Here’s the checklist for email deliverability in the priority order - domain reputation, infrastructure, and content. The following article covers details about email deliverability and how to improve it.
As more people are moving towards using emails as a communication tool for their marketing and promotional communication, more spam and unwanted emails are being delivered to our inboxes.
Our inbox would have been filled with these spam emails if not for the ISPs (Internet Service Providers) putting more restrictions on direct access for user’s mailboxes.
This article covers the fundamentals of email deliverability, how to improve your email deliverability, and best practices for email marketing.
Inbox deliverability, also known as email deliverability, is a measure of how well your marketing emails are performing in terms of getting delivered to a recipient's inbox.
Email delivery vs email deliverability: Which one to target?
Email delivery and email deliverability are sometimes interchangeably used in the marketing industry. But these two terms are technically very different.
The term email delivery is used when the recipient's mail server acknowledges the email file and sends it, regardless of the folder (social, span, updates, etc.).
Whereas email deliverability is used when the server accepts the file and sends it to the inbox. In other words, email deliverability refers to the ability to successfully deliver emails to recipients' inboxes.
Why is email deliverability important?
As per a recent study from Influencer Marketing Hub shows that just 79.6% of genuine emails make it to their target recipient. This means that out of 20 users, 3 users will not receive your emails, and this becomes a huge loss when you have a user base in billions.
What is an ideal email deliverability rate?
There is no straightforward answer to this question. But in general, it is advised to achieve a deliverability rate between 85%-95% to get the maximum benefits out of your marketing initiatives.
However, the numbers may change depending on the organization. It is always advised to conduct market research to learn how competitors operate, and to evaluate your present email inbox placement rate and key metrics, including engagement rates, to determine what can be done better to get improved results.
Following that, a deliverability benchmark for emails should be established, and the email marketing team should work together to meet it.
You cannot know directly if the email is being sent to the recipient's spam folder or inbox. There is no way the accuracy of email deliverability. But there is work around this bottleneck to check and track.
The process usually starts by tracking whether the email was opened or clicked. The mailing platforms, with built-in analytics, attach a tiny transparent tracking pixel along with the email. The file is of the size 1 px to 1 px, which is literally invisible to the recipients.
This tracking pixel is able to track easily when an email is opened or clicked. It also tracks the device and app with which users have opened the email.
You must be wondering if it's illegal to do that, right?
No, there is no law (yet) against the use of tracking pixels. So, anyone can use it for their marketing campaigns without users’ permission.
Build the right domain reputation
ISPs pay a lot of attention towards the credibility of the sender’s domain. They always run a ‘reputation check’ before sending the mail to the recipients.
Selecting the right mailing infrastructure
Internet service providers implement several email authentication techniques to make sure the sender of the email is genuine. And it is not difficult to pass through these authentication if you’re a genuine sender.
Last but not the least - Crafting targeted content
Now you must know how email deliverability is different from email delivery. Email deliverability takes time, patience, a lot of testing, and deeper understanding on how the system works. The execution becomes easy after this.
The checklist for email deliverability will always follow the priority order - Reputation, Infrastructure, and Content. With the pointers mentioned above, you can keep your mailing list healthy, send relevant content to the target segment, and engage with customers.
To fulfill your vision of exponential growth and reaching the pinnacle of marketing efforts, Propel automated marketing services can help you in achieving your vision. With a structured scientific approach, we create a robust and solid foundation of your marketing automation campaigns.
Keywords - email deliverability, email delivery, email marketing, automated marketing
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