Five strategies for improving email deliverability

Crafting relevant and interesting emails that will motivate your leads to become customers is hard enough. However, content isn’t the only potential barrier to your customers. You also have to combat spam filters that can prohibit your emails from even reaching your intended audience.

Mail servers use different levels of spam and virus blockers to stop unwanted or harmful messages. These filters assess your reputation, review authentication data, scan for keywords associated with spam, and look for other red flags like sending emails in bulk.

With so many verification processes, you need to optimize every aspect of your email marketing campaign to maximize your chances of reaching and converting your leads.

Keep reading to learn a few strategies to improve email deliverability.

Improve email deliverability with smaller campaigns

While there is nothing wrong with keeping a comprehensive database of addresses, smaller, targeted email lists will be less likely to trigger filters that use bulk emails as criteria.
Beyond avoiding filters, segmenting your audience into niche groups also allows you to craft your content specially for that audience. Thus, you can deliver more focused and relevant content that promotes higher engagement rates.
Additionally, the more relevant your content is, the fewer unsubscribes and spam reports—two other factors tied to your IP reputation and email deliverability—you will receive.

Pro-tip: Create buyer personas to create a strong foundation for your email segmentation.

Enhance your reputation with email servers

You can increase the trust email servers have in your domain by using a Sender Policy Framework (SPF).
An SPF is a text record that logs the different servers authorized to send emails from your domain, allowing the receiver’s email server to verify your identity and block potential spam that spoofs your domain name.
There are additional steps you can take to avoid triggering the spam and virus filters:

• Avoid using attached files. Instead, include a CTA that links to the document on your website.
• Pay attention to your use of images. Pictures take more time to load than text and too many photos or pictures with a large file size can affect deliverability. Take the time to make sure any graphics you use are optimized.
• Don’t use keywords generally associated with spam, such as “no obligation” and “best price.”

Monitoring metrics

Keep track of your reputation by monitoring your Sender Score. You can register a subdomain that you only use for email marketing to easily examine metrics tied to this IP address.

Because these different metrics are connected to the quality of your content and email list, you should focus on delivering relevant content to the right people to boost your Sender Score:

• Track your open rate. Analyze your subject lines and learn what style your target audience responds to and finds relevant and attention-grabbing.
• Keep an eye on unsubscribes and spam reports. Monitor any trends to determine why people are ignoring your emails.
• Measure engagement with your click-through rate. Use segmentation and strong CTAs to encourage more activity.

Maintain your email list to maximize email deliverability

A large list of low-quality prospects will result in high unopen and unsubscribe rates. It also increases the potential for spam reports.
Clean up your list regularly by eliminating recipients who haven’t opened your emails in a while or who haven’t made any purchases since subscribing.
You should also implement double opt-in or confirmed opt-in strategies to require recipients to take an additional step to confirm that they want to receive your content. These strategies can lower spam reports and improve the quality of your leads.

Optimize your email marketing campaign

Don’t forget that there are two sides to email marketing optimization: boosting server trust and developing relevant and valuable content:

• Provide quality content consistently to promote better open and click-through rates, which can increase your Sender Score.
• Add branding information in the “from” field to make your company easier to identify and reduce risks of spam reports.
• Write engaging subject lines, and focus on the content recipients will see in email previews to boost your open rate.
• Make your click-through links and CTAs immediately visible without scrolling.

Creating an optimized email marketing campaign starts with a clear understanding of email deliverability best practices.
When they are done well, email marketing campaigns drive traffic to your website and speed up your sales cycle. If your email campaigns aren’t setting you up to reach your business goals, TBH Creative can help.
Our full-service email marketing team helps companies of all sizes create results-driven strategies, develop email automation sequences, design, and code responsive templates, set up email deliverability tracking, maintain lists, and more.