The Ultimate Guide to Improving Email Deliverability with Constant Contact Part2

Email testing and monitoring Even if you incorporate all the best practices in email marketing, no email campaign is perfect.

You should always test your emails ahead of time to narrow down what works and what doesn’t. Send small batches of the same email with minor tweaks to see which works better, then send the higher-performing email to your whole list. When you test emails, focus on the preview text — the snippet of the message that appears after the subject line in recipients’ inboxes. Intriguing preview text helps your message stand out and prove it isn’t spam, improving deliverability rates. Remember to monitor your email analytics regularly. Changes in key email metrics like open rates, click-through rates (CTR), and spam complaints can dramatically affect your email deliverability rates.

Advanced email deliverability techniques Once you’ve tackled basic email deliverability best practices, there are some more advanced techniques you can use to boost your deliverability even further. Try these techniques:

Setting up feedback loops To protect your deliverability rates, you must monitor complaints and concerns from email recipients. Luckily, feedback loops can help. Most email service providers offer feedback loops that notify you when your recipients mark your emails as spam. If you use feedback loops, your email provider will send you reports when they receive complaints about your emails. Use the data from these reports to create better emails, avoid future complaints, and improve email deliverability.

Avoiding spam traps and filters Spam traps and filters exist to catch people sending unwanted emails and stop those messages before they reach recipients. You need to avoid these traps to keep your email deliverability high. Ensure you send to engaged users and never purchase email lists to avoid these traps.

Managing sending frequency and scheduling Constantly sending messages will frustrate your recipients and ultimately reduce your deliverability rates. Manage your sending frequency to keep readers engaged without overwhelming them. If you’re not sure how often that is, provide a preference center where they can select email frequency. The schedule of your emails also matters. Avoid sending emails far outside of business hours because this can annoy recipients and make them more likely to flag your message as spam.

Personalized and behavioral email targeting You may wonder which strategy will improve email deliverability the most. One possible answer is personalization and behavioral email targeting. Instead of sending the same email to everyone on your list, segment your audience based on their interests and behavior. For example, send re-engagement emails to people who haven’t interacted with your brand lately, and send thank you messages to people who make a purchase. Targeting and personalizing your emails makes them more appealing to readers, improving your reputation and email deliverability over time.

Email deliverability and marketing impact Email deliverability is only part of email marketing and marketing as a whole. The strategies you implement to improve email deliverability should align with your broader marketing goals. For example, companies hoping to increase customer retention should focus on segmentation and behavioral targeting. Sending targeted emails to existing customers will make your messages more relevant — boosting deliverability — and encouraging customers to stick with the company. If you want to get more out of your email marketing drip campaigns, use strategies for improving deliverability that align with your marketing goals.

Email deliverability tools and software Email deliverability tools and software can also help you increase your deliverability rates. Email automation platforms like Constant Contact include a variety of tools to improve your email marketing campaigns, including their deliverability rates. Constant Contact, for example, uses AI to craft engaging email subject lines and body content with just a few keywords. The improved content keeps readers happy, improving your email deliverability.

Email deliverability tools also help with the following:

Segmenting your email list to send more targeted emails

Running tests to determine the best emails

Sending automatic emails in response to user behaviors like abandoning a cart

Identifying inactive users on your email list to filter out This software allows you to track and analyze the performance of your emails to gain insights into what you can improve.

Common issues with email deliverability Negative actions taken by recipients are a common problem that lowers deliverability rates. If your recipients consistently report your messages as spam, your reputation will suffer, and your deliverability will, too. Address this by removing uninterested users from your email list and only sending well-designed, relevant messages. Similarly, to mitigate high bounce rates, test your emails before sending them to see if there’s any issue that could prevent your message from reaching recipients. Something as simple as a poorly-formated image or an attachment could be the culprit. Finally, it’s crucial to understand and take steps to rectify clone phishing attacks. Clone phishing is a type of scam in which a scammer imitates a legitimate brand and sends fake emails to customers in an attempt to steal sensitive information or send malware. Clone phishing is considered harder to detect than spear phishing because emails generally include similar or the same details as the business’s real communications. If you become aware of a clone phishing attempt that impersonates your business, alert your customers and report the attempt so that your legitimate email deliverability does not suffer. Monitor your email deliverability and other key email metrics on a regular schedule to check for sudden changes that can indicate a problem. If your email deliverability isn’t as high as you’d like, investigate which of these issues may be the cause.

Legal and ethical considerations Regulations exist to prevent companies from spamming people with unwanted emails. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union and the CAN-SPAM Act in the United States both outline how companies can use personal data and send commercial messages. Violating these email regulations can lead to fines and other actions against your business. Understand your obligations as a commercial email sender to avoid these legal problems.

Why purchased email lists are a risk Purchasing an email list is a quick way to add more email recipients, but you should avoid this practice. When you buy an email list, you have no way to know whether those users will be interested in your messages. Sending them emails is a great way to get mass reported for spam and damage your sender reputation beyond repair.

Conclusion and next steps Your email deliverability rates tell you what percentage of your emails are actually reaching recipients’ inboxes. The higher this rate is, the better your email marketing campaign will perform. Implement best practices like using a double opt-in feature, cleaning up your email list, and setting up feedback loops to improve deliverability.