What is email deliverability?
Email deliverability is the ability to send emails to subscribers’ inboxes successfully. It’s used in email marketing to assess delivery performance and metrics.
Several factors can impact the actual delivery of emails, such as internet service providers (ISPs), throttling, bounce rates, spam issues, and email bulking.
Organizations use email deliverability software to monitor, track, and optimize email campaigns and improve email placement, send rates, and sender reputation. Using these tools also increases the chances of conversions and open rates.
Importance of email deliverability
High email deliverability rates are linked to effective customer communication, increased chances of conversions, and better brand awareness. Ensuring that emails reach customers can impact business in the following ways:
- Better email marketing. Email deliverability service is directly tied to email marketing and is one of the most critical factors for its success. Email marketing software is necessary to build and design customized email communications. Email deliverability is a vital metric required to ensure receivers are getting those well-thought-out emails.
- Refined inbox placement. Emails often end up in spam and junk folders. While high delivery rates imply the message was delivered to the recipient, they give no information about where the delivery took place. Email deliverability focuses on inbox placement through email hygiene and inbox optimization and by cleaning receiver lists.
- Fewer email bounces. Deliverability keeps the recipient list as its central focus. Paying attention to contact lists and ensuring that the recipients are relevant, not spammy, and signed up for business emails reduces the frequency of bounces and overall email bounce rate.
- Quicker referral identification. Tracking email deliverability helps determine which subscribers are likely to provide product referrals to potential customers.
- Existing content verification. Content is an integral part of email marketing materials. Companies can get an idea of the efficacy of the message content by understanding where business emails end up after pressing send.
Factors that affect email deliverability
Every company has a different way of measuring email deliverability. However, some factors are relatively uniform when evaluating email sends.
Elements that contribute to low email deliverability:
- Single opt-ins
- Free email address domains
- Uniform resource locator (URL) shorteners
- Low levels of email engagement
- Sender reputation
- Email infrastructure
- Email authentication and protocols
- Contact list quality: The mailing list is the most vital part of email marketing. It is unique for every business and industry. A good quality, properly built email list is also important for new companies as it’s the primary identifying factor for the ISP.
- Email frequency and relevancy: Keeping an eye on how often emails are sent is integral to a successful email delivery process. Ensuring that emails are relevant in their content and context also has a big impact on engagement.
- Message content and format: Personalizing email content and avoiding spammy tactics can positively impact email deliverability. Always seek to provide value for the email receiver.
- Sender reputation: Companies cannot always control their sender reputation, but domains that have a high reputation are less prone to email deliverability issues. Marketers should invest time and effort in improving business reputation for online communication.
How to improve email deliverability
Testing email deliverability regularly is key to maintaining customer interactions and engagement. Companies use email tracking software to track sent emails and report open rates, link clicks, and the number of downloads.
-
Focus on IP and sender reputation. Domains with valid and authoritative internet protocol (IP) addresses pass through ISP spam filters and improve email deliverability rates. Start all email campaigns by sending emails in small batches to engaged contacts.
Companies must also regularly score sender reputation to avoid low email deliverability. Every ISP has a certain threshold of sender scores and domains that fall below the threshold are flagged as spam. - Monitor email list hygiene. Reviewing contact lists regularly for unengaged subscribers and invalid emails is important when refining email deliverability. Inactive list management can trigger the server’s intrusion prevention system (IPS) signals and flag the domain as spam.
- Make use of authentication protocols. Implement appropriate email authentication p such as sender policy frameworks (SPFs), domain keys identified mail (DKIM), and Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) protocol to improve domain credentials.
-
Be friends with ISPs. The ISP is at the core of email communication. Ensure that sent emails follow ISP rules, such as text-to-image ratio (60:40) and email size (100KB).
Businesses can check their IP reputation by signing up to services like Google Postmaster and Microsoft SDNS.
Review email campaign reports at an ISP level and evaluate bounce and complaint rates to better understand why emails may be going to spam folders.
- Provide convenience sign-up options. Having easy and memorable sign-up processes reduces the chance of emails being flagged as spam. Using double opt-in-sign-ups and CAPTCHAs on registration pages helps mitigate spambots on contact lists. Personalize message content by integrating behavioral and purchase data and user preferences. At the same time, simplify unsubscribe options to prevent ambiguity and provide clarity to the email audience.
- Invest in frequency management. It's easy to get lost in the crowd when creating a global email list. Monitoring email engagement as a metric to manage email frequency helps businesses avoid being blocked or flagged. Leverage email anti-spam software and list segmentation practices to score message content and control the frequency of sends.
- Check for universal rendering. Business emails should load and render consistently across devices and browsers. Emails that render correctly and are optimized for mobile apps increase ISP trustworthiness and lower spam complaints.
Email deliverability vs. email delivery
Email deliverability considers the factors that enable successful email delivery. It goes beyond delivery speed and focuses on inbox placement. Email deliverability improves domain and sender reputation, filters recipient lists, reduces email bounces, and gauges email performance.
Email delivery is when an email is sent and the receiver gets it in their inbox. The delivery of email messages depends on speed and inbox placement. Businesses use CRM software to analyze email delivery time and evaluate associated metrics.
Implement email authentication protocols using DMARC software and improve your email deliverability now.
Aayushi Sanghavi
Aayushi Sanghavi is a Campaign Coordinator at G2 for the Content and SEO teams at G2 and is exploring her interests in project management and process optimization. Previously, she has written for the Customer Service and Tech Verticals space. In her free time, she volunteers at animal shelters, dances, or attempts to learn a new language.
