As an email marketer, there’s nothing more frustrating than knowing that your emails aren’t reaching their intended destination. Hard and soft bounces, unsubscribes, spam reports – it isn’t easy to stomach.
But email deliverability isn’t completely out of your control. Let’s look at four factors that influence email deliverability, and how you can influence those factors to increase your rate of success.
Sender Reputation
When you scan your inbox, you look at who sent the emails, right? If it’s someone you trust, you’re more likely to open the email and read the content.
ISPs work in much the same way in determining email deliverability. If they see an email from a sender with a solid reputation, they happily place that message in the recipient’s inbox. But an email from a sender with a BAD reputation is going into the spam/junk folder, if it makes it to the recipient at all.
Sender reputation is determined based on a variety of factors, which can change from ISP to ISP. But if you’re using bad data, falling into spam traps and getting high bounce rates and spam reports, it’s not doing your email deliverability any favors. That’s why it’s essential that you clean your data.
Learn more about sender reputation.
Data Quality
If you’re using low quality data, your email deliverability rates, sender reputation and ROI are going to suffer. So, why waste the time and money?
Your campaign is only as strong as the data it’s built upon. Make sure you’re continually auditing and validating data quality to keep your campaigns clean and compliant.
If you’re not cleaning your data, you could be…
- Sending to bad email addresses, which results in hard bounces. As hard bounces increase, your sender reputation drops because you look like a spammer.
- Sending to spam traps, which are email addresses that ISPs use to catch spammers. Which you don’t want to be classified as – because you’re likely not one.
Doing any of the above … and suddenly you’re blacklisted, an email outlaw!
Bonus Tip: To ensure your data is of the highest quality, use only reputable data providers and keep data clean and compliant by using Email Lead Generation software.
Learn more about content quality.
Message Frequency
Email deliverability is also influenced by recipient engagement. Studies have shown that as email frequency increases, engagement drops off and unsubscribe rates increase.
The last thing you want to do is annoy your audience. But how often is too often?
It depends on your audience, industry, business model, products and services — even the time of the year! The best way to figure it out is to test the waters and see what works for your specific audience.
Learn more about when to send email marketing campaigns.
Content Relevance
The internet has made it possible for anyone to grab the information they need at any given moment. As a result, attention spans are short these days.
You just can’t fake your way through a blog post or email and expect to hold the reader’s attention. Nor can you bombard them with thinly veiled advertisements. If that’s your strategy, prepare to watch those unsubscribe rates soar!
To retain your audience and increase email deliverability and engagement, you have to deliver content that is not only relevant, but also valuable to the reader. Start a personalized dialogue with the customer and build a long-term relationship. If you don’t, someone else will.
Clickback’s Email Lead Generation software can help you protect your reputation, keep your data clean and improve email deliverability. To learn more, sign up for a free 1-on-1 demo.
