Email deliverability is a hot topic in 2021. At a time when we are trying to communicate with our contacts in the best way possible, the concern of seeing our emails arrive in spam, or to not arrive at all, is very real. Filters are multiplying, robots are more efficient and the number of emails is always increasing. All these points make the control of email deliverability complicated.

To better understand what’s behind this notion and how to improve email deliverability with marketing automation, let’s take a look at the essentials and best practices for measurement and avoid the traps. 

Definition:

Email deliverability is the quantity of emails that arrive in the inboxes of your contacts in relation to the number of emails sent. This notion is essential because an email that does not arrive in an inbox does not deliver the desired message. Whether it’s an important contract renewal email, an order email or a marketing message, it hurts your customer relationship or your prospecting. Your deliverability can be impacted by several things:

• Your database
• The content of the email 
• The frequency of sending 
• The opening rates 

Measures:

To measure the deliverability of your emails, there are several platforms:

• Glockapps : offers 3 tokens to test and analyse your senderscore, your HTML errors, your bounces, your reputation, etc. This complete tool is particularly powerful.
• Mailtester : is simple and effective; you send an email to a test address to measure important performance indicators. 
• SendForensics : allows you to compare your results with other companies in your sector and gives you advice to improve your deliverability.

To interpret the results you will be given, here are some tips:

1. Your senderscore must be above 95%. This is the most important criterion because it defines whether your email will arrive in spam or not.

2. Your senderscore depends on the reputation of your IP, your domain name and your content.

3 Tips for top deliverability

• Comply with the GDPR

Obligations from the General Data Protection Regulation, such as opt-in and preference center, have a positive impact on your deliverability. A clean database with consenting contacts increases your open rate. 

As a reminder, an opt-in field is mandatory to send emails to contacts. To go further, you can use the double opt-in: following a form submission, you send an email to your contact asking him to validate his agreement to receive your emails. This allows you to clean up false email addresses and typos. 

• Pay attention to the content

From the subject line, to the body of the email, to the images and links, be careful with your emails. Personalise your emails and add emojis. Don’t write words like “taxes” or “great promo” for example. The length should be moderate. We advise a maximum of 1000 words for SEO; it is absolutely necessary to be concise in your emails. You can put a few images, but do not exceed 40%. 

• Optimise your reputation

You can send emails with a shared or a dedicated IP address. A dedicated IP address sends only your emails. This is the right solution for you if the amount of emails you send daily is minimal. If your daily target number is high, it’s necessary to warm up your IP address by gradually increasing the number of emails you send. 

With a shared IP address, you benefit from other companies’ mailings.

Marketing automation for efficient deliverability

The all-in-one deliverability:

• opt-in 
• preference center
• personalisation of your subject line
• responsive email 
• ability to test your emails before sending 
• shared IP address

In a few words, you collect data in compliance with the GDPR and easily integrate an opt-in. You can also set up double opt-in. The preference center is very simple to add to your communication. To further improve your email deliverability, you can segment your contacts to make sure you send the right email to the right person, and thus increase your open rate. In addition, the email editor will help you create responsive emails which adapt to all email solutions on computer, tablet or phone. You will be able to create, test and send optimised emails without much effort.

At the end of the day, your deliverability depends on you! A bad senderscore will have negative consequences on your emails. However, it is not definitive, by adopting our advice you will improve your deliverability.