What’s the point of sending emails to your clients if they don’t receive them? There are several factors that can affect the delivery of your email messages, so we thought it was important to share some of the rules you will want to consider in order to improve your overall email deliverability.
Spam filters are constantly evolving, and according to Return Path, about 20% of legitimate emails never reach the Inbox. We put together this overview for you to be aware of some elements to consider to help you achieve maximum deliverability.
Sender Reputation
Look after your sender reputation to put all chances on your side! Each IP address from which your emails are sent is analyzed to consider several elements which together, assign you a sender rank that ultimately affects the delivery of your messages.
Pay close attention to the number of your email messages you send at one time. Spammers are known to send bulk emails and send to a large amount of recipients at the same time or in a short timeframe. So, if you’re planning on sending an email campaign to 250,000 people, it would make more practical sense to do it in several smaller batches of 25,000.
The complaints rate is also taken into account as part of determining your sender reputation. This rate is measured based on the number of people who reported your email as spam. Always send relevant information to ensure the interest of your recipient. This will prevent you from receiving complaints that could negatively affect your reputation.
Non-existent or bad email addresses should be removed from your list. If some of your contacts have abandoned an email address and you continue to send them messages, this can cause blockages during the delivery.
Some abandoned addresses are recorded by internet and webmail service providers like Yahoo and Gmail, which label them as “spam traps”. Any email sent to these addresses is automatically considered spam, which affects your sender reputation and the delivery rate of your messages. Our advice is therefore to make sure to keep a list of contacts updated and avoid any purchased or rented lists.
Infrastructure and authentication are also points to consider to improve the delivery of your messages. Authentication protocols allow the anti-spam systems to consider the emails being sent from this system as legitimate.
Message Content
In addition to the sender reputation, the contents of your email can also affect its delivery. We’ve summarized some known tips on things to avoice in order for your emails to not to get caught in spam filters.
- Your text should not contain excessively used capital letters or exclamations points, or be too big or too colorful. An email containing very little text might also be considered suspicious. It is not recommended to use a large image as the main content.
- Attachments that are sent to a large group of people sometimes contain viruses. It is therefore wiser to host the file on your website and insert the link into the message content. The email will be less likely to find itself blocked.
- The wrong HTML code can also be a factor to watch. You will want to be extra careful when copying or pasting text from a WORD document into any software or platform that creates HTML code. These tools can be very useful when you don’t know a lot about programming, but they can also insert unwanted codes in your message and reduce its quality.
- Avoid hidden links. For example, if you are using a link that includes (http://), make sure that the destination link is the same. A link within in an email that displays a different URL from the actual destination URL once the link is clicked is considered to be an attempt of phishing. The newsletter can be considered spam and does not reach the inbox.
