4 Things You Can Do Today to Improve Email Deliverability
Getting your message into inboxes is one of the most important elements of a successful marketing strategy. If your emails aren't being delivered, not only are your efforts wasted but you also risk damaging your domain reputation as well. Fortunately, there are actionable steps you can take today to improve email deliverability. Let's look at four key strategies that can make an immediate impact.
1. Verify Your Domain Authentication
Proper domain authentication using protocols like DKIM, DMARC, and SPF is essential for establishing trust with ISPs and reducing the likelihood of your emails being flagged as spam. These authentication methods verify the identity of the sender and protect against spoofing and phishing attacks.
Steps to ensure domain authentication:
Configure DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Generate DKIM keys and publish them in your domain's DNS records to authenticate your outgoing emails.
Implement DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance): Create a DMARC policy to specify how ISPs should handle emails that fail authentication checks.
Set Up SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Define authorized sending sources for your domain to prevent unauthorized use of your domain name.
2. Stop Sending to Bounced Contacts
A hard bounce happens when the address is invalid, no longer exists, or has blocked the sender. Continuously sending to bounced contacts can harm your sender reputation and again, increase the risk of spam flags.
Take the following steps:
Regularly clean your email list: Remove invalid email addresses and hard bounces from your mailing list. Use email validation or email deliverability tools provided by your email marketing provider to automatically identify and remove bounced contacts.
Implement double opt-in: Confirming a subscriber’s intent by sending a confirmation email with a verification link ensures the email address provided is valid and owned by the subscriber, reducing the chances of a bounce and improving overall deliverability.
3. Segment Your List
Categorizing subscribers based on specific criteria such as demographics, behavior, industry, or engagement level helps provide more targeted and relevant content to each segment. This strategy has been shown to improve engagement and reduce the risk of unopened messages and spam complaints.
Here's how to segment effectively:
Use subscriber data: Leverage subscriber data collected through sign-up forms, purchase history, or previous interactions or email clicks to create meaningful segments. (Read more about how you can leverage data and interactions to provide more meaningful content to your users.)
Personalize content: Tailor your emails to resonate with the interests and preferences of each segment. Personalization leads to higher engagement and better deliverability.
4. Send a Re-engagement Email
Re-engagement campaigns are designed to win back inactive subscribers and rekindle their interest in your messages and brand. Sending re-engagement emails can help keep your list current by identifying disengaged contacts and reducing the risk of spam blocks.
Key elements of a successful re-engagement email:
Compelling subject line: Grab attention with a personalized subject line.
Clear call to action (CTA): Encourage subscribers to take an action such as updating their preferences or confirming their interest.
Provide value: Offer exclusive content, promotions, or incentives to reignite subscriber interest.
By implementing these four strategies today, you can immediately improve deliverability and maximize the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts. Remember that consistent monitoring and optimization are key to maintaining a healthy sender reputation and maximizing deliverability over time. Need to clean up your campaign, revive your stagnated list, and improve key metrics like opens, replies, and clicks? Talk to BoxCrush. We’re an experienced email marketing agency with talented digital strategists who excel at creating and executing email campaigns that convert. Use the form below or call us at 317-816-9353.