How many of your customers aren’t receiving your emails?
You go to the trouble of writing and sending great emails. Yet some of your customers aren’t receiving them. Why?
It’s called “deliverability,” and it’s an important part of your email plan. If you are sending 100 emails and only 60 are receiving them, there’s a problem.
Email deliverability is about the percentage of your readers who are receiving your emails. Keeping up with this includes monitoring your bounce rate. It also includes increasing the safety and authentication of your emails to ensure your emails aren’t getting rejected by your subscriber’s in box.
In 2003 the US Legislature passed the “Can-Spam Act.” This is a law to prevent unsolicited porn and spam from bombarding your inbox. There are some hefty penalties for people who persist sending such material.
As a result, your email marketing provider is on high alert for marketers who are sending this unwelcome material. They can be fined or even closed down if their clients are sending such material.
One flag for the providers is “low deliverability.” That metric shows how much of the mail is probably going to spam. The spam folder means that the receiving email service rejected the email.
So in order to be more effective and to keep a good reputation with your email provider, here are some ways to improve your email deliverability
Have a Double Opt-in Process
Use double opt-in forms to ensure the information subscribers provide is correct. For example, an incorrect email address or typo can easily lead to your email being rejected. However, double opt-in forms require your readers to confirm their information, thus avoiding this altogether.
You know, that’s the “check your email and click on the confirmation link” response we see often when we sign up. Just be sure to make this requirement clear when signing up; otherwise, it can lead to further confusion.
The double opt-in confirmation means it’s not a robot and that the email address is real.
Establish a Proper Send Schedule
In other words, don’t spam your readers.
If you send too many emails, they won’t see you as trustworthy nor know the content as personalized and valuable. If your content gets marked as spam, eventually, their email service provider will reject you altogether.
And yours might also.
So how many would be too many? Many respected marketers send daily or two or three times a day. If the material is good, that’s fine.
Five times or more a day could seem excessive. It depends on what you are sending. Certainly don’t send that many with just sales pitches in them.
Enable Tools to Authenticate Your Emails
We know that hackers have become more of a problem to all of us. Some have been known to hack email sending addresses and spam clients with porn or predatory content. Obviously, this gives the sender a bad name. (Kind of like identity theft).
The techies have come to the rescue. There are tools available to authenticate and secure your sending ip address – thus stopping such predatory behavior.
A terrific site for such help is SparkPost.com. They have free tools available to help you secure your emails.
Add Easy Unsubscribe Options
This is imperative.
I remember when I had my first unsubscriber. It really hurt my feelings, but that was just being naive.
Since then, I have learned differently. While not something you want to see, it helps improve your deliverability. It keeps those truly interested in seeing your content on the list and screens out those who aren’t interested in your message.
You can “be yourself,” without having to placate those who aren’t really your people.
Implementing guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission, most email service providers require that you add an obvious way for subscribers to opt-out if they want to. This also further authenticates your emails.
To recap: the goal of proper email deliverability is to make sure your content ends up in the subscriber’s inbox in order to be seen and clicked open to be read. If your emails never make it or consistently end up in their spam folder, you won’t see any conversions. In the most extreme cases, you will have to start over – from scratch.
So take a deep breath and go check your email account. It requires mindfulness and a little work, but it’s so worth the effort!!
