How to increase your email delivery rate

If you want your company to be known you need to get on the email marketing boat. It's hands down, one of the most effective marketing channels. However, it's not just about creating an email and sending it. You need to be smart about your campaigns so you won't end up in the dreaded spam folder. Today we will show you how to increase the delivery rate, so emails will always reach your recipients.

How to avoid spam/junk folder?

Emails landing in the spam folder can be a real nightmare for any email marketer. Luckily there are few things that can cause this and there is a simple solution for each, to increase your email delivery rate and reach your customers again.

Common Cause 1 

Firstly, there are too many recipients reporting your email as spam (complaints/abuse reports) which created an issue with increasing delivery rate.  Check your Activity screen and your reputation for further information about your complaint rate.  The threshold toleration for spam is .1% that is 1 complaint about every 1000 emails sent.

Recommended Actions

1. Make sure you are sending what your subscribers are expecting to receive.
2. Ensure the from address is recognizable and could not be perceived as deceptive.
3. Reduce the frequency of your campaigns or emails.
4. Change your subject lines to be more relevant.
5. Add more relevant text content to your messages.
6. Use the List-Unsubscribe header option.
7. Make sure you have a clear unsubscribe option that is easy to use.
8. Then reduce the frequency to addresses that have not opened or clicked recently.

Common Cause 2

Too much of your email is sent to invalid or inactive email addresses. Check your reputation details for further information about your invalid email percentage. You should monitor this closely.

Recommended Actions

1. Ensure that addresses that bounce (NDR's) more than twice are removed from your list.
2. Avoid mailing to addresses that have not opened or clicked recently.

Common Cause 3

You have not validated your domain(s) properly for SPF and DKIM to allow your domains to trust our servers to send emails on their behalf. That can give you a heavy blow in increasing your email delivery rate and it's a must nowadays, if you want to sent content.

Recommended Actions

1. Ensure SPF and DKIM are properly configured for all the domains you send from. These are simple TXT entries on your domains DNS that tell recipient servers to "trust" our servers for sending your mail.

Why my email status is "Sent" - but not arriving?

It's frustrating when you see that your emails are being sent and everything seems alright, but they don't actually reach the recipients. In short it means that your email delivery is low. Thankfully there are few reasons why is that and how you can increase it.

Common Cause 1

You are hitting Spam Traps which are dynamically created accounts that are used to stop unsolicited bulk email. Spam Traps are often inactive (old) accounts that get re-established so ESP's can detect mail that is being sent to them indicating using old/outdated lists.

Recommended Actions

1. Segment your transactional and marketing emails by setting and adhering to your Account Type. This can be achieved with sub-accounts.
2. Ensure that addresses that bounce (NDR's) more than twice are removed from your list.
3. Avoid mailing to addresses that have not opened or clicked recently.

Common Cause 2

Too many of your emails are being detected as spam by ESP's reputation systems and spam filtering software such as Spam Assassin. ESP's use common blacklisting services as well to help determine the probability of your email being spam.

Recommended Actions

1. Make sure you are sending what your subscribers are expecting to receive.
2. Ensure the from address is recognizable and could not be perceived as deceptive.
3. Then, reduce the frequency of your campaigns or emails.
4. Change your subject lines to be more relevant.
5. Add more relevant text content to your messages.
6. Use the List-Unsubscribe header option.
7. Make sure you have a clear unsubscribe option that is easy to use.
8. Reduce frequency to addresses that have not opened or clicked recently.

Why email is bouncing?

High bounce rates can be a reason of low delivery rate. In order to increase it you need to first recognize the symptoms:

1. When you receive an unusually high number of bounce messages.
2. Your open, click, and unsubscribe rates decline significantly.
3. Subscribers inform you that your mail is not being delivered to their inbox or to their spam/junk folder.
4. Some or all of your email sent to your own email account is not received in the inbox or the spam/junk folder.
5. When you are seeing connection issues in your bounce messages.
6. You are seeing blacklisting or blocked information in your bounce messages.

Common Cause 1

The IP your email is being delivered on is on a block list.

Recommended Actions

1. Visit a few blacklist lookup sites such as Sender Base or MultiRBL. If you have a private IP it will be your responsibility to get the IP removed (we are here to help too). If you do not have a private IP, then please let us know by contacting support. We have automated and manual systems in place that usually detect these before you do, but sometimes there can be a block caused by one client that affects others.
2. Review the common ESP's best practice documentation - for example, http://mail.live.com/mail/policies.aspx for Microsoft providers like Hotmail, Windows Live, and Outlook.

Common Cause 2

Account Configuration.

Recommended Actions

1. Ensure your DNS server is configured correctly.
2. Check if you have validated your sending domains for SPF and DKIM.
3. Ensure you have set up a CNAME custom tracking domain.
4. If you have a private IP, contact support to help you white-label your DNS lookup.

Common Cause 3

Volume Caps.

Recommended Actions

For large volume senders, a second private IP might be available.  Contact support if you are seeing bounces due to volume caps.

Michael

Spend most of my time collaborating with our fantastic team! When I’m not talking email I’m usually watching hockey or behind a boat.