The objective of an e-mail campaign is to ensure e-mails reach several recipients whose schedules in terms of checking their inbox may be different. This concept of sending the message to its recipient’s inbox is deliverability. Deliverability is influenced by not only the quality of your campaign but also by the different rules of the e-mails servers and the ISPs. In addition to your efforts in creating campaigns, you will also have to know the preferences of your potential customers. According to an indicator on the deliverability 2017 from Return Path, it seems that on average, 1 message out of 5, never reaches the inbox, which means that 20% of a campaign are lost either in the spam folder or are blocked by the ISPs. This is how you can optimize your deliverability:
- Do not use spam wordsor excessive punctuation excessive inside the whole message (body + subject)
- Use a sender address connected to a safe domain ( same for the IP address)
- Use a professional routing system such as Mailprowhich offers the authentication of the e-mails with the help of SPF and DKIM.
- Make sure the unsubscribing link is visible; the rate of complaints also has an impact on the deliverability. If a user is unable to find the unsubscribe link he may be forced to complain which will impact the campaign. Therefore, the unsubscribe link should be visible.
- Clean your database because too many hard bounces have a negative impact on the deliverability
- Customizeyour e-mail campaign: the messages with the highest rate of conversion are considered as wanted by the recipients and this has a positive impact on the deliverability.
Some definitions from the article:
- ISPs: Internet Service Provider
- Spam words: keywords belonging to the advertisement jargons (offered, for free etc)
- SPF: Sender Policy Framework, checking standard for a domain name when sending a message
- DKIM: Domain Keys Identified Mail, authentification and cryptic standard of an e-mail
- Hard bounces: message indicating that the delivery of a message has failed (in the case of a invalid e-mail address for example )