Email deliverability is the cornerstone of any successful email marketing campaign. It defines how many of your emails actually make it to your recipient’s inbox, rather than being flagged as spam or getting lost in the void of the internet. Understanding how to test email deliverability and utilizing the right tools and techniques can make all the difference between high engagement rates and wasted effort.
In this article, we will walk you through how to test your email deliverability, the best practices involved, and the most reliable tools to help you ensure your emails land where they’re supposed to—your audience’s inbox.
What is Email Deliverability?
Email deliverability refers to the ability of your emails to successfully reach the inbox of your intended recipients. It is affected by several factors, including sender reputation, email content, authentication methods, and the overall performance of your email campaigns.
Why is Email Deliverability Important?
In email marketing, the success of your campaign is measured by engagement. However, no one can engage with an email they never receive. If your emails don’t reach your recipients’ inboxes, your open rates, click-through rates, and conversions will suffer. Poor email deliverability can also harm your sender reputation, further reducing your ability to land in the inbox in future campaigns.
Here are some major reasons why ensuring high deliverability is essential:
- Maximizing ROI: A higher deliverability rate ensures more people see your message, thereby increasing the potential return on your investment.
- Protecting Sender Reputation: Internet Service Providers (ISPs) judge your sending behavior. If you consistently send emails that bounce or are marked as spam, it can harm your domain’s reputation.
- Increasing Engagement: Emails that make it to the inbox have a higher chance of being opened, read, and acted upon.
Now, let’s delve into how you can test and ensure that your email deliverability remains high.
How to Test Your Email Deliverability
Testing your email deliverability is essential to knowing whether your emails are successfully making it to your audience’s inbox. Here are some techniques and methods for doing so:
1. Use Dedicated Email Deliverability Testing Tools
There are specialized tools designed to test and monitor your email deliverability. These tools provide insights into whether your emails are flagged as spam, how they perform across different ISPs, and offer suggestions for improvements. Below are some of the most recommended tools to get the job done.
- Warmy: Warmy helps you warm up your email inbox by gradually increasing your sending volume and interaction with your recipients. It is crucial for businesses that want to build a strong sender reputation from the ground up. Warmy also offers analytics to help you monitor the progress of your campaigns.
- GMass: This tool is not only a great email marketing tool but also includes built-in deliverability testing features. It shows how likely your email is to land in the recipient’s inbox or if it will get sent to spam.
- Bouncer: Bouncer focuses on email validation, ensuring that you’re sending emails to real and active email addresses, reducing bounce rates and improving your overall deliverability.
Using these tools can help you identify and solve common deliverability issues before they affect your email campaigns.
2. Authenticate Your Email
Email authentication methods like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC help ISPs verify that your email is legitimate and not being sent by a malicious third party.
- SPF (Sender Policy Framework) ensures that only authorized senders can send emails on behalf of your domain.
- DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) attaches a digital signature to your email, proving that the email content has not been altered during transit.
- DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) helps email senders protect their domain from unauthorized use, such as email spoofing.
Without proper email authentication, your emails are more likely to end up in the spam folder.
3. Monitor Your Sender Reputation
Your sender reputation is critical in determining email deliverability. ISPs use it to judge whether your emails are trustworthy. If your sender reputation is low, your emails will likely be blocked or sent to spam. Tools like SMTP.com provide real-time monitoring of your sender reputation, allowing you to stay ahead of any issues that might impact your deliverability.
- Warm-up Your IP: If you’re using a new IP or haven’t been sending emails for a while, you should consider warming up your IP address. This involves gradually increasing the volume of sent emails over time. Warmy is particularly useful for this.
4. Check Your Bounce Rate
A high bounce rate can indicate poor email deliverability. Emails can bounce for several reasons, such as invalid email addresses or full inboxes. To avoid this, it’s essential to clean your email list regularly using tools like Bouncer, which verifies the validity of email addresses and ensures you’re only sending emails to active accounts.
Best Practices for Improving Email Deliverability
Knowing how to test your email deliverability is only part of the equation. You also need to follow best practices to maintain high deliverability rates.
1. Maintain a Clean Email List
Your email list should consist of active, engaged subscribers. Sending emails to outdated or invalid addresses will lead to high bounce rates and lower your sender reputation. Regularly scrub your email list using a tool like Bouncer to remove inactive subscribers and invalid email addresses.
2. Segment Your Audience
Segmenting your email list allows you to send personalized and relevant emails, which leads to higher engagement rates. ISPs often view high engagement as a positive signal, which can improve your deliverability. GetResponse offers robust segmentation features, helping you tailor your content to specific audiences.
3. Craft Engaging Subject Lines
The subject line of your email is often the first thing a recipient sees. A well-crafted, engaging subject line can encourage users to open the email, improving your open rates. However, using misleading or spammy subject lines can hurt your deliverability. Make sure your subject lines are relevant and truthful.
4. Optimize Email Content
Your email content should be well-structured, visually appealing, and devoid of spammy phrases. Keep in mind that ISPs scan email content to determine whether an email is spam or legitimate. Tools like GetResponse help optimize your email content by offering templates and guidelines for creating engaging, high-quality emails.
5. Include a Clear Unsubscribe Option
Having a clear and accessible unsubscribe button is not only a legal requirement under most anti-spam laws, but it also improves your deliverability. Recipients who cannot easily unsubscribe from your emails might mark them as spam, which negatively impacts your deliverability. Ensure every email you send includes an easy-to-find unsubscribe link.
6. Warm Up Your Domain and IP Address
If you’re just starting out or using a new domain or IP address, warming it up is essential for building a good sender reputation. This involves gradually increasing the number of emails you send over time. Warmy and Campaigner offer tools for warming up your email domain and IP address, helping you avoid being flagged as spam.
7. Use Double Opt-In
Double opt-in is a method that ensures subscribers are genuinely interested in your content. After signing up for your email list, they will receive a confirmation email asking them to verify their subscription. This method reduces the risk of sending emails to invalid or uninterested recipients, improving deliverability.
8. Monitor Your Metrics
Regularly monitor the performance of your email campaigns. Tools like GMass provide detailed analytics on open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and spam complaints. By keeping an eye on these metrics, you can make informed decisions on how to optimize your campaigns and improve deliverability.
Email deliverability is a critical aspect of any email marketing strategy. By regularly testing your email deliverability and using the right tools and techniques, you can ensure your emails reach your audience’s inbox and not the spam folder. Implementing best practices such as email list hygiene, audience segmentation, and content optimization will not only improve your deliverability but also enhance the overall success of your email campaigns.
Whether you’re just starting out or looking to improve an established email marketing strategy, tools like Gsuite, GMass, SMTP.com, GetResponse, Warmy, Campaigner, and Bouncer provide the functionality you need to monitor, test, and optimize your email deliverability. By utilizing these tools and following the outlined best practices, you’ll set your email campaigns up for success and ensure they reach the intended audience.
