What Does Email Deliverability Mean to You?

Email deliverability is the most crucial part of your marketing plan. You can have the world's most talented copywriters and the most eye catching graphic designs, but if your email ends up in the spam folder, or perpetually floating around cyberspace, your hard work is all for nothing. But how do you know that your emails are reaching their destination? Most importantly, what do you do when you find out they aren't?

According to the Global Email Deliverability Benchmark Report by Return Path, “only 81% of all permission based email makes it to the world’s inboxes. Globally, one out of every five emails lands either in a spam or junk folder (7%) or simply goes missing—blocked by ISP level filtering (12%)”. Though an 81% deliverability rate is certainly respectable, over time, that 19% difference can make a big impact on your bottom line.

Consider this: if you send out 1,000 emails, that is 190 customers who will never hear your message. 190 missed opportunities to make a connection with a person who might be looking for exactly what you are selling. If you snowball this as your email lists continue to grow, you could soon be looking at thousands of lost clients.

To combat this, monitor your email deliverability closely by analyzing bounce back errors, and act to rectify the problems as they arise. If the subscriber’s mailbox doesn't exist, you can remove it from your list. However, if it is a temporary issue, the email address can continue to be monitored and sent mailings periodically. List cleansing and email verification services like LeadSpend exist to aide marketers in this.

Spam filters make things a little bit stickier, even if all of the addresses you are sending to are valid. They are set up to make sure that unwanted emails aren't sent. That doesn't mean true marketing emails, like the ones you mail out. There are ways that you can ensure that your emails aren't marked spam:

1. Make sure you send relevant content: Don't send the same emails over and over. Also, make sure that your message is something your subscribers are in the market to hear. The key is to increase your customer’s engagement and the best way to ensure that is to provide relevant content delivered with the right frequency. Additionally, don’t let your message be too self promotional. Offer something relevant to their lives that will provide value even if they aren’t necessarily purchasing a product.
2. Don't email too often: A few times a week is okay, but don't send out messages every day or multiple times every day. If people become annoyed with you, you will end up in their spam folder.
3. Only mail to people who opt in: Don't buy email lists, or just send huge email blasts. If a person cannot connect the information in their inbox with a specific request they made, they are likely to hit the spam button and be done with it. If you get too many spam hits, your email address will start to show up as spam.

For more information on how to make sure your emails get to their destination contact us.