Email marketing is the most effective way to build relationships with recipients because it creates a personal connection.
However, there are many challenges and obstacles that can hinder the success of an email on its way from the sender to the recipient’s inbox. Even though your email is delivered, there may be deliverability issues that cause the email to land in spam.
Like airport security, email deliverability ensures that emails reach the recipient’s inbox. Passengers and their belongings navigate safely through airport security protocols and pass through airport security to their destination.
This guide takes an in-depth look at common deliverability issues and how to resolve them.
What is Email Deliverability?
Email deliverability is an important metric that measures how many of the emails you send reach your end users’ inboxes.
Email delivery measures how many emails were india email list delivered, while deliverability measures how many ended up in the inbox.
According to statistics, the average delivery rate is 84.2%.
Why is deliverability so important?
Similar to how runners in a race go through checks to ensure a fair race, your emails will go through spam filters to check everything from authentication to spam template scores. Likewise, emails with proper authentication and a good sender reputation are more likely to make it through spam filters, improving their chances of making it into an inbox.
However, obstacles such as incorrect addresses or content issues can delay or disqualify your email (becoming spam or bouncing).
Every marketer’s goal is to see his emails reach the recipient’s inbox.
By maintaining a reasonable delivery rate, you can ensure:
- Your sent emails will not be lost in spam folders
- You have a good reputation with your ISP
- You achieved your ultimate goal conversion
Several deliverability issues and their solutions
1. Email campaigns suddenly start turning into spam
The world of email marketing is often at a crossroads as unwanted emails compete for your attention. Not only do emails from spammers end up in spam, but emails from your business can also end up in spam.
At this point, you have to look back at the gaps in your infrastructure because this is where the setup begins.
Infrastructure:
IP reputation in Google and Microsoft can be measured by Google Postmaster and SNDS. If you find your IP reputation has dropped, find out the root cause:
- If it is a shared IP, determine which sender is responsible for the data breach
- If it is a dedicated IP, please check the content and data targeted on the day of the drop
This is because your ESP needs to keep an eye on your IP so that it doesn’t get listed, and we at MailPick always do this. This helps maintain a good and consistent reputation.
End User Response:Avoid investing in third-party databases because buying an email list might make your job easier, but in hindsight, it won’t be the case because your email recipients won’t have any affinity with the brand.
Using tools to clean up your pre-purchased database won’t do you much good, as there’s no filtering for spam traps. Also, what if a user uninstalls your app and loses interest in your brand?
Therefore, preserving a label of the end-user response helps ensure deliverability.
Content reputation:
Deliverability issues related to content exist beyond “free” or other specific phrases.
Let’s say your email campaign receives many spam complaints. The text in the footer could be a phone number or your email ID is cached negatively, causing it to go spam even though you are sending it to the right audience from a different infrastructure.
The above is one of many examples of how content reputation can have a profound impact. Follow best practices like eliminating URL shorteners like /bit.ly, avoid using map tags, and sometimes it’s best to avoid alt and title tags because they don’t have the same impact on email as they do on SEO.
2. Sudden delivery errors
To identify delivery errors, you can use Google’s Postmaster. The most common reasons include:
- A temporary rate limit has been triggered because this domain or IP address has been sending traffic at an abnormally high rate
- Suspect that incoming traffic is spam
- The email you received may be spam due to its content.
- Email attachments not authorized by the ISP
- The DMARC policy of the sender domain is inconsistent with that of the receiver
- The sender’s domain and IP have a poor reputation
Using postmaster, you can not only identify errors, but also how errors can severely affect your delivery. You can start with the following best practices:
- Format emails according to Internet standards
- Do not send messages without consent, as the recipient may mark you as spam in the future.
- Slowly increase your sending volume
- Verify the sending server’s PTR (pointer) record
3. Sudden decline in reputation
Let’s say your email list consists mostly of gmail email addresses. So by using Postmaster we can analyze the root cause behind the reputation drop.
Because, the decline in reputation is caused by various factors, including:
- Is signature authentication stopped?
- Did you change the content?
- Are you experiencing a high volume of spam complaints because you changed your target audience?
4. IP is blacklisted
Assume, let’s say, you’ve been working hard for weeks to craft the perfect email and now the results are in. You can see an improvement in your deliverability rate. While looking at the stats on your email marketing platform, you’d be disappointed when you observe that your deliverability rate has plummeted.
5. Internet Service Providers Blocked by Email
ISPs take many factors into consideration, and most ISPs will block you from sending emails if you are caught sending spam. In most cases, ISPs block you because of local policies on the recipient’s email server, or in rare cases, because of reputation issues with the IP address used to send the message.
Also, if you send emails that aren’t personalized, they’ll block you, and having a bad domain and IP reputation will make ISPs block your emails.
For example, if you have used Outlook, you must know that most legitimate emails are mistakenly considered threats and blocked (false positives). To avoid this, you can ask recipients to mark your emails as “not spam” and add you to their recent mobile phone number affiliate marketing safe senders list. In addition, security administrators enable end users to receive email summaries about quarantined messages.
The key to successful email marketing is self-discipline. Sending messages promptly and consistently requires a carefully planned email cadence. Following best practices and good email etiquette will help you improve your IP and domain reputation and prevent ISPs from blocking you.
6. Bounce due to authentication error
Authentication-related bounces occur when the recipient’s mailbox does not accept emails. People often say “your email bounced back.” There are two types of bounces: hard bounces and soft bounces. Bounces are mainly caused by authentication errors.
There are several reasons why authentication errors can cause bounces:
- The recipient’s email address may not exist or need correction, resulting in rejection. By double opt-in registration, you can eliminate the possibility of receiving a misspelled or non-existent email address.
- A soft bounce occurs when the recipient’s mailbox is full and exceeds the storage limit. The email server will reject new messages until adb directory space is freed up. In this case, the recipient must make room for the new recipient.
- If the sender’s domain is not authenticated, the email may be rejected. Some email servers require proper domain authentication (e.g., SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
- The recipient’s email server can block emails from specific sources using an endpoint protection service, causing bounces. This can be resolved by enabling branded URLs or authenticating the sending domain.
Summarize
Email deliverability is a key component of email marketing, as it determines whether an email is delivered to the recipient’s inbox and not marked as spam. Maintaining a reasonable deliverability rate starts with resolving deliverability issues, as this helps maintain your domain and IP reputation and promotes better engagement with your audience. Incorporate these best practices to savor the success of your email marketing campaigns.
