In e-marketing, deliverability refers to the ability of an email to reach the recipient’s inbox. It is estimated that nearly 20% of commercial emails never reach their destination. This figure highlights the importance of a good deliverability strategy. With the constant tightening of anti-SPAM filters implemented by ISPs and email services, monitoring the reputation of your domain and IP is crucial. A simple campaign or poorly configured newsletter can quickly be classified as undesirable, compromising the visibility of your messages and tarnishing your sender reputation.
The inevitable steps to ensure good deliverability
How to avoid having your emails marked as SPAM
The deliverability of your emails largely depends on the reputation of your domain with ISPs (Internet Service Providers). To maintain good deliverability, it is essential to improve the quality of your distribution lists, the regularity of your mailings, and to follow best practices in emailing. ISPs assign a “Sender Score” to your domain, a score ranging from 0 to 100 based on the success rate of your emails reaching the inbox. Below 60, your messages risk being classified as SPAM; below 30, they can even be blocked before sending.
How to ensure a good sending reputation?
Clean up your database
The quality of your email addresses is crucial for your deliverability rate. A bounce rate over 10% immediately impacts the reputation of your domain and sender. The consequences are swift: your deliverability rate may drop below 50%, significantly reducing the presence of your messages in the inbox. Therefore, it is essential to clean your lists of hard bounces, soft bounces, and inactive addresses (no opens or clicks), as some ISPs use these addresses as spam traps. By cleaning your lists with Captain Verify, you ensure better visibility for your campaigns in messaging tools and a more accessible inbox for your mailings.
Avoid complaints
Consider highlighting an unsubscribe link, ideally at the top of the email. This allows your subscribers to easily unsubscribe and prevents them from marking your emails as SPAM, which would harm your reputation score. Poor management of this point can lead to deliverability problems for all your domains. To maintain a good engagement rate, be clear about the sender’s identity and the reason for receiving the message.
What frequency and which IP?
Email marketing frequency is a subjective concept, depending on the type of emails sent and their content. For advertising campaigns, a reasonable threshold is about 4 emails per week to limit unsubscribes and complaints. To preserve your deliverability and sender reputation, it is highly recommended to use dedicated IPs for your marketing mailings. Indeed, shared IPs can harm your reputation if shared with unreliable senders.
Beware of blacklisting!
It is essential to follow good email sending practices to avoid complaints from your clients. Too many reports can lead to your IPs being listed in anti-spam databases used by email providers. The result: your mailings are blocked, your emails no longer reach inboxes, and your domain and sender are penalized. There are certification programs such as Sender Score Certified that provide access to whitelists, but these services are expensive, lengthy to obtain, and do not guarantee a permanent status. It’s better to adopt a proactive strategy: regularly clean your lists, maintain a healthy database, and optimize your mail content to encourage client engagement.
Care for the content of your mails
The content of a mail represents about a quarter of the final score influencing deliverability. Every detail counts, whether it’s the HTML code or the drafting of your messages. Avoid fancy elements in the subject line, notably special characters, and monitor vocabulary: some words like “free” or “cheap” are often associated with spam. For your emailing campaigns, maintain a good balance between images and text, with a higher proportion of text. Avoid mails made up of only one image. Moreover, encode your mail in UTF-8 to ensure optimal compatibility with different browsers and messaging systems. Finally, conduct tests (litmus.com) to verify the display and reception by your recipients.
To improve your deliverability, it is recommended to use online tools like SpamAssassin to test your emails. These tools analyze the content, HTML code, responsive design, as well as technical aspects related to sending authentication. A score above 5 indicates that your mail is at high risk of being classified as spam. Before any mailing, test your campaigns and correct identified errors. Also, ensure that your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are well-configured. These authentication protocols are essential to ensure that your messages are recognized as legitimate by messaging services.
Deliverability myths: sorting out fact from fiction
Unfortunately, deliverability is subject to many misconceptions that have sometimes persisted for many years… even if they have long been obsolete. Here are some examples:
- Myth: The open rate of emails has a direct impact on deliverability.
- Reality: The open rate may influence the perception of your mailings, but it is not a determining factor in deliverability according to email services.
- Myth: Anti-spam filters only block illegal emails.
- Reality: Anti-spam filters also target content deemed undesirable or annoying for recipients, even if legal.
- Myth: Using certain keywords in the email subject guarantees good deliverability.
- Reality: Vocabulary can influence message classification, but the sender’s reputation, content, and domain quality have a much stronger impact on emails reaching the inbox.
- Myth: Authenticating emails with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC is optional.
- Reality: These protocols are essential to guarantee your emails are recognized as legitimate. Without them, your mailings can be rejected or end up in spam.
- Myth: Once your emails reach the inbox, the work is done.
- Reality: Deliverability also depends on recipient engagement: open rates, click rates, and response rates influence your reputation.
- Myth: Buying a contact list is a good starting point for an emailing campaign.
- Reality: This severely damages your reputation, increases complaints, bounces, and can cause your domain or IPs to be blocked by email services.
- Myth: Sending a maximum number of emails in a short time maximizes impact.
- Reality: Poorly controlled frequency generates unsubscribes, complaints, and can lower your deliverability score.
Improving mail deliverability relies on a combination of technical actions upstream (notably SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication) and constant efforts to optimize the content of each email. It is also essential to maintain a good sender reputation by sending positive signals to email providers: low complaint rate, high engagement, and up-to-date contact lists. By following these tips and avoiding common pitfalls, you maximize your chances of reaching inboxes and succeeding in your email marketing campaigns.
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