Email Deliverability Guide In 2020 | Handysends Blog

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Imagine the hard work and time you invest while you brainstorm, strategize and plan an email campaign or draft a client engaging mail and the email reaches in the mailbox that is owned by no one – Spam Folder.

Just having the right email structure and content is not enough, senders must be extremely alert and keep the best practices in mind to ensure the sender's purpose is solved. There are chances that the email will never hit the target inbox or at times be caught in the various filters set by the internet service providers.

Smart 20 Tips to accelerate your email deliverability a notch higher
Definition of email deliverability?
A scope that the mail sent by you will reach the recipient must be prepared, email deliverability in all likelihood is meant to reach the inbox unless influenced by other aspects that filter it down and does not allow deliverability.

What matters most in email deliverability is that the better your deliverability rate is the higher is your sender's score. You must make sure that you abide by the generic rules and have the required infrastructure. This is how your ...
... email deliverability will strengthen and you will be able to achieve your desired sender score.

Note: In principle, we tend to mix up email delivery and email deliverability.

Email delivery is the total number of mails that the gateway server records and email deliverability is the number of emails that get to the inbox.

GUIDE # 1- Is there a reason to worry?
Since email marketing has huge potential and provides a lot of opportunities to reach out to the mass, this is the best option for you to identify your leads.

How will you reach your potential clients? The only effective way is to use a top-notch email campaign and make sure your email lands on the right box.

Worldwide the inbox hit rate is around 84.8%, this clearly shows that 15.2% emails sent never reach the recipient.

What do this 15.2% emails mean – it means loss of effort and missed opportunity.

Undelivered Emails HandySends

Substructure
If your infrastructure is built on a temporary structure, how hard you try you will not be able to reach your target. We have tried to put together the most essential practices and processes to create an environment that is tested infrastructure that is enabled and all authentication passed.

Though most of us feel email delivery as the most intricate and complex activity but be rest assured, you will be confident post these 8 minutes read.

GUIDE 1.1 Use committed IP address
One must keep a note, sharing your sending IP address at times impact your deliverability ratio.

Be alert while you are using a shared IP address considering it to be a cost-effective affair, but if you heavily depend on email and have been sending over thousands of emails on a month on month basis –having a committed and dedicated IP address is a necessity.

Be cautious when you are sharing a similar IP address.
Make sure no one can influence negatively
Your email deliverability’s success will decide your Sender score
GUIDE 1.1 Make sure dissimilar IP addresses for unlike email types
It is important that you send your transactional emails and promotional emails through different IP addresses, this is one of the best practices. None of your marketing campaigns will impact your deliverability and the most important confirmation emails, password change alerts, confirmation for payments and more will be handled differently.

GUIDE 1.3 NEVER modify your IP address
We often tend to believe that the foremost reason for any deliverability glitch is the IP address. That is a myth. We agree this is not a great idea since Spammers and disguise senders tend to switch their IP addresses and a fresh new IP address is always suspected and thus goes through several filters before it is processed.

Notably, an aged IP address is trusted more compared to a fresh IP address.SO our experts advise to keep your existing IP address and not switch.

GUIDE 1.4 Prepare your IP address
At all, if you continue to face similar issues and your sender score is a continuous concern – you must keep in mind to initiate the email marketing by sending a small number of mails and slowly increasing the frequency and volume – so your emails start with a smart and positive reputation.

Note: If you are not using a dedicated IP address and depend on share IP; you are not required to work on the above.

Guide 1.5 Protect your IT servers with Transport Layer Security
If you do not want your email to be read by a third party or by people handling the sending procedure, use Transport Layer Security (TLS) to safeguard your emails.

Nowadays most of the servers look for TLS, hence it is recommended to safeguard the servers and accelerate deliverability.

GUIDE 1.6 Authenticate your email
Email marketers tend to check the email sending process by double authentication protocols. Professional email marketers make it a point to include authentication processes whilst sending the mail to increase the delivery ratio and credibility of your emails.

The three chief protocols are :

Sender Policy Framework (SPF)
Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM)
Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC)
GUIDE 1.7 Register for feedback loops (FBL)
A simple thumb rule is –NEVER mark an email to those subscribers, who have, marked unsubscribe since this might lead to your reputation being tarnished. 84% of the Internet facilitators offer an add on service called FBL, The Second thing is to remove this and that means raining alarm-so we are guarded and well prepared.

GUIDE # 1.8. How to set account and abuse@ addresses
Having these two role accounts is a best practice and a requirement by some internet service providers. They are used to receive abuse complaints so you should check them regularly and resolve all the issues as soon as possible.

GUIDE # 1.9 Try and use the domain that is authenticated
The domain you are using to send emails must be well suitable to receive mails as well. If this does not happen, the IP address might block your emails automatically. Ensure you keep your MX records well updated and in a valid state.

Those who receive emails from you must be able to send you replies as well. Those emails which are sent from a NO REPLY address usually represent an irritant and arrogant approach.

Sending behavior
GUIDE 1.10 Refrain from buying an email database
If you are planning to reduce your workload and purchase a readymade email database –you are purchasing uncertainty and SPAM prone database that might pull your score down and also get you a C-grade Sender score.

Note – The email database that is purchased is not authenticated and is full of SPAM traps. The dollar you spend in purchasing an email database can be saved and utilized in other productive channels. Try to avoid them as a pandemic.

GUIDE 1.11 Subscriber’s consent a MUST
If your email address is not from the purchased email source and provided to you by the subscriber itself, you have to make sure that your emails are welcomed

Whenever you receive a confirmation to register the recipient for your services –it necessarily does not mean they are interested in receiving every detail from the service provider, hence it becomes imperative to seek permission and their consent to receive the specific category of emails.

Build an ethical email databank with each email address verified. Your emails will reach the right email box and you will see a great email deliverability percentage.

GUIDE # 1.212 Welcome unsubscribes
Quality is what matters not quantity, the number of emails you send has less significance than the number of emails that hit the inbox. In case you receive unsubscribe alert or notification from your subscriber- welcome it. It is better to accept and move on to replace the email ID rather than landing your email on the spam folder.

The best practice of email deliverability is to have a unsubscribe tab or button with every email sent. Create it using a link option so they use it hassle-free.

Note _ Unsubscribe option is good for both you, as a marketer and the recipient as well.

GUIDE # 1.13 Double opt-in – a boon
No, what you are sending your emails to only those who are keen to receive your emails, you may now use the double-opt-in option. This is considered the most effective email marketing technique.

Listed amongst the top 10 Best practices of email deliverability – double-opt-in option gives you an edge over other marketers who do not care to use this option.

GUIDE # 1.14 Be steady
Offering steady service and maintaining a schedule is important. This is both in terms of volume and regularity. Devise a marketing plan, prepare a checklist, and a status update column and try to adhere to it.

Never try to shoot pending emails at one go, in case you have had a technical glitch and failed to shoot the scheduled mail –do not think of sending all the emails at one go. It will lead to low sender score and spike up spam.

Note – Try to send only scheduled emails ( Maximum of 2 weeks at an interval of min 3 days ) your subscriber will understand the cycle and welcome the emails.

GUIDE # 1.15. Beware of SPAM feeds.
If your sender IP address is constantly being marked as SPAM, you might be giving stern signals to ISP's and result in low sender score and reputation.

GUIDE # 1.16 Refrain activities that lead to being blacklisted
Try to use a blacklist checker tool to avoid being blacklisted. Many times – we do not adhere to this and end up being blacklisted and being banned. It is advisable to make sure you avoid those aspects that lead to the spamming of your email and eventually getting blacklisted.

GUIDE # 1. 17 Watch your bounce rate regularly
If your email fails to reach the target inbox, it bounces back. If you observe hard bounce, again and again, it is advisable to remove it from the list rather than getting bounced for an indefinite time.

Note – A soft bounce is a temporary glitch but a hard bounce is a permanent error ( this is when the email bounces more than 8-10 times)

Content
Content as mentioned above is an important factor and is also a reason for email deliverability.

Creating engaging and focused content is a way to improve the score and deliverability ratio both.

Emails drafted must have a great score, apt formatting, and not too many cluttered texts.

Try the following Tricks.

GUIDE # 1.18 –Email formatting is important
The debate as to what is the correct format has taken a toll on all of us. Recipient prefers smart content, slim fonts, and a nice, neat format. Never use broken HTML tags as they are picked by Internet service providers easily.

GUIDE # 1.19 Try and use the most suitable image that complements the content.
Using too many images, infographics can damage your sender score and impact email deliverability immensely. Use simple images that represent the context.

Refrain using one large image and no content- they are picked very easily.

GUIDE # 1.20 Limit Subject line
Email drafted must have a smart and short subject line, this helps the receiver understand what the email is all about, and that increases open rate. Your emails are first viewed and only the subject line is read –if the reader finds it engaging-they proceed else it lands where you don’t want it to land.