Do you think the email tool you use is the reason your open rates are low? It might be. Most of the time, though, the problems with your email delivery are your own responsibility.
If your open rates are going down or your once-loyal list isn’t reacting, it’s clear that your emails aren’t helping your business if they aren’t getting to the inbox.
What is good news? Most difficulties with deliverability can be fixed with the right setup, improved segmentation, and a few good email habits.
Here’s how I make sure that emails never go to the spam folder:
Step 1: Nail Your Sender Setup
You need to check that it will get there before you hit submit. These four technical changes make inboxes trust you:
- Choose a decent email provider. Cheap newsletter platforms often employ IP addresses that are already being used too much or are on a blacklist. Do some homework by reading reviews, asking about the platform’s IP reputation, and staying clear from any platform that doesn’t check new senders or need sender domain verification.
- Check your domain. Your DNS provider can assist you add SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records to your domain. Starting in 2024, Google will require this of anyone who sends more than 5,000 emails a day. Use distinct domains for cold email and marketing campaigns to protect your marketing efforts. Also, don’t overlook how consistent visual elements like a gmail email signature can reinforce brand recognition and improve email deliverability across every touchpoint in your outreach.
- Add a tracking domain that only you own. Using a branded subdomain (like email.yoursite.com) for tracking links makes it easier for people to trust and recognize your links in their inboxes.
- Take out the trash from your “From” address. Remove the “noreply@” addresses. They make individuals less inclined to reply and send you junk mail. People can only respond if the “From” label is always the same and the addresses are real.
Step 2: Manage Your Sender Reputation
If your sender reputation is bad, even the best setup won’t help. This is how to keep it clean:
- Keep an eye on blacklists and IP reputation. Check your sender health with tools like Google Postmaster or blacklist checkers. If you share an IP with someone who has a bad reputation, ask your provider to transfer you. If you send a lot of emails, you might want to switch to a dedicated IP.
- Keep your list healthy. Bad emails that bounce hurt your reputation. If you haven’t used your list in a while, run it through a verification tool to get rid of undeliverable emails, mistakes, and remove spam traps. Also, don’t ever buy lists because they are full with spam traps.
- Make it easy to unsubscribe.It can seem weird, but keeping it easy to opt out keeps your sender score. If you hide the link, people usually hit “spam” instead of clicking on it.
- Be a pro at segmenting. Are you sending the same email to everyone? That’s how people acted in 2015. Make two groups out of your list: engaged and not engaged. Send more to people who have recently opened your email and less to people who haven’t.
Step 3: Fine-Tune Every Send
Deliverability is a game of always improving things. These methods will help your emails get to the main inbox of the person you’re sending them to:
- Make it personal for a reason. Adding even one custom field, like [first name], can make people more interested. To make your material seem more personal, use conditional logic to change it or send various subject lines to different groups.
- Make your topic lines shorter. The ideal number of words is three to four. Gmail often marks long, salesy titles as spam, especially if they are in Title Case or have spammy words like “Click Here.”
- Make sure to write preview content on purpose. You can think of preview content as a second subject line. Instead than just utilizing it as “placeholder copy,” use it to give context or interest.
- Get people to click and reply. High engagement signals, like as answers and link clicks, make inboxing more likely. You may pose a question in your welcome email or use polls, videos, or interesting calls to action.
- Make your pictures better. Use a program like Kraken.io or Pixlr to make them smaller. Put in ALT text. Don’t go over 600px in width. No one wants to wait for a banner to load or get an email that doesn’t have any pictures in it.
- Check against spam filters. Mail-tester.com and other tools can find spam triggers before your audience does.
- Time it right. Newsletters and updates function best in the morning (7–10 am). Shopping CTAs? Try between noon and 3 or 4 p.m. Don’t send messages after 5 p.m. unless you want to be ignored (people are less likely to check their inbox then).
- Limit big sends. Don’t send an email to all of your subscribers at once if you have more than 100,000. Sending in smaller groups over time can make it easier for emails to go through.
Bottom Line: Make It Worth Their Click
Even the finest emails won’t help you if you send too many emails with unrelated content. I always start with what my audience wants and then add value to it. My rule of thumb is to have a 4 to 1 ratio of value to promotion.
Email marketing still gives you the best return on investment (ROI), but only if your emails reach to their destination.
Do the work ahead of time, create trust with each email, and keep your inbox in order.
