One of the most frustrating things about creating a super email marketing campaign is when that campaign fails because your emails weren’t reaching their intended inboxes. Whether it’s because their filters decided your campaign was spam, or because you were using an outdated contact list, ignoring email deliverability best practices results in a whole lot of wasted time, energy and money, and often a lost opportunity, especially if your campaign was time-sensitive.
Here are four tips to improve email deliverability and enhance your email reputation.
Target the right audience, or, keep your lists hot
Sending out thousands of emails to an audience that isn’t interested in your product or service is going to get you added to spam folders faster than you can say “what is email deliverability?” but that’s not the only problem you face. If your email contact lists aren’t constantly monitored and updated, you’re going to end up sending your campaigns to defunct email addresses. One of the most useful email deliverability tools is an up-to-date contact list. A hot list includes relevant, current contact information, as well as demographic information that ensures you’re sending to interested parties.
Don’t spam
Get to know what spam filters look for. If your campaign fails the email spam test, you need to review it, rework it and sometimes even start from scratch. Knowing how to pass spam filter tests before you even begin will make life a whole lot easier for you. Some of the factors that will get your email marked as spam include: URL shorteners in the email, overuse of capitalized letters, special characters and changing fonts, sending from a free domain address, or using bad code. Looking for an email deliverability testing tool to use? Try one of these.
Keep in touch
Send regular communications to your email list, but don’t flood them. If you only send an email once every few months, subscribers may forget who you are and automatically assume you are a spammer. Keep in regular contact, and they will recognize you as a legitimate sender. Also check your follow-up analytics to weed out defunct contacts faster and keep your lists nice and clean. On the flip side, make sure not to send emails at varying schedules. If your contacts expect a monthly email and you start sending them something every day without communicating the change, they will probably report you as spam pretty quickly.
Give an easy out
Of course you don’t want people to unsubscribe. However, them flagging you as spam is worse, as this negatively affects sender reputation, which in turn affects your deliverability statistics. Improve email deliverability by making it easier for people to unsubscribe if they really want to. Bonus: they are also doing the work of keeping your lists clean for you and making sure you are sending to a target audience that’s actually interested in what you have to offer.
Taking the time to make sure your campaign meets email deliverability best practices is going to make a world of difference to the response rate on your campaign and dramatically improve campaign success. Don’t skip this step in the email marketing process – it’s not worth the time you think you’ve saved.
Struggling to avoid spam filters with your legitimate campaign? Leave a comment, I read every one.
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