Best Practices for Email: Ensuring Inbox Deliverability

By following these best practices, email marketers can improve their deliverability rates and maximize the impact of their email.

Deliverability is a critical concern for email marketers, as it determines whether your carefully crafted messages actually reach your audience’s inbox or end up in the spam folder. Below is a comprehensive guide to best practices that will help improve your deliverability rates and ensure your emails make it to your subscribers’ inboxes.

By following these best practices, email marketers can significantly improve their deliverability rates and maximize the impact of their email campaigns. Strong deliverability leads to higher engagement, better ROI, and a more trusted sender reputation.

Build and Maintain a Clean Email List

Having a healthy, engaged email list is the foundation of good deliverability.

  • Use Double Opt-In: Always use a double opt-in process to confirm that subscribers genuinely want to receive your emails. This reduces the chances of spam complaints and ensures a higher quality list.
  • Regularly Clean Your List: Periodically remove inactive subscribers who haven’t opened or engaged with your emails over a set period (e.g., 6 months). This improves open rates and reduces the risk of being flagged by ISPs.
  • Avoid Purchased Lists: Never buy email lists. These are often filled with unengaged, outdated, or unverified emails that will harm your sender reputation and trigger spam filters.
  • Use Preference Centers: Let subscribers choose how often they want to hear from you and what kind of content they prefer. This reduces the chance of them marking your emails as spam.

Authenticate Your Sending Domain

Domain authentication is crucial for building trust with email service providers (ESPs) and ensuring that your emails are considered legitimate.

  • Set Up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC:
    • SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Ensures that your sending server is authorized to send emails on behalf of your domain.
    • DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Adds a digital signature to your emails to verify that they haven’t been tampered with.
    • DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance): Combines SPF and DKIM for enhanced email security and offers feedback on the legitimacy of your email traffic.

Avoid Spam Triggers

Many words, phrases, and practices can cause spam filters to flag your emails, even if they are legitimate.

  • Avoid Spammy Words: Words like “free,” “guaranteed,” “limited-time offer,” and “click here” can trigger spam filters. Use them sparingly and naturally in your copy.
  • Be Cautious with Symbols and Excessive Punctuation: Avoid overusing exclamation marks, all caps, and dollar signs in subject lines and body text.
  • Limit Images: Keep a good balance between text and images. A good rule of thumb is to maintain at least 60% text and 40% images in your emails. Avoid using a single large image with little to no text as this can trigger spam filters.

Craft Compelling and Relevant Subject Lines

Your subject line plays a huge role in both deliverability and open rates.

  • Be Descriptive and Transparent: Ensure your subject lines clearly describe what’s inside the email. Deceptive or clickbait-y subject lines can lead to high spam complaints.
  • Personalize Where Appropriate: Personalized subject lines, such as including the recipient’s name, can improve engagement but avoid overdoing it.
  • Keep It Short and Impactful: Ideally, subject lines should be between 40-60 characters. Many mobile devices cut off longer subject lines, so be concise.

Monitor Engagement and List Quality

Monitoring how recipients interact with your emails will help maintain good deliverability over time.

  • Track Metrics: Keep an eye on your bounce rates, spam complaints, open rates, and click-through rates. A high bounce rate can indicate a list quality issue, while a high spam complaint rate could damage your sender reputation.
  • Re-engage or Remove Inactive Subscribers: Create re-engagement campaigns for subscribers who haven’t interacted in a while. If they don’t engage, consider removing them from your list.
  • Segment Your List: Send targeted and relevant content to different segments of your audience to increase engagement. This improves both open and click-through rates, positively impacting your sender reputation.

Test Before Sending

Testing is key to ensuring your email reaches inboxes and looks good across various devices.

  • Use Inbox Placement Testing Tools: Tools like Litmus, Email on Acid, or your ESP’s built-in testing tools can check if your emails are likely to land in spam folders or promotions tabs before sending.
  • Test Across Devices: Ensure that your emails render correctly across multiple devices and email clients (mobile, desktop, Gmail, Outlook, etc.). Responsive design is critical for mobile users.
  • A/B Test Subject Lines and Content: Experiment with different subject lines and content to see what resonates best with your audience. This can boost open and click rates, positively impacting your sender reputation.

Optimize Send Times

Sending your emails at the right time can increase engagement, which positively influences deliverability.

  • Consider Your Audience’s Time Zones: Make sure your emails arrive when your audience is likely to check their inbox. Many email marketing platforms allow you to optimize for send times based on the recipient’s location.
  • Send Consistently: Don’t send too frequently, but also avoid long periods of inactivity. A consistent schedule helps build trust with your audience and ISPs.

Use a Recognizable Sender Name and Email Address

Your sender name and email address should build trust and familiarity with your audience.

  • Use a Consistent Sender Name: Stick to a recognizable and trusted sender name. For example, “John from Acme” or just “Acme Corp.”
  • Avoid No-Reply Addresses: Always use a valid and monitored email address for sending. A “no-reply” email address can reduce engagement and frustrate customers who may want to reply or ask questions.

Monitor Your Sender Reputation

Your sender reputation is a key factor in whether your emails land in inboxes.

  • Monitor Blacklists: Use tools like MxToolbox or Google Postmaster Tools to check if your IP or domain has been blacklisted.
  • Keep an Eye on Spam Complaints: ESPs often provide feedback on spam complaints. If this number spikes, you need to adjust your practices quickly.

Comply with Email Marketing Laws

Failure to comply with laws like GDPR or CAN-SPAM can result in penalties and damage your reputation.

  • Include an Unsubscribe Link: Make it easy for subscribers to opt out of your emails. This is a legal requirement in many countries and improves the overall quality of your list by removing uninterested contacts.
  • Provide Contact Information: Always include your company’s physical address and contact information in your emails to comply with legal requirements.
  • Respect Privacy Preferences: Honor user data preferences and be transparent about how you collect and use email addresses.