresses across different email providers.
These tests check for several factors:
Inbox placement: Does your email land in the primary inbox, promotions tab, or spam folder?
Rendering: How does my email look across different email clients and devices?
Authentication: Are my SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records set up correctly?
Content analysis: Does my email content contain elements that might trigger spam filters?
Link checking: Are all the links in my email working and not blacklisted?
Regularly performing these tests before sending your campaigns can help you catch and fix potential deliverability issues early, improving your email performance and inbox placement rates.
Analyze and Act on Email Performance Metrics
Using Key Metrics to Optimize Email Campaign Performance
Review key performance metrics regularly, such as engagement rates, bounce rates, and spam complaints. These indicators tell you about your email campaigns' effectiveness and highlight areas for improvement.
For instance, a low open rate might indicate an issue with your subject lines or sender name. To improve engagement, you can experiment with different:
Subject line styles
Personalization
Sender names
Improving Click-Through Rates and Managing Email Bounces Effectively
Meanwhile, if your open rates are reasonable but CTR is low, your email content may need to resonate with your audience. To boost engagement:
Test different content formats
Call-to-action placements
Offer types
High bounce rates can harm your sender's reputation. Regularly clean your list to remove invalid email addresses. Implement a retry strategy for soft bounces. Remove these email addresses immediately for hard bounces, as they are spam traps.
Harnessing A/B Testing to Optimize Email Campaign Performance
Use A/B testing to improve these metrics systematically. Test elements like:
Subject lines
Content
Send times
Segmentation strategies
Remember, minor improvements can compound over time to significantly boost your overall email performance and deliverability.
Stay Updated With Email Deliverability Best Practices
IPS and email clients frequently update their algorithms and policies, so staying informed is a good idea to maintain high deliverability rates. You can follow industry blogs and newsletters like your email marketing program's blog to stay informed. These often provide timely updates on industry changes and best practices.
You can also monitor ISP postmaster pages. Significant ISPs like Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft have postmaster pages that provide guidelines and updates on their spam filtering practices. Stay informed about legal changes. Business email communications are subject to regulations, such as:
Keep abreast of any changes to these laws that might affect your email practices.
Start Buying Domains Now and Setup Your Email Infrastructure Today
Inframail takes a unique approach to email deliverability that cuts through the complexity of sending cold emails. Inframail’s revolutionary cold email infrastructure gives users unlimited inboxes at a flat rate. This makes it easy to scale outreach without worrying about the costs associated with traditional email providers. Plus, Inframail streamlines the entire setup of cold email infrastructure with automated technical configurations.
Microsoft-Backed Deliverability for Cold Emailing
Inframail boasts Microsoft-backed deliverability rates. This high deliverability means that users can rest assured that their cold emails will reach their target. This is especially important for cold email, as many prospects will not recognize your email address or company and may automatically send your email to the spam folder. The more emails you send, the more likely your future emails will reach the inbox of your intended target. Using Inframail’s service, you can reduce the chances of your cold emails being flagged as spam.
Automated Technical Setups to Improve Email Deliverability
One of the biggest draws of using Inframail is its automated technical setup. When you sign up for an Inframail account, you don’t just get unlimited inboxes. You also get automated SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setups to optimize your email deliverability. These protocols help verify your identity as a sender and establish your reputation with mailbox providers. The higher your reputation score, the better your chances of reaching the inbox. Inframail helps improve your email deliverability so you can focus on connecting with prospects instead of worrying about your cold emails getting delivered.
Dedicated Email Servers to Improve Email Deliverability
Inframail assigns each user a dedicated email server. This is significant because users need to share their reputation with other senders. Instead, you have a clean slate to send cold emails and build your reputation with mailbox providers independently of different users. This helps improve your email deliverability so that you can reach more of your prospects on the first try.
16-Hour Priority Support to Ensure Smooth Operations
Inframail offers 16-hour priority support to help users troubleshoot any issues that may arise while using the service. With a quick response time, you can connect with an Inframail expert to help you resolve technical problems or answer any questions to ensure you're sending cold emails as quickly as possible. This level of support ensures smooth operations so you can continue to reach your prospects without any hiccups.
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
Have you ever wondered why your carefully crafted email campaigns seem to vanish into thin air? Sure, they look great, and you’ve probably obsessively tested them to ensure they work, but what good would they be if no one ever saw them? Inbox delivery is like the gatekeeper that decides whether your emails get to the recipients’ inboxes—or the spam folder (or worse, oblivion). In this article, we’ll unpack why email deliverability is crucial for successful email marketing and how you can improve yours to reach your goals.
Inframail helps you enhance your email deliverability with a robust email infrastructure. With our solution, you can optimize your email-sending process, build and maintain your sender reputation, and achieve your objectives, such as consistently delivering emails to recipients’ inboxes, maximizing engagement, and achieving a higher ROI from your email campaigns.
Table of Contents
What is Email Deliverability, and Why Is It Important?
Email deliverability is the ability of emails to reach recipients' inboxes rather than being filtered into spam or rejected. Not all emails sent are delivered. Email delivery, often confused with email deliverability, refers to the number of incoming emails that reach the subscriber’s inbox, not the junk folder. One of the main goals of every email campaign is to have higher deliverability, as only then would other metrics, such as opens, clicks, etc., matter.
Difference Between Email Delivery and Deliverability
Deliverability of your email campaigns rests with inbox providers like:
Gmail
Outlook
Yahoo
If emails meet the protocols placed by inbox providers, they will land in the primary tab, keeping deliverability high. Often, marketers confuse email deliverability with email delivery, but there are some differences. MetricEmail DeliveryEmail DeliverabilityDefinitionNumber of emails not bounced backPercentage of emails reaching the recipient’s inbox, excluding spam.Calculation(Sent Emails-Bounced Emails / Sent Emails) x 100(Inbox Emails / Delivered Emails) x 100InterpretationIndicates the overall success in reaching the receiver serverProvides insights into how healthy emails perform in reaching the inboxNotesIt doesn’t account for spam or promotion folder placementConsiders placement in spam or promotion tabs
What Happens When You Hit Send?
Before we discuss the nitty-gritty of email deliverability, it’s essential to understand what happens after you click send. When an email is sent from the sender’s server, it must clear the email gateway and the spam filters, which act as the gatekeepers of the recipient's mail server.
These filters assess the email for different factors, such as the legitimacy of the sender, authenticity of the email content, and domain reputation.
How to Ensure Your Emails Avoid the Spam Folder and Reach the Inbox
Emails that pass all the checkboxes are delivered to the recipient's server in the inbox or promotion tab (applicable for Gmail users only). Many get stuck in the process and are either rejected by the recipient's server or sent to the spam folder. So, if your emails are making it to the inbox, Voila! With that in mind, let's discuss the most asked question.
What Is a Good Email Deliverability Rate?
Globally, the average inbox placement rates (IPRs) were just below 85 percent in 2022, meaning one of every six messages failed to reach the inbox. - Validity's Email Deliverability Benchmark Report 2023. Per our State of Email Report 2023, average inbox placement rates across industries typically range between 70% and 100%.
Industry Benchmarks for Email Deliverability Rates: What to Expect
While exact industry-specific deliverability rates can vary and may not always be publicly available, many industry reports and benchmarks provide insights into average deliverability rates for various sectors. Here’s a general overview of deliverability expectations in multiple industries.
IndustryRangeSaaS90%-95%Retail85%-90%Finance80%-85%Healthcare85%-90%Nonprofit70%-85%Technology80%-90%
Note: These ranges are indicative and can fluctuate based on specific practices and recent changes in email service provider algorithms and filtering technologies.
What Constitutes a Good Email Deliverability Rate and When to Investigate Issues
So: a reasonable email deliverability rate varies from industry to industry and is context-dependent. Maintaining email deliverability above 70% is a good practice, and striving to exceed the industry average can help ensure effective email communication. If it goes below 70%, it might be worth looking into email deliverability problems.
Factors That Affect Email Deliverability
To send an email, several technical steps happen behind the scenes.
You compose an email using a service like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, or a platform like Mailchimp.
You click send, and the message is uploaded to a simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP), which passes the email between servers. The SMTP communicates with a domain name server (DNS). A DNS operates like an online address book, telling the SMTP where the recipient’s mail server is. If the DNS cannot find the relevant server, it will send you a “mail undelivered” message.
Once the DNS locates and contacts the relevant server, the SMTPs pass messages to one another. The recipient's SMTP then decides where the email belongs—whether that's in their inbox, spam folder, or not delivered. But what influences whether the SMTP sorts your email into a contact's inbox or spam filter or blocks it altogether?
Engagement
If you achieve regular engagement, this demonstrates that your audience finds value in your emails, and that increases deliverability. The secret to engagement?
Segment
Understand
Keep your audience interested
Sender Reputation
This is a score assigned by an ESP to a sender. It's based on data—similar to how search engines rank a webpage. Your sender reputation is based mainly on your audience's engagement with your emails. It also factors in the quality of the content, the frequency of your messaging, open rates, and authenticity. A poor sender reputation will result in ISPs automatically blocking an email or sending it to the spam folder.
Your Domain Reputation
Like IP reputation, domain reputation measures the trustworthiness of your sending domain. Email providers assess the history of emails sent from your domain to determine whether they are likely legitimate or spam. Factors like engagement rates, spam complaints, and adherence to email best practices all contribute to your domain reputation. A good domain reputation can improve email deliverability even if you change IP addresses.
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
• Email Sender Reputation
Why Is Email Deliverability Important?
Impacts on Your Sender Reputation
Email deliverability is crucial as it directly impacts your sender’s reputation with inbox providers. A good sender reputation increases the likelihood of your emails being delivered to the recipient’s inbox rather than the spam folder.
This reputation is built over time based on factors like the number of spam complaints your emails generate, the frequency of your emails landing in spam traps, and the overall engagement your emails receive. Maintaining a stellar sender reputation is essential for ensuring that your email campaigns are effective and that your messages reach your audience.
Helps Your Emails to Avoid the Spam Folder
Effective email deliverability strategies help your emails bypass the spam folder, a critical aspect of any email marketing campaign. When your emails are consistently delivered to the recipient’s inbox, it reduces the risk of being labeled as spam by email service providers. This is particularly important as landing in the spam folder diminishes your email’s visibility and can harm your sender’s reputation.
Avoiding the spam folder means your emails have a higher chance of being read and acted upon. If you send a lot of content (e.g., transactional emails) and have a high email frequency, things can quickly spiral out of control, and your email engagement metrics can tank.
Affects Your Campaign Inbox Placement
Inbox placement is a key metric in email marketing deliverability. It refers to the ability of your emails to be placed directly in the recipient’s inbox instead of the junk or spam folder. When an email bounces, this is not a good look for you as a sender. This placement is influenced by various factors, including:
The quality of your email content
The health of your email list
Your sender reputation
High inbox placement rates indicate successful email deliverability, ensuring your intended audience sees and engages with your content. Otherwise, a high email bounce rate could imply that you’re sending malicious emails, and your spam scores can skyrocket.
Maximizes Email Open Rates
Email deliverability is a significant factor in maximizing email open rates. When emails are successfully delivered to the recipient’s inbox, the chances of them being opened and read increase dramatically. One of the generative AI use cases can be crafting and personalizing emails to increase email open rates. This is crucial for the success of any email marketing campaign, as open rates are a primary indicator of subscriber engagement and interest. Good deliverability practices, such as maintaining a clean email list and adhering to email service providers’ guidelines, are essential for high open rates.
Increases Conversion Rates
Email deliverability is pivotal in increasing conversion rates in email marketing campaigns. When emails are successfully delivered to the recipient’s inbox, it significantly boosts the likelihood of your content being seen and acted upon. This is crucial for driving conversions, whether a product purchase, a sign-up for a webinar, or any other call-to-action.
Good email deliverability ensures that your carefully crafted messages and offers reach your audience promptly. This enhances the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts and directly contributes to higher conversion rates, which becomes increasingly important with a high volume of email messages.
Maintains List Hygiene
Maintaining list hygiene is critical to email deliverability. Regularly cleaning your email list by removing invalid email addresses and unsubscribed users helps reduce bounce rates and avoid spam traps set by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and mailbox providers.
This practice improves your sender reputation and ensures that your email campaigns reach genuine and interested recipients. Effective list hygiene practices are essential for email marketers to ensure their campaigns are efficient, targeted, and compliant with email service provider guidelines.
Strengthens Customer Trust
Effective email deliverability is key to strengthening customer trust. When your emails consistently land in the recipient’s inbox, it builds reliability and confidence in your brand. This is particularly important as frequent appearances in the spam folder can lead to customer complaints and diminish your brand’s credibility.
By ensuring that your emails are delivered successfully, you demonstrate respect for your subscribers’ inboxes, which fosters a positive relationship and strengthens their trust in your brand and email program.
Enhances Data-Driven Decisions
Good email deliverability is essential for enhancing data-driven decisions in email marketing. When emails are delivered effectively, the data obtained from email campaigns are more accurate and reliable, such as:
Open rates
Click-through rates
Conversion rates
This accurate data allows email marketers to make informed decisions about their:
Email content
Design
Overall strategy
It also helps identify trends, understand subscriber behavior, and tailor future campaigns better to meet the needs and interests of the audience. Since your emails land where they should, this improves email marketing efforts' overall performance.
Prevents IP and Domain Blacklisting
Effective email deliverability is crucial in preventing IP and domain blacklisting. When emails consistently land in spam folders or trigger spam complaints, it can lead to blacklisting by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and email service providers. This blacklisting can severely impact your email delivery rates and sender reputation.
By adhering to best practices in email deliverability, such as sending relevant content and avoiding spam triggers, you can maintain a good sender score and IP reputation, ensuring your emails are successfully delivered to your audience’s inboxes.
Facilitates Effective Audience Segmentation
Good email deliverability practices facilitate effective audience segmentation in your email marketing campaigns. When you are confident that your emails are being delivered successfully, you can focus more on segmenting your audience based on their interests, behaviors, engagement levels, and interactions with your emails.
This segmentation allows for more targeted and personalized:
Email campaigns
Improving engagement
Conversion rates
Effective segmentation depends on reliable delivery rates, as it ensures that your tailored messages reach the right audience segment.
Ensures Compliance with Email Regulations
Maintaining high email deliverability is essential for ensuring compliance with various email regulations, such as:
GDPR
PAIR
These regulations often require adherence to specific standards in email marketing, such as:
Obtaining consent (double opt-in)
Providing clear unsubscribe options
Ensuring the privacy of recipient data
By focusing on email deliverability, you ensure your email program adheres to these legal requirements, avoiding potential fines and legal issues and maintaining trust with your audience.
Improves Brand Image and Reputation
Email deliverability has a direct impact on your brand image and reputation. When your emails are consistently delivered to the recipient’s inbox, it enhances the perception of your brand as reliable and trustworthy. On the other hand, poor email deliverability, leading to emails landing in spam folders or not being delivered at all, can harm your brand’s reputation. Ensuring that your emails are delivered successfully improves the effectiveness of your email campaigns and positively influences how recipients perceive your brand.
Related Reading
• DMARC vs DKIM
• Importance Of DMARC
• What Is a Soft Bounce Email
• Email Deliverability Checklist
• What Affects Email Deliverability
• Email Bounce Rate
• Fix Email Reputation
• Improve Sender Reputation
• Email Hard Bounce
• Email Deliverability Tools
• Email Deliverability Best Practices
• Best Email Domains
Tips for Improving Email Deliverability
Build Email Deliverability by Starting Slow and Sending the Right Amount of Emails
To improve email deliverability, start by sending a limited number of emails. Sending a high volume of emails when you begin a campaign can alert internet service providers (ISPs) to your activity, making your IP address look like a spammer. Instead, it's best to start with small batches and gradually increase the amount you send over time.
Managing Email Send Rates to Protect Deliverability and Sender Reputation
For instance, if you have 10,000 subscribers, you should begin by sending 100 emails and then pause to monitor engagement metrics and sender reputation. Take it further and ensure you aren't sending out emails daily. Over time, ISPs will identify patterns in send rates and adjust their metrics accordingly. A significant change, like a sudden, substantial rise in the volume and frequency of emails sent, will alert the ISP to the possibility of a spam virus from this sender, which could result in being denylisted or blocked.
Send High-Quality Content to Improve Email Deliverability
The next step to improving email deliverability is to send high-quality content. Even if your audience has opted to receive your emails, unwanted or irrelevant content runs the risk of being flagged as spam, which lowers your sender’s reputation and can land your emails in the spam folder. Avoid this by sending high-quality, relevant content that won't be considered “spammy” or triggering spam traps, those fake email addresses ESPs use to identify who is sending spam.
The Role of Valuable Content in Boosting Email Deliverability and Retention
By providing valuable content to your audience, you'll keep your messages out of the spam folder and maintain a low unsubscribe rate, another important factor in email deliverability. Email service providers constantly refine their algorithms to protect users from unwanted emails, so staying focused on quality content is crucial for long-term success.
Increase Opens and Clicks to Help Email Deliverability
Another way to improve email deliverability is to increase opens and clicks. The more opens and clicks your emails receive, the better your sender reputation becomes, directly impacting your inbox placement. When your emails drive actions like clicking through to your website, it shows the ISP that your audience values your emails. This engagement can help you maintain good email deliverability, as internet service providers are likelier to place emails from senders with high engagement rates directly in the inbox.
Focusing on increasing opens and clicks can help you identify and manage inactive subscribers. Monitoring which subscribers consistently fail to engage with your emails allows you to implement re-engagement campaigns or consider removing them from your list.
Keep the Conversation Going to Increase Email Deliverability
It's also a very positive signal to ISPs when your contacts reply to your emails. For that reason, you should monitor replies and respond promptly. Moreover, avoid sending emails from an email address that cannot receive replies.
Build and Manage Your Audience Wisely to Improve Email Deliverability
Keeping a clean and engaged audience is vital to maintaining a good sender reputation. Ensure your audience is free of spam traps used to identify and monitor spam senders. Even one spam trap in your list can damage your sender’s reputation if you unknowingly email it. Regularly remove unengaged subscribers, unknown users, and contacts who still need to give you explicit permission to email them. Maintaining a high-quality email list will help improve deliverability rates and keep you out of the spam folders of engaged subscribers.
Avoid Hard Bounces to Maintain Good Email Deliverability
Hard bounces occur when you email an address that doesn't exist. ISPs factor hard bounces into the sender’s reputation because it can signal poor audience management. Soft bounces, on the other hand, happen when an email address has a temporary issue, like a full inbox. If you're experiencing a lot of bounces, you may need to change how you grow your audience.
For instance, you could install a double opt-in signup method to help validate your new contacts. This method requires users to submit their email addresses and receive an email asking them to confirm them.
Make Sure Your Emails Look Legitimate
All of your email content—including imagery and links—will be reviewed by ISPs to:
Determine whether or not it's spam
A phishing attempt
Any other malicious email
Watch out for broken links, misspellings, missing email headers, or omitting unsubscribe options. These mistakes increase the odds that your email will be perceived as spam.
Authenticate Your Emails to Improve Deliverability
Email authentication is critical to deliverability. This vital step proves that your emails are genuinely from your brand. Maintaining a secure email and website infrastructure is also critical to building trust with ISPs.
Use a Reputable Email Service Provider
Choose an email service provider with a reputation for deliverability. Reputable providers have established relationships with ISPs and sophisticated spam filters, which can significantly improve your chances of reaching the inbox. They often offer tools to help you deal with complex spam filter algorithms and improve your email performance.
Monitor and Manage Your Sender Score
Your sender score is a metric ISPs use to determine whether they should deliver your emails to the recipient's inbox or spam folder. Regularly check your sender score using the available tools and take steps to improve it if necessary. This may include cleaning your email list, improving engagement rates, and following best practices for email content and frequency.
Segment Your Email Lists for Targeted Sending
Segmentation allows you to send better, relevant content to specific groups within your audience. Tailoring your communications to the interests and behaviors of different segments can help you improve engagement rates, positively impacting your deliverability. Segmented lists often see higher open rates and lower unsubscribe rates, which contribute to a better sender reputation.
Use a Custom IP Address to Improve Deliverability
Consider using dedicated IP addresses for your email campaigns. Unlike shared IPs, dedicated IP addresses give you complete control over your sender’s reputation. With dedicated IP addresses, other companies’ sending practices don’t affect your deliverability. Using your IP address can benefit high-volume senders or businesses with strict deliverability requirements. Maintaining a good reputation on a dedicated IP requires consistent sending practices and volumes.
Regularly Clean Your Email List
Maintain a high-quality email list by regularly removing inactive subscribers, bounced email addresses, and addresses that have marked your emails as spam. Include a clearly and easily accessible unsubscribe link in every email that lets recipients opt-out if they no longer wish to receive your communications. This process complies with anti-spam laws and helps maintain a clean list of engaged subscribers.
Perform Deliverability Tests Before Sending Email Campaigns
Before sending out large campaigns, conduct deliverability tests to identify potential issues. These tests help you spot problems with your email content, formatting, or sender authentication that might trigger spam filters. Many email service providers use built-in testing tools you can use to simulate how your emails will perform across different email clients and devices.
How Deliverability Tests Can Prevent Common Email Issues
A deliverability test typically involves sending a sample of your email to various test email addresses across different email providers.
These tests check for several factors:
Inbox placement: Does your email land in the primary inbox, promotions tab, or spam folder?
Rendering: How does my email look across different email clients and devices?
Authentication: Are my SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records set up correctly?
Content analysis: Does my email content contain elements that might trigger spam filters?
Link checking: Are all the links in my email working and not blacklisted?
Regularly performing these tests before sending your campaigns can help you catch and fix potential deliverability issues early, improving your email performance and inbox placement rates.
Analyze and Act on Email Performance Metrics
Using Key Metrics to Optimize Email Campaign Performance
Review key performance metrics regularly, such as engagement rates, bounce rates, and spam complaints. These indicators tell you about your email campaigns' effectiveness and highlight areas for improvement.
For instance, a low open rate might indicate an issue with your subject lines or sender name. To improve engagement, you can experiment with different:
Subject line styles
Personalization
Sender names
Improving Click-Through Rates and Managing Email Bounces Effectively
Meanwhile, if your open rates are reasonable but CTR is low, your email content may need to resonate with your audience. To boost engagement:
Test different content formats
Call-to-action placements
Offer types
High bounce rates can harm your sender's reputation. Regularly clean your list to remove invalid email addresses. Implement a retry strategy for soft bounces. Remove these email addresses immediately for hard bounces, as they are spam traps.
Harnessing A/B Testing to Optimize Email Campaign Performance
Use A/B testing to improve these metrics systematically. Test elements like:
Subject lines
Content
Send times
Segmentation strategies
Remember, minor improvements can compound over time to significantly boost your overall email performance and deliverability.
Stay Updated With Email Deliverability Best Practices
IPS and email clients frequently update their algorithms and policies, so staying informed is a good idea to maintain high deliverability rates. You can follow industry blogs and newsletters like your email marketing program's blog to stay informed. These often provide timely updates on industry changes and best practices.
You can also monitor ISP postmaster pages. Significant ISPs like Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft have postmaster pages that provide guidelines and updates on their spam filtering practices. Stay informed about legal changes. Business email communications are subject to regulations, such as:
Keep abreast of any changes to these laws that might affect your email practices.
Start Buying Domains Now and Setup Your Email Infrastructure Today
Inframail takes a unique approach to email deliverability that cuts through the complexity of sending cold emails. Inframail’s revolutionary cold email infrastructure gives users unlimited inboxes at a flat rate. This makes it easy to scale outreach without worrying about the costs associated with traditional email providers. Plus, Inframail streamlines the entire setup of cold email infrastructure with automated technical configurations.
Microsoft-Backed Deliverability for Cold Emailing
Inframail boasts Microsoft-backed deliverability rates. This high deliverability means that users can rest assured that their cold emails will reach their target. This is especially important for cold email, as many prospects will not recognize your email address or company and may automatically send your email to the spam folder. The more emails you send, the more likely your future emails will reach the inbox of your intended target. Using Inframail’s service, you can reduce the chances of your cold emails being flagged as spam.
Automated Technical Setups to Improve Email Deliverability
One of the biggest draws of using Inframail is its automated technical setup. When you sign up for an Inframail account, you don’t just get unlimited inboxes. You also get automated SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setups to optimize your email deliverability. These protocols help verify your identity as a sender and establish your reputation with mailbox providers. The higher your reputation score, the better your chances of reaching the inbox. Inframail helps improve your email deliverability so you can focus on connecting with prospects instead of worrying about your cold emails getting delivered.
Dedicated Email Servers to Improve Email Deliverability
Inframail assigns each user a dedicated email server. This is significant because users need to share their reputation with other senders. Instead, you have a clean slate to send cold emails and build your reputation with mailbox providers independently of different users. This helps improve your email deliverability so that you can reach more of your prospects on the first try.
16-Hour Priority Support to Ensure Smooth Operations
Inframail offers 16-hour priority support to help users troubleshoot any issues that may arise while using the service. With a quick response time, you can connect with an Inframail expert to help you resolve technical problems or answer any questions to ensure you're sending cold emails as quickly as possible. This level of support ensures smooth operations so you can continue to reach your prospects without any hiccups.
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
Have you ever wondered why your carefully crafted email campaigns seem to vanish into thin air? Sure, they look great, and you’ve probably obsessively tested them to ensure they work, but what good would they be if no one ever saw them? Inbox delivery is like the gatekeeper that decides whether your emails get to the recipients’ inboxes—or the spam folder (or worse, oblivion). In this article, we’ll unpack why email deliverability is crucial for successful email marketing and how you can improve yours to reach your goals.
Inframail helps you enhance your email deliverability with a robust email infrastructure. With our solution, you can optimize your email-sending process, build and maintain your sender reputation, and achieve your objectives, such as consistently delivering emails to recipients’ inboxes, maximizing engagement, and achieving a higher ROI from your email campaigns.
Table of Contents
What is Email Deliverability, and Why Is It Important?
Email deliverability is the ability of emails to reach recipients' inboxes rather than being filtered into spam or rejected. Not all emails sent are delivered. Email delivery, often confused with email deliverability, refers to the number of incoming emails that reach the subscriber’s inbox, not the junk folder. One of the main goals of every email campaign is to have higher deliverability, as only then would other metrics, such as opens, clicks, etc., matter.
Difference Between Email Delivery and Deliverability
Deliverability of your email campaigns rests with inbox providers like:
Gmail
Outlook
Yahoo
If emails meet the protocols placed by inbox providers, they will land in the primary tab, keeping deliverability high. Often, marketers confuse email deliverability with email delivery, but there are some differences. MetricEmail DeliveryEmail DeliverabilityDefinitionNumber of emails not bounced backPercentage of emails reaching the recipient’s inbox, excluding spam.Calculation(Sent Emails-Bounced Emails / Sent Emails) x 100(Inbox Emails / Delivered Emails) x 100InterpretationIndicates the overall success in reaching the receiver serverProvides insights into how healthy emails perform in reaching the inboxNotesIt doesn’t account for spam or promotion folder placementConsiders placement in spam or promotion tabs
What Happens When You Hit Send?
Before we discuss the nitty-gritty of email deliverability, it’s essential to understand what happens after you click send. When an email is sent from the sender’s server, it must clear the email gateway and the spam filters, which act as the gatekeepers of the recipient's mail server.
These filters assess the email for different factors, such as the legitimacy of the sender, authenticity of the email content, and domain reputation.
How to Ensure Your Emails Avoid the Spam Folder and Reach the Inbox
Emails that pass all the checkboxes are delivered to the recipient's server in the inbox or promotion tab (applicable for Gmail users only). Many get stuck in the process and are either rejected by the recipient's server or sent to the spam folder. So, if your emails are making it to the inbox, Voila! With that in mind, let's discuss the most asked question.
What Is a Good Email Deliverability Rate?
Globally, the average inbox placement rates (IPRs) were just below 85 percent in 2022, meaning one of every six messages failed to reach the inbox. - Validity's Email Deliverability Benchmark Report 2023. Per our State of Email Report 2023, average inbox placement rates across industries typically range between 70% and 100%.
Industry Benchmarks for Email Deliverability Rates: What to Expect
While exact industry-specific deliverability rates can vary and may not always be publicly available, many industry reports and benchmarks provide insights into average deliverability rates for various sectors. Here’s a general overview of deliverability expectations in multiple industries.
IndustryRangeSaaS90%-95%Retail85%-90%Finance80%-85%Healthcare85%-90%Nonprofit70%-85%Technology80%-90%
Note: These ranges are indicative and can fluctuate based on specific practices and recent changes in email service provider algorithms and filtering technologies.
What Constitutes a Good Email Deliverability Rate and When to Investigate Issues
So: a reasonable email deliverability rate varies from industry to industry and is context-dependent. Maintaining email deliverability above 70% is a good practice, and striving to exceed the industry average can help ensure effective email communication. If it goes below 70%, it might be worth looking into email deliverability problems.
Factors That Affect Email Deliverability
To send an email, several technical steps happen behind the scenes.
You compose an email using a service like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, or a platform like Mailchimp.
You click send, and the message is uploaded to a simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP), which passes the email between servers. The SMTP communicates with a domain name server (DNS). A DNS operates like an online address book, telling the SMTP where the recipient’s mail server is. If the DNS cannot find the relevant server, it will send you a “mail undelivered” message.
Once the DNS locates and contacts the relevant server, the SMTPs pass messages to one another. The recipient's SMTP then decides where the email belongs—whether that's in their inbox, spam folder, or not delivered. But what influences whether the SMTP sorts your email into a contact's inbox or spam filter or blocks it altogether?
Engagement
If you achieve regular engagement, this demonstrates that your audience finds value in your emails, and that increases deliverability. The secret to engagement?
Segment
Understand
Keep your audience interested
Sender Reputation
This is a score assigned by an ESP to a sender. It's based on data—similar to how search engines rank a webpage. Your sender reputation is based mainly on your audience's engagement with your emails. It also factors in the quality of the content, the frequency of your messaging, open rates, and authenticity. A poor sender reputation will result in ISPs automatically blocking an email or sending it to the spam folder.
Your Domain Reputation
Like IP reputation, domain reputation measures the trustworthiness of your sending domain. Email providers assess the history of emails sent from your domain to determine whether they are likely legitimate or spam. Factors like engagement rates, spam complaints, and adherence to email best practices all contribute to your domain reputation. A good domain reputation can improve email deliverability even if you change IP addresses.
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
• Email Sender Reputation
Why Is Email Deliverability Important?
Impacts on Your Sender Reputation
Email deliverability is crucial as it directly impacts your sender’s reputation with inbox providers. A good sender reputation increases the likelihood of your emails being delivered to the recipient’s inbox rather than the spam folder.
This reputation is built over time based on factors like the number of spam complaints your emails generate, the frequency of your emails landing in spam traps, and the overall engagement your emails receive. Maintaining a stellar sender reputation is essential for ensuring that your email campaigns are effective and that your messages reach your audience.
Helps Your Emails to Avoid the Spam Folder
Effective email deliverability strategies help your emails bypass the spam folder, a critical aspect of any email marketing campaign. When your emails are consistently delivered to the recipient’s inbox, it reduces the risk of being labeled as spam by email service providers. This is particularly important as landing in the spam folder diminishes your email’s visibility and can harm your sender’s reputation.
Avoiding the spam folder means your emails have a higher chance of being read and acted upon. If you send a lot of content (e.g., transactional emails) and have a high email frequency, things can quickly spiral out of control, and your email engagement metrics can tank.
Affects Your Campaign Inbox Placement
Inbox placement is a key metric in email marketing deliverability. It refers to the ability of your emails to be placed directly in the recipient’s inbox instead of the junk or spam folder. When an email bounces, this is not a good look for you as a sender. This placement is influenced by various factors, including:
The quality of your email content
The health of your email list
Your sender reputation
High inbox placement rates indicate successful email deliverability, ensuring your intended audience sees and engages with your content. Otherwise, a high email bounce rate could imply that you’re sending malicious emails, and your spam scores can skyrocket.
Maximizes Email Open Rates
Email deliverability is a significant factor in maximizing email open rates. When emails are successfully delivered to the recipient’s inbox, the chances of them being opened and read increase dramatically. One of the generative AI use cases can be crafting and personalizing emails to increase email open rates. This is crucial for the success of any email marketing campaign, as open rates are a primary indicator of subscriber engagement and interest. Good deliverability practices, such as maintaining a clean email list and adhering to email service providers’ guidelines, are essential for high open rates.
Increases Conversion Rates
Email deliverability is pivotal in increasing conversion rates in email marketing campaigns. When emails are successfully delivered to the recipient’s inbox, it significantly boosts the likelihood of your content being seen and acted upon. This is crucial for driving conversions, whether a product purchase, a sign-up for a webinar, or any other call-to-action.
Good email deliverability ensures that your carefully crafted messages and offers reach your audience promptly. This enhances the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts and directly contributes to higher conversion rates, which becomes increasingly important with a high volume of email messages.
Maintains List Hygiene
Maintaining list hygiene is critical to email deliverability. Regularly cleaning your email list by removing invalid email addresses and unsubscribed users helps reduce bounce rates and avoid spam traps set by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and mailbox providers.
This practice improves your sender reputation and ensures that your email campaigns reach genuine and interested recipients. Effective list hygiene practices are essential for email marketers to ensure their campaigns are efficient, targeted, and compliant with email service provider guidelines.
Strengthens Customer Trust
Effective email deliverability is key to strengthening customer trust. When your emails consistently land in the recipient’s inbox, it builds reliability and confidence in your brand. This is particularly important as frequent appearances in the spam folder can lead to customer complaints and diminish your brand’s credibility.
By ensuring that your emails are delivered successfully, you demonstrate respect for your subscribers’ inboxes, which fosters a positive relationship and strengthens their trust in your brand and email program.
Enhances Data-Driven Decisions
Good email deliverability is essential for enhancing data-driven decisions in email marketing. When emails are delivered effectively, the data obtained from email campaigns are more accurate and reliable, such as:
Open rates
Click-through rates
Conversion rates
This accurate data allows email marketers to make informed decisions about their:
Email content
Design
Overall strategy
It also helps identify trends, understand subscriber behavior, and tailor future campaigns better to meet the needs and interests of the audience. Since your emails land where they should, this improves email marketing efforts' overall performance.
Prevents IP and Domain Blacklisting
Effective email deliverability is crucial in preventing IP and domain blacklisting. When emails consistently land in spam folders or trigger spam complaints, it can lead to blacklisting by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and email service providers. This blacklisting can severely impact your email delivery rates and sender reputation.
By adhering to best practices in email deliverability, such as sending relevant content and avoiding spam triggers, you can maintain a good sender score and IP reputation, ensuring your emails are successfully delivered to your audience’s inboxes.
Facilitates Effective Audience Segmentation
Good email deliverability practices facilitate effective audience segmentation in your email marketing campaigns. When you are confident that your emails are being delivered successfully, you can focus more on segmenting your audience based on their interests, behaviors, engagement levels, and interactions with your emails.
This segmentation allows for more targeted and personalized:
Email campaigns
Improving engagement
Conversion rates
Effective segmentation depends on reliable delivery rates, as it ensures that your tailored messages reach the right audience segment.
Ensures Compliance with Email Regulations
Maintaining high email deliverability is essential for ensuring compliance with various email regulations, such as:
GDPR
PAIR
These regulations often require adherence to specific standards in email marketing, such as:
Obtaining consent (double opt-in)
Providing clear unsubscribe options
Ensuring the privacy of recipient data
By focusing on email deliverability, you ensure your email program adheres to these legal requirements, avoiding potential fines and legal issues and maintaining trust with your audience.
Improves Brand Image and Reputation
Email deliverability has a direct impact on your brand image and reputation. When your emails are consistently delivered to the recipient’s inbox, it enhances the perception of your brand as reliable and trustworthy. On the other hand, poor email deliverability, leading to emails landing in spam folders or not being delivered at all, can harm your brand’s reputation. Ensuring that your emails are delivered successfully improves the effectiveness of your email campaigns and positively influences how recipients perceive your brand.
Related Reading
• DMARC vs DKIM
• Importance Of DMARC
• What Is a Soft Bounce Email
• Email Deliverability Checklist
• What Affects Email Deliverability
• Email Bounce Rate
• Fix Email Reputation
• Improve Sender Reputation
• Email Hard Bounce
• Email Deliverability Tools
• Email Deliverability Best Practices
• Best Email Domains
Tips for Improving Email Deliverability
Build Email Deliverability by Starting Slow and Sending the Right Amount of Emails
To improve email deliverability, start by sending a limited number of emails. Sending a high volume of emails when you begin a campaign can alert internet service providers (ISPs) to your activity, making your IP address look like a spammer. Instead, it's best to start with small batches and gradually increase the amount you send over time.
Managing Email Send Rates to Protect Deliverability and Sender Reputation
For instance, if you have 10,000 subscribers, you should begin by sending 100 emails and then pause to monitor engagement metrics and sender reputation. Take it further and ensure you aren't sending out emails daily. Over time, ISPs will identify patterns in send rates and adjust their metrics accordingly. A significant change, like a sudden, substantial rise in the volume and frequency of emails sent, will alert the ISP to the possibility of a spam virus from this sender, which could result in being denylisted or blocked.
Send High-Quality Content to Improve Email Deliverability
The next step to improving email deliverability is to send high-quality content. Even if your audience has opted to receive your emails, unwanted or irrelevant content runs the risk of being flagged as spam, which lowers your sender’s reputation and can land your emails in the spam folder. Avoid this by sending high-quality, relevant content that won't be considered “spammy” or triggering spam traps, those fake email addresses ESPs use to identify who is sending spam.
The Role of Valuable Content in Boosting Email Deliverability and Retention
By providing valuable content to your audience, you'll keep your messages out of the spam folder and maintain a low unsubscribe rate, another important factor in email deliverability. Email service providers constantly refine their algorithms to protect users from unwanted emails, so staying focused on quality content is crucial for long-term success.
Increase Opens and Clicks to Help Email Deliverability
Another way to improve email deliverability is to increase opens and clicks. The more opens and clicks your emails receive, the better your sender reputation becomes, directly impacting your inbox placement. When your emails drive actions like clicking through to your website, it shows the ISP that your audience values your emails. This engagement can help you maintain good email deliverability, as internet service providers are likelier to place emails from senders with high engagement rates directly in the inbox.
Focusing on increasing opens and clicks can help you identify and manage inactive subscribers. Monitoring which subscribers consistently fail to engage with your emails allows you to implement re-engagement campaigns or consider removing them from your list.
Keep the Conversation Going to Increase Email Deliverability
It's also a very positive signal to ISPs when your contacts reply to your emails. For that reason, you should monitor replies and respond promptly. Moreover, avoid sending emails from an email address that cannot receive replies.
Build and Manage Your Audience Wisely to Improve Email Deliverability
Keeping a clean and engaged audience is vital to maintaining a good sender reputation. Ensure your audience is free of spam traps used to identify and monitor spam senders. Even one spam trap in your list can damage your sender’s reputation if you unknowingly email it. Regularly remove unengaged subscribers, unknown users, and contacts who still need to give you explicit permission to email them. Maintaining a high-quality email list will help improve deliverability rates and keep you out of the spam folders of engaged subscribers.
Avoid Hard Bounces to Maintain Good Email Deliverability
Hard bounces occur when you email an address that doesn't exist. ISPs factor hard bounces into the sender’s reputation because it can signal poor audience management. Soft bounces, on the other hand, happen when an email address has a temporary issue, like a full inbox. If you're experiencing a lot of bounces, you may need to change how you grow your audience.
For instance, you could install a double opt-in signup method to help validate your new contacts. This method requires users to submit their email addresses and receive an email asking them to confirm them.
Make Sure Your Emails Look Legitimate
All of your email content—including imagery and links—will be reviewed by ISPs to:
Determine whether or not it's spam
A phishing attempt
Any other malicious email
Watch out for broken links, misspellings, missing email headers, or omitting unsubscribe options. These mistakes increase the odds that your email will be perceived as spam.
Authenticate Your Emails to Improve Deliverability
Email authentication is critical to deliverability. This vital step proves that your emails are genuinely from your brand. Maintaining a secure email and website infrastructure is also critical to building trust with ISPs.
Use a Reputable Email Service Provider
Choose an email service provider with a reputation for deliverability. Reputable providers have established relationships with ISPs and sophisticated spam filters, which can significantly improve your chances of reaching the inbox. They often offer tools to help you deal with complex spam filter algorithms and improve your email performance.
Monitor and Manage Your Sender Score
Your sender score is a metric ISPs use to determine whether they should deliver your emails to the recipient's inbox or spam folder. Regularly check your sender score using the available tools and take steps to improve it if necessary. This may include cleaning your email list, improving engagement rates, and following best practices for email content and frequency.
Segment Your Email Lists for Targeted Sending
Segmentation allows you to send better, relevant content to specific groups within your audience. Tailoring your communications to the interests and behaviors of different segments can help you improve engagement rates, positively impacting your deliverability. Segmented lists often see higher open rates and lower unsubscribe rates, which contribute to a better sender reputation.
Use a Custom IP Address to Improve Deliverability
Consider using dedicated IP addresses for your email campaigns. Unlike shared IPs, dedicated IP addresses give you complete control over your sender’s reputation. With dedicated IP addresses, other companies’ sending practices don’t affect your deliverability. Using your IP address can benefit high-volume senders or businesses with strict deliverability requirements. Maintaining a good reputation on a dedicated IP requires consistent sending practices and volumes.
Regularly Clean Your Email List
Maintain a high-quality email list by regularly removing inactive subscribers, bounced email addresses, and addresses that have marked your emails as spam. Include a clearly and easily accessible unsubscribe link in every email that lets recipients opt-out if they no longer wish to receive your communications. This process complies with anti-spam laws and helps maintain a clean list of engaged subscribers.
Perform Deliverability Tests Before Sending Email Campaigns
Before sending out large campaigns, conduct deliverability tests to identify potential issues. These tests help you spot problems with your email content, formatting, or sender authentication that might trigger spam filters. Many email service providers use built-in testing tools you can use to simulate how your emails will perform across different email clients and devices.
How Deliverability Tests Can Prevent Common Email Issues
A deliverability test typically involves sending a sample of your email to various test email addresses across different email providers.
These tests check for several factors:
Inbox placement: Does your email land in the primary inbox, promotions tab, or spam folder?
Rendering: How does my email look across different email clients and devices?
Authentication: Are my SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records set up correctly?
Content analysis: Does my email content contain elements that might trigger spam filters?
Link checking: Are all the links in my email working and not blacklisted?
Regularly performing these tests before sending your campaigns can help you catch and fix potential deliverability issues early, improving your email performance and inbox placement rates.
Analyze and Act on Email Performance Metrics
Using Key Metrics to Optimize Email Campaign Performance
Review key performance metrics regularly, such as engagement rates, bounce rates, and spam complaints. These indicators tell you about your email campaigns' effectiveness and highlight areas for improvement.
For instance, a low open rate might indicate an issue with your subject lines or sender name. To improve engagement, you can experiment with different:
Subject line styles
Personalization
Sender names
Improving Click-Through Rates and Managing Email Bounces Effectively
Meanwhile, if your open rates are reasonable but CTR is low, your email content may need to resonate with your audience. To boost engagement:
Test different content formats
Call-to-action placements
Offer types
High bounce rates can harm your sender's reputation. Regularly clean your list to remove invalid email addresses. Implement a retry strategy for soft bounces. Remove these email addresses immediately for hard bounces, as they are spam traps.
Harnessing A/B Testing to Optimize Email Campaign Performance
Use A/B testing to improve these metrics systematically. Test elements like:
Subject lines
Content
Send times
Segmentation strategies
Remember, minor improvements can compound over time to significantly boost your overall email performance and deliverability.
Stay Updated With Email Deliverability Best Practices
IPS and email clients frequently update their algorithms and policies, so staying informed is a good idea to maintain high deliverability rates. You can follow industry blogs and newsletters like your email marketing program's blog to stay informed. These often provide timely updates on industry changes and best practices.
You can also monitor ISP postmaster pages. Significant ISPs like Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft have postmaster pages that provide guidelines and updates on their spam filtering practices. Stay informed about legal changes. Business email communications are subject to regulations, such as:
Keep abreast of any changes to these laws that might affect your email practices.
Start Buying Domains Now and Setup Your Email Infrastructure Today
Inframail takes a unique approach to email deliverability that cuts through the complexity of sending cold emails. Inframail’s revolutionary cold email infrastructure gives users unlimited inboxes at a flat rate. This makes it easy to scale outreach without worrying about the costs associated with traditional email providers. Plus, Inframail streamlines the entire setup of cold email infrastructure with automated technical configurations.
Microsoft-Backed Deliverability for Cold Emailing
Inframail boasts Microsoft-backed deliverability rates. This high deliverability means that users can rest assured that their cold emails will reach their target. This is especially important for cold email, as many prospects will not recognize your email address or company and may automatically send your email to the spam folder. The more emails you send, the more likely your future emails will reach the inbox of your intended target. Using Inframail’s service, you can reduce the chances of your cold emails being flagged as spam.
Automated Technical Setups to Improve Email Deliverability
One of the biggest draws of using Inframail is its automated technical setup. When you sign up for an Inframail account, you don’t just get unlimited inboxes. You also get automated SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setups to optimize your email deliverability. These protocols help verify your identity as a sender and establish your reputation with mailbox providers. The higher your reputation score, the better your chances of reaching the inbox. Inframail helps improve your email deliverability so you can focus on connecting with prospects instead of worrying about your cold emails getting delivered.
Dedicated Email Servers to Improve Email Deliverability
Inframail assigns each user a dedicated email server. This is significant because users need to share their reputation with other senders. Instead, you have a clean slate to send cold emails and build your reputation with mailbox providers independently of different users. This helps improve your email deliverability so that you can reach more of your prospects on the first try.
16-Hour Priority Support to Ensure Smooth Operations
Inframail offers 16-hour priority support to help users troubleshoot any issues that may arise while using the service. With a quick response time, you can connect with an Inframail expert to help you resolve technical problems or answer any questions to ensure you're sending cold emails as quickly as possible. This level of support ensures smooth operations so you can continue to reach your prospects without any hiccups.
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
Address
© Inframail LLC. 2023
228 Park Ave S.
PMB 166934
New York, New York 10003-1502
© Inframail LLC. 2023
228 Park Ave S.
PMB 166934
New York, New York 10003-1502
Compare
Social
© 2023 Inframail. All Rights Reserved.