Marketers come up with new channels of communication every now and then, but nothing can really replace a traditional platform such as email. Email marketing has been around for more than three decades, but it remains a critical tool of business communication with nearly four billion users worldwide.
But it doesn’t mean that email campaigns guarantee success. On the contrary, many businesses are struggling with email marketing because they cannot increase the deliverability rate. If you are having problems with deliverability, keep reading to see five steps towards building an ideal reputation in email marketing.
Email Deliverability Explained
Email deliverability is a term that refers to the ability of an email message to arrive in the recipient's email inbox. A recent report indicates the average email deliverability rate for marketers is 80%, but it all depends on how you design your email marketing strategy and reach out to the target audience. This is very important because:
- Nearly 50% of all emails sent worldwide are marked as junk email.
- Average read rates have been decreasing year-over-year to 12% in 2018.
- The average click rate for all industries is 2.62%
All these parameters will influence your email marketing reputation, but let’s start with the basics and see how you can deal with deliverability issues.
5 Ways to Increase Email Deliverability
We can name dozens of more or less influential deliverability tactics, but some tricks proved to perform better than others. This is why we narrowed down the solutions to five practical tips.
1. Introduce a double opt-in procedure
Email marketing begins with users who subscribe to your newsletter through one of your lead magnets. It’s a starting point that often determines the faith of entire campaigns, so we strongly encourage you to introduce a double opt-in procedure (also known as confirmed opt-in).
It’s a two-step subscription verification, which means that new subscribers immediately receive a confirmation message to once again confirm that they accept receiving your emails. Although it sounds fairly simple, a double opt-in process is a surefire way to maximize deliverability rates.
The idea is to minimize the number of users who end up treating your emails as spam messages as it’s the quickest route to crushing your digital reputation. Besides that, a confirmed opt-in usually comes with higher open and click-through rates.
2. Gradually build your IP credibility
One of the most important tasks of email marketers is to build their IP credibility. IP is nothing more than the address from which you’re sending emails to the subscribers, but it has the power to make or break your marketing objectives.
How come?
Emailing platform filters are constantly looking for spam messages and stopping unwanted content from reaching users’ inbox folders. If your emails come from a suspicious IP address, rest assured the messages will end up in the junk folder.
The simplest way to build trustworthiness and credibility is by gradually increasing the volume of your email campaigns. For instance, you shouldn’t send a message to 100 thousand subscribers right away as it will probably be interpreted as spam. A much safer choice is to start slowly and then gradually increase the number of recipients.
3. Segment the audience
As you’ve probably figured out already, the purpose of email marketing is to deliver highly relevant content to verified leads only. This is exactly why segmentation plays such a major role in email campaigns, so you’ll need to divide the audience into smaller groups with unique interests.
Segmentation is a genuine engagement booster, which is a clear sign that your IP address is fully reliable. Therefore, you should always keep an eye on segmentation and even try to personalize messages by exploring different features of the target audience. We are talking about traits such as:
- Position within the sales funnel
- Location, gender, and age
- Average income and level of education
- Relationship or marital status
- Personal interests or hobbies
- Favorite topics
If you adjust emails so as to match these criteria, you can expect subscribers to engage with your messages and positively impact the overall deliverability.
4. Mind the scheduling and sending frequency
Creating a meaningful schedule of activities is yet another thing you can do in an attempt to solidify online reputation and increase the deliverability rate. Random emails won’t do you well, which is why you should choose the right timing for each message.
Lots of studies are trying to identify the best time to send business emails, but it all depends on the habits of your target audience. Try to determine when your subscribers are usually active online and create a schedule based on those insights.
At the same time, you must pay attention to the sending frequency. There is no general rule to follow here because every company approaches it differently. However, we believe that it’s good to send emails weekly or biweekly. This proves to be a nice rhythm because it regularly reminds the audience of your business, but it doesn’t bother anyone too frequently.
5. Enable easy opt-outs
No one wants to see a subscriber bouncing, but it’s just the way things work in email marketing. In such circumstances, you have to help users unsubscribe quickly and effortlessly.
This is not only a matter of acting politely but also a genuine necessity deliverability-wise. People who cannot find the opt-out option will probably get angry and report your emails as spam. It will harm your reputation and jeopardize future campaigns.
Therefore, the only reasonable solution is to enable easy opt-outs and keep your email marketing activities highly professional from start to finish.
Up to You
Email marketing is a serious business promotion tool, but it requires vast knowledge and strategic planning. It all begins with deliverability as you cannot build relationships with customers if you fail to approach them.
In this post, we showed you five ways to improve email deliverability and build a professional reputation. Keep our tips in mind and make sure to use them – you will see a quick boost in email marketing results!