Deliverability is crucial in an email campaign. No matter how much you will refine all the creation of your message, the main purpose of the latter is that it can reach the reception box of its recipients without incident.
Today, we suggest that you clarify the subject, and to explain the most common terms that revolve around this famous deliverability. In short, understand it well to better optimize it.
Do not confuse delivery and deliverability
The first important thing is to make the difference between deliverability and delivery because, although the definition seems the same, there is still a slight subtlety.
- We are talking about delivery when the supplier used by the recipient accepts or not the email sent.
- We are talking about deliverability when the email has been accepted by the messaging provider, and it must be stored in a category (main messaging, spam, etc.).
Email deliverability: Basic terms
- The messaging service provider, also called ESP (Email Service Provider), is a service that hosts an electronic messaging, and which will therefore allow both sending, reception and the storage of emails (Outlook, Gmail, yahoo, etc.).
- The Internet service provider (ISP) designates the company that allows you to access the Internet (AT&T, Verizon, Mediacom, etc.).
- The IP address (Internet Protocol) is a unique identification number, permanently or provisionally attributed to equipment connected to the Internet or on a network (computer, smartphone, printer, etc.).
- The estate corresponds to the name of a website, to its address. It designates the location where all the internet servers and equipment are located. For us, for example, this is: captainVerify.com.
- The sub-domain is an extension of the main domain and therefore depends on the latter. It allows you to organize the different parts of a website. If we take the example “https://blog.captainverify.com”, the domain name is “CaptainVeriffy.com” and the subdomain is “blog”.
Everything is a question of reputation
Your reputation as a sender is a very important point for the delivery of your emails. The better, it will be, the more likely you will have the ISPs to deliver your messages in the recipient reception box, rather than placing them in “undesirable” or “spam”.
To measure this reputation as a sender, several elements will be taken into account:
- The reputation of your IP address, which depends on the history of shipments made from this address. This reputation is defined by messaging service providers.
- The reputation of your field, which depends on the shipments made with your domain name.
These two clues must obviously be good for obtaining a reputation as a satisfactory sender.
Email authentication standards
- The Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is a standard whose purpose is to check the domain name of an email sender. In particular, it prevents spammers from using your domain name to send messages, usurping your identity.
- The DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) is another standard which allows the recipient to verify that the email received has been sent by the domain owner. This verification is carried out thanks to an encrypted digital signature, added in the message header.
- The dmarc is a protocol to use SPF and/or DKIM standards to authenticate sender Emails, in order to fight more effectively against spam and phishing. It therefore acts in addition to these two standards.
- The bimi (brand indicators for message identification) is used to identify the sender D ‘An email by displaying the logo of the company that issues the message, next to its name, proving that it is it which is at the origin of the shipment.
Results monitoring
Hard bounce and soft bounce
In general, the bounce designates a message that could not land in the recipient’s reception box. We differentiate the hard bounce, a permanent problem that manifests itself when an email address does not work, of the soft bounce, that is a temporary problem preventing the recipient from receiving email sent.
Spam and blockages
- The spam trap is a system used by ISPs and anti-spam organizations in order to identify and stop spammers as well as ill-intentioned sender. Be careful, even if you are a legitimate sender, you can be stuck in a spam trap if you do not take care of your diffusion lists.
- The Blacklist of IP is a blacklist on which the IP addresses are listed by ISPs and messaging boxes as sources of spam or fraudulent shipments.
Deliverse and commitment of subscribers
The way subscribers react by receiving your emails also counts for many in deliverability, while impacting your campaign and your reputation as a sender.
- The spam complaint is to be avoided at all costs. A subscriber can make a spam complaint with the messaging server or the host. The consequences range from blocking the sender’s email address concerned, when it closed. It is thus largely understood why it is essential to always ask permission from the subscriber concerning the use of his data, the sending of emails, etc.
- The opt-in and the double opt-in are useful to avoid spam placement, since they consist in obtaining the prior agreement of the contacts to send them emails.
- The feedback loop, or “Feedback Loop”, is to inform the organization behind the emailing campaign, which its shipments have generated complaints. It is useful, because it allows you to react quickly by deleting from the list of contacts people who have marked email as “spam” or as “undesirable”.
- Action Tins (“This is not spam”) is undertaken by the recipient in order to authorize your communications to enter his mailbox, thus avoiding being placed in “spam”. An excellent point for your reputation as a sender!
- The white list, unlike the black list, proves to email servers that your recipients consider you an approved sender.
