Improving Email Deliverability and Results
Email marketing continues to achieve impressive results for marketers and businesses. According to Statista, there are 4 billion daily email users, and they estimate that email marketing revenue will reach almost 11 billion by the end of 2023.
One thing to remember when crafting an email campaign is its deliverability. Failure to deliver an email to your subscriber negatively impacts open rates, sales, and overall results.
Darwill discusses three simple ways to improve your email deliverability in this blog. These steps will help get your email in your customer's inbox and boost sales.
Email Deliverability
So, what does email deliverability mean? Well, it refers to the number of emails successfully delivered to a subscriber's inbox. It focuses on the emails that land in the customer's inbox, not including their spam folders. Several things can influence this metric, including the content and the contact list.
Elements that hurt deliverability include:
- Improperly collecting subscribers.
- Sending large emails.
- Sending without custom authentication.
- Burning out subscribers.
- Making it difficult to unsubscribe.
- Using URL shorteners.
- Lack of engagement.
However, you can take steps to improve your email deliverability to convert more sales.
Verify Your List
One of the most important things you can do to improve deliverability is to verify your email list regularly. According to HubSpot, email marketing databases naturally degrade by about 22.5% yearly. For successful email marketing, Darwill recommends staying on top of your lists with email hygiene and validating the lists frequently. Doing so will ensure that you have accurate contact information and help to remove emails that may no longer be in use.
If you do not act on this, you will see an increase in bounce rate as emails will not be able to send to inaccurate or abandoned addresses. Bounce rate has a direct negative impact on email deliverability. The more bounce rates you receive, the more likely the email will be sent to spam by internet service providers (ISPs).
Data hygiene is easier than you think. Darwill's Data Science team uses data mining to clean and enhance email lists. We'll update and remove any email addresses that may cause an issue with deliverability, leaving you with an accurate, healthy list to communicate.
Send Content People Expect
Another common issue is the content of the email. When improving deliverability, many marketers need to consider how important content is. Email content has a substantial influence on how subscribers and ISPs perceive you.
When you send relevant content to subscribers, they are more likely to interact with it and increase open rates. They will click open the email and click through to follow links that interest them. The engagement your emails receive lets ISPs know that the content is relevant. ISPs are more likely to push your email through to an inbox over spam if they see that you send relevant information that engages the subscriber. If your content isn't appropriate, leaving your audience passive and not interacting, ISPs may push you to spam.
As a marketer, you can encourage healthy engagement that improves deliverability by sending content that subscribers signed up to receive. Give them what they expected upon subscribing and develop a healthy communication cadence. The more you do this, the better brand awareness and trust you build. If you send emails on topics they did not sign up for, they will not interact with your email. Your cadence or number of times you send emails also affects customer expectations. For example, suppose they sign up for monthly emails, and you send them weekly ones. In this case, they will experience email exhaustion and become frustrated that you are ignoring their email preferences – ultimately resulting in the customer unsubscribing.
Fine Tune Every Email Campaign
Lastly, we recommend fine-tuning each email running in the campaign to improve deliverability. You will want to look at elements such as the subject line, salutation, body copy, CTA's, working hyperlinks, and images.
Some things that can cause an email to go to spam include:
- Irrelevant Subject Line – Ensure your subject line is relevant to the email's message and the subscriber's interests. As mentioned above, if the email does not apply to their interests, they will not engage, causing a higher chance of ISPs sending the email to spam.
- Too Many Images – Certain images can be blocked by spam filters. Ensure you use a good balance of text and images to convey your message.
- Poor Cadence – You'll want to build a good cadence, so your audience doesn't lose interest over time. Set expectations that they will receive daily, weekly, or monthly emails when they opt in. Remember, emailing too little or too much can lead to customers unsubscribing from your email subscription list. It’s all about finding the right balance.
- Broken Links – Broken hyperlinks in your CTA and within the body copy may cause subscriber frustration and deter your audience from opening your emails. Not providing the resources subscribers need to learn more will have them turn to a competitor for the information.
Darwill Improves Email Deliverability and Results
If you need help figuring out where to start with email deliverability, Darwill is here to help improve your results. We can help implement list verification, data cleansing, content clean-up, and fine-tuning. With a trusted partner, we'll ensure you have the highest chance of getting your message in front of your audience. Contact us to get your emails delivered and improve campaign results.
