The average email user receives an estimated 193 emails per day. That’s a lot of messages! With that in mind, it is understandable why some people may not want to receive your email marketing campaigns. In this blog post, we are going to discuss how you can improve your email deliverability so that recipients don’t unsubscribe from your list. We will also talk about the importance of good email deliverability for 2021 and beyond.
What is email deliverability?
Email deliverability is the process of ensuring that your eMail campaigns are delivered to a recipient’s inbox, or spam folder. This usually happens when they are signed up to receive your emails. As you can imagine, email deliverability is an important part of eMail marketing because if your campaigns do not arrive in someone’s inbox, then there is no chance that they will read it and take any action on the contents within. You can use tools like Coresender to ensure that your emails hit the right inbox, always.
Why does email deliverability matter?
In 2021, consumers will be spending more time on screens and less time with traditional media such as newspapers and magazines. This means that marketers have an increasing number of channels through which they can reach their audience – one of these being emails! As we discussed earlier, users receive a tonne of messages every day so it is important for brands to ensure good delivery rates if they want people to see their message. Otherwise, recipients might mark you as spam or unsubscribe from your list completely. How do you go about improving your email deliverability?
The three pillars of email deliverability
#1 Reputation
In 2021, it is important that your brand has a positive reputation. It can be difficult to maintain this as you may make errors such as sending spammy or irrelevant messages.
If recipients mark your eMail campaigns as unwanted and hit the unsubscribe button, this could have an adverse effect on your email deliverability rates. This is because other subscribers might also see these negative comments which make them less likely to open future emails from you. To improve your reputation over time, we recommend only sending relevant content and being clear in how people can opt out of receiving more emails (this should not take more than two steps). You could even include an option for users who want to receive promotional offers but do not wish to join your main list, for example.
#2 Relevance
Relevance is key in 2021. According to a study by Adestra, around 46% of recipients determine whether or not an eMail is relevant based on the subject line alone. Therefore, it’s important that your email titles and content are clear so that people know what they will be receiving if they open your message. This means avoiding spammy-sounding messages such as “Great Deals” or “Amazing Offers”. Make sure you send valuable information which subscribers actually want to read about.
#3 Engagement
As an eMail marketer, you should be tracking your email campaigns so that you can see which ones are being opened and acted upon. This means using a tool like MailChimp or Coresender to measure engagement rates and open rates over time. If people are opening your emails but not clicking on the content inside, then this could indicate low relevance levels (people may have opted in for certain information). However, it might also suggest that there is something wrong with the email itself such as poor layout or unclear subject lines/content descriptions. You could even send test versions of messages to yourself before sending them out to subscribers so that they don’t get marked as spam!
What strategies should marketers use?
There’s no silver bullet… yet! However, we’re going to cover a few tips for you to follow to reach the highest email deliverability.
How to increase email deliverability?
There are a number of things that marketers can do to ensure their eMail campaigns reach the inbox. These include:
#1 Using an opt-in form on landing pages
This is how you capture people’s information for the first time.
If your email is being sent to a non-subscribed audience, you should have an opt-in form on the landing page. This ensures that people are giving their consent before receiving messages from you.
If your email is being sent to a subscribed audience, they should have already opted-in via an opt-in form. So it’s important to have a clear checkbox asking for permission so that people know what they’re receiving.
If someone has already opted-in, you should not need to ask them again via an opt-in form on your landing page as this defeats the object of having one in the first place! It could annoy subscribers and make them leave your list.
You should also make it easy for people to unsubscribe if they no longer want to receive emails from you (again, avoid asking them via an opt-in form). This can be done by adding a “leave this list” checkbox which will remove the person’s details when clicked.
#2 Take care of list segmentation
You should get into creating different lists based on behavior, demographics, etc. and send relevant messages with personalized content.
This is an important part of growing your email lists and it also helps with increasing deliverability rates.
When you have a good number of people on your list, it is easy to see which audiences are more engaged and which ones aren’t. This means that you can better target messages towards those who will be most interested in what they receive!
#3 Check deliverability reports
These show what percentage of recipients opened and clicked through from each campaign, which in turn allows you to make improvements if needed. It is also a good idea to segment your lists based on how engaged they are. This allows you to determine which contacts should receive more promotional content and gives an insight into who might unsubscribe or complain (if the number of complaints increases significantly over time, it’s possible that you’ve sent too many messages).
Final thoughts on why this matters for businesses in 2021
It can take several months before you start seeing positive results when it comes to improving your email deliverability rates. The more time you invest into relationships with subscribers, sharing valuable content, and ensuring your messages are coming from a valid IP address or domain name – the better.
As per usual, there’s no single best recipe for success that can work wonders for every support team. It’s important to listen to the expert advice, but still keep the specificity of your business in mind when applying the tips in practice.
About the Author
Kinga Edwards – Creative Owner at Brainy Bees & City Leader at SaaStock. Passionate about content marketing and out-of-the-box PR, looking for insights everywhere and all the time.
