But while email is a powerful tool, it's nothing if it doesn't reach your readers' inboxes. Think about it: it would be incredibly frustrating to spend hours each week crafting the perfect email only to have it end up in the spam folder.
That's why mastering email deliverability is essential.
The reality is that only 79.6% of emails sent reach their final destination, meaning 1 in 5 emails are lost due to poor deliverability.
This guide breaks down 10 important steps to mastering sri lanka b2b leads your email deliverability, plus best practices to ensure your emails land in your subscribers' inboxes.
So let's take a closer look!
What is Email Deliverability?
Email deliverability mainly refers to the percentage of emails you send that reach your subscribers' inboxes. As mentioned above, the average deliverability rate is about 79.6%. This means that 4 out of 5 emails you send actually reach your subscribers' inboxes.
But email deliverability isn't just about how many emails reach their final destination. It encompasses a broad combination of factors and practices, including:
Sender and domain reputation adjustments
Spam report rate
List Hygiene
Technical Certification
Subscriber Interactions
Looking at these factors and practices collectively will help you determine how effective your email is at getting into inboxes.
Email deliverability is the cornerstone of any successful email marketing strategy, especially if you run an email newsletter.
If your email doesn't land in someone's inbox, it won't be opened. If it's not opened, it won't be read. If it's not read, it won't be clicked. If it's not clicked, it won't buy anything or take the action you want it to.
As a result, your subscribers don't get the value they signed up for, and you don't get the engagement or sales you were hoping for.
In many ways, deliverability is the most important aspect of email marketing, as poor deliverability creates a domino effect that negatively impacts every other part of your email strategy.
How to measure email deliverability
Email deliverability can be measured with a simple calculation:
For example, let's say you sent an email to 5,536 subscribers, of which 4,208 made it to the inbox:
4,208 ÷ 5,536 = 76.0%
In this case, your email deliverability rate would be 76%.
Criteria for high email deliverability
So how high does email deliverability need to be?
Generally, a good coverage rate is in the 85% to 95% range.
Most email service providers (ESPs) claim to offer email deliverability rates of around 95%. If you can get your deliverability rate in this range, you're on the right track. If your deliverability rate is below 90%, you need to be proactive and work on improving it.
If your deliverability rate is below 85%, you should focus most of your efforts on increasing that number.
10 steps to improve your email deliverability
How can you improve your email deliverability?
The most effective way is to think from the perspective of the people who make email possible: Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.
Can you imagine how many emails are sent every day?
1 million? 100 million? 1 billion?
In fact, a staggering 347 billion emails are sent every day - that's roughly 43 emails for every person on the planet - and email providers act as the highways that get these emails to the right place.
The problem is that a lot of these emails are spam, scams, and other things the recipient doesn't want, which is why email providers like Gmail need to filter out as much of the junk as they can to keep people using their services and receiving email.
Did you know that in 2022, 48% of all emails sent were spam. That's almost half!
Email providers are constantly working to protect themselves from the ongoing onslaught of junk email, and one of the ways they do this is by punishing bad sending habits.
They have algorithms that look for characteristics of spam emails, ensuring that recipients are not inundated with spam.
Luckily, there are some proven strategies for optimizing your deliverability to ensure your emails reach your readers' inboxes when they hit send.
Follow these 10 steps to master your email deliverability and ensure your emails are getting delivered to your subscribers.
1. Email Domain Authentication
The first step to improving your deliverability is to authenticate your sender domain with DKIM, SPF, and DMARC. These might sound like technical jargon, but don't worry - they're just the technical steps required to establish a trusted sender reputation on the backend.
Email authentication tells your subscribers' servers that your emails are coming from a verified email domain and not from a scammer.
Here are three ways to authenticate your email domain:
Sender Policy Framework (SPF) SPF is an authentication method to ensure that email is coming from a legitimate, authorized sender and not a relay server.
Domain Keys Identified Mails (DKIM) DKIM uses public key cryptography to ensure that emails are not altered in transit, including the use of email domains found in the DNS and digital signatures.
Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) DMARC is a mechanism to protect against spam and phishing attacks by authenticating emails using DKIM and SPF methods and blocking fraudulent messages from certain domains.
For details on how to set up these three authentication methods, please refer to the separate detailed article.
Brand Indicators for Messaging Identification (BIMI) BIMI is a new email security technology that allows brands to use verified sender logos with supported email providers. Check out our article on how to set up BIMI.
2. Warm up your email list
Before you send email from a new IP address for the first time, it's important to go through a process called email domain warming (or IP warming).
The process is pretty simple: start by sending an email to a small group of your most engaged subscribers, then gradually increase the number of subscribers you send to (while expanding to less engaged subscribers as well).
This way, you're proving to email providers that your emails aren't spam by engaging with your recipients. Engagement signals like high open and click rates show that your emails are relevant and valuable to your readers.
This process essentially builds your email sender reputation - think of it like a credit score.
Over time, as you get consistently good engagement, email providers will give you more credit in a sense (i.e. the ability to send to larger groups at once without a deliverability penalty).
The key is to be consistent and stick to a sending schedule - if you're sending irregular emails to your subscribers, you're more likely to trigger spam filters.
