7 Email Best Practices to Improve Email Deliverability

7 email best practices

One important goal in any email marketing campaign is to ensure that your emails reach the inbox of your target subscribers. If emails don’t reach the inbox of your intended audience, however good the content may be, then it may result in a failed email marketing campaign.

There are a number of factors that determine whether your emails get delivered, and in this post, I will cover seven email best practices you can use to significantly improve your email deliverability rates.

1) Contacts have opted in

Set up a working opt-in process where people can subscribe to the content they want. This will ensure you have engaged subscribers on your list who are interested in the emails you send to them. 

If you send emails to people who have not opted in to receive emails from you, then the recipients will mark your email as spam, and this will lead to ISPs marking emails from you as spam.

You should also avoid sending emails to purchased lists because they may contain spam traps or invalid emails. Spam traps are emails created by ISPs and other companies to catch people sending spam email. Also having a lot of bounces due to invalid emails in your list may negatively affect your sending reputation.

2) Relevant email title and content

Always use subject lines that match the content of the email and are relevant to the subscribers you are sending to. Avoid the use of spammy or click bait words, especially in the email title as this may trigger some ISPs to mark your emails as spam or classify them as promotional emails like in the case with Gmail.

Using platforms such as SharpSpring can also help you personalize the email content that your subscribers receive, resulting in stronger relationships with your audience and high engagement rates.

3) Manage your lists regularly

It is always recommended to check your lists regularly and remove:

  • Invalid emails – these are emails that are no longer valid or misspelled email addresses.
  • Inactive users – users that have never opened your emails for a considerable length of time (6 months).
  • Users with very low engagement – users that have very little interactions with your emails over a long time span (6 months).

This will help reduce your bounce rate and protect your sending reputation. Apart from suppressing sending of bulk emails to contacts with very low engagement, the SharpSpring marketing automation system normally unsubscribes invalid and bounced email addresses automatically, saving you tons of manual work and valuable time that can be used on other important marketing activities.

4) Authenticate your email domain

Authenticating your email domain helps to improve your email delivery rates. The process of authentication involves setting up DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) and Sender Policy Framework (SPF). It helps ISPs know that the emails you are sending are actually coming from you and identify you as a trusted sender.

5) Monitor your email statistics and reports

Check your email statistics and reports, regularly so that you can know more about your audience. You will get to identify what your subscribers like and what they don’t like.

Using these statistics and reports you will see email titles with high open rates and emails with content that has high engagement. This can help you draft emails with great titles and content that your list subscribers will enjoy.

6) Comply with Email Opt-In Laws

Apart from avoiding sending emails to people who have not opted to your lists, you should also have a valid unsubscribe link in your emails. This allows recipients to unsubscribe from receiving emails from you in the future.

Your emails should also contain a valid business physical postal address. Failure to comply with some laws can result in fines and your domain being blacklisted by ISPs.

7) Sender Reputation

ISPs normally track the reputation of domains, and it is important to maintain a good sending reputation regardless of the email provider you use. If the sending reputation of your domain is damaged while using one provider, the bad reputation will still follow you even if you change email providers.

It is therefore important to protect your sender reputation. In addition to the domain, ISPs also check the IPs being used to send emails. SharpSpring partners with SendGrid, an industry-leading email service company, to provide users with high-quality sender IP pools ensuring your emails get delivered to your subscribers’ inbox.

Takeaway

Making the email best practices outlined in this post part of your email marketing efforts will ensure high email deliverability and increase your chances of having successful email campaigns.

If you’d like to learn more or speak to one of our experts about email marketing and how to automate your marketing efforts to get more leads for your business using the SharpSpring platform, book a session with us here and we’ll get back to you.

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About the Author

Denis Muhuri

Denis is a project manager with FunnelBud who enjoys helping companies to realize the benefits of marketing automation. He is SharpSpring Gold certified and is experienced in the field of search engine optimization(SEO).

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