Deliverability is a major factor in the success of your email marketing activity. You could have the best campaign, but if it doesn’t make its way to your subscribers’ inboxes, then it wont matter!
A whole range of factors influence what’s known as your Sender Reputation – a score that internet service providers assign to any organisation who send email. The higher your score, the more likely your emails will be delivered. Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can ensure yours is as high as possible.
A Numbers Game
The frequency of your email sends is a contributing factor to your sender reputation, with high-volume senders at the most risk of being penalised. That is not to say that you can’t send very regular campaigns, but the key is to ensure that if you do, they are going to an engaged list of subscribers.
So, consider sending only your most active users the most campaigns, with less frequent campaigns sent to your other readers. Targeting and segmentation can also help ensure that every email is as relevant as possible to the audience who are receiving it.
These tactics should also help reduce the number of subscribers who either unsubscribe, or mark your email as spam – another key reputational factor. A few are inevitable, so don’t worry unduly, however a large volume of these is likely to reduce your score. Targeted and timely emails are much likely to engage your users – so remember that sometimes less is more.
Clean Up Your Contacts
Since GDPR came into effect, only using a list of consciously opted-in contacts should be standard practice. Buying data leaves you open to risk of breaching the policy, and also increases the likelihood of users marking your unsolicited email as spam.
Even if you haven’t bought data, regular management of your contact lists will ensure they remain fresh and up to date. For example, if a user hasn’t opened any of your emails in over a year, consider deleting them – they are not bringing any value and are bringing down your open rate percentage.
Sometimes, old and unused addresses become spam traps – another factor affecting your sender reputation score. Clearing such addresses out of your contact lists will reduce your bounce rate and improve all other campaign metrics. Plus, given that email service providers often charge based on database size, a smaller one will mean your campaigns cost less to send, while still generating great results!
Time for Design
The content of your email is another area scrutinised by the sender reputation score. It means that you need to ensure your campaigns look great to your end users, but also easily readable by internet service providers. A key part of this is adding ALT text to any images in your email. Not only is this great for accessibility (screen readers will use this to describe the content) but also ISP bots will be able to scan the content and ascertain its relevancy.
Images should also be used sparingly – the recommended balance is a 70:30 split between text and images. And remember, a graphic that includes text within it still counts as an image!
We hope this gives you a better understanding of how to improve your sender reputation and the deliverability of your emails. If you have any questions or would like some help in putting any of this into action, our dedicated email marketing team are here to help. Say hello by giving us a call, or email [email protected].
