Email Deliverability Issues (With the Best Practices to Solve Them)

Your emails are worthless unless they land in your subscriber’s inbox.

Even a slight concern with email deliverability can cost you many opportunities and customers. And flush your hard work in the spam folder.

But the good news is that it’s a solvable problem.

Here are some common email deliverability mistakes and how you fix them with proven tips.

1. Using Unreliable Source to Send Emails

All it can take is a bad IP to crash your email campaign.

While you put most of your energy into creating the perfect email, it’s equally important to also apply the same to the last step of finishing the process. That’s the address which you use to send those emails.

ISPs keep track of the IP addresses used for mass communication to detect spam. If your IP lands on its radar, your email deliverability will automatically take a big hit.

Here are the best practices to avoid it.

• Since domain reputation plays a huge role in determining your deliverability, it’s better to use it cautiously. Create a sub-domain especially for your email communication so that its results don’t impact the domain.
• Steer clear from using shared IPs for your customer communication. Shared IPs are resources that other businesses also have a portion of. It means that if someone is misusing the IP, it will directly impact your email deliverability.

• Warm up your IP addresses to build credibility among the ISPs. Using a brand new IP for bulk communication raises bright red flags and blocks the delivery to the subscriber’s inbox.
• Many tools even provide you with a list of blocked IP addresses. You can raise a delisting request if your IP is also popping up in such lists. Once the claims are verified, the IP is marked safe for receivers.

2. Failing to Create Inbox-friendly Emails

Irrespective of how well-intentioned your message is, if it lacks substance, it will be called out by the ISPs.

That’s why creating emails that meet the standard guidelines is crucial.

• If you design HTML emails, ensure the code is written and formatted correctly. A poorly written letter diminishes the credibility of the email.
• Avoid spammy subject lines and words like ‘money’ & ‘lottery’ in your emails. These are instantly flagged and blocked by the ISPs.
• Don’t flood your email content with hyperlinks. Use a couple of CTAs to link to the landing pages.

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• Maintain the 60/40 ratio of text and images in your emails.
• Draft the information so that you don’t need attachments to your email. Adding pdf files to your email also hampers your email deliverability.

3. Targeting the Wrong Audience

People unsubscribing to your emails can be a fatal blow to your deliverability game.

When your messages reach the wrong audience, it can lead to more people marking your emails as spam. And that can get you straight to the blocklist of ISPs.

So, before you run your next campaign, ensure that you are taking care of your mailing list hygiene.

• Don’t rely on the lists purchased off the market. If you are using such bought data, run a quick email verification check to see if those are valid or not.
• Remove the unsubscribed customers from your next mailing list. Instead, focus on people who are genuinely interested in your messages.
• Implement double opt-ins for your subscribers to get authentic contacts only.
• Regularly clean your lists of invalid email addresses and bounced ones.

4. Cutting Corners With Sender Authentication

You don’t need to be a tech geek to get this covered.

Implement the basic authentication policies to boost your chances of better email deliverability. Start with at least the following three.

• DKIM: DomainKeys Identified Mail comes with two sets of encryption keys. One that is added to your email signature and is called a private key. Another is shared with the ISPs and is called a public key. These two keys are verified whenever you send an email to confirm if the email came from the original source. Otherwise, it’s put to spam or even rejected.
• SPF: Sender Policy Framework is a record with your DNS provider that maintains the list of all IP addresses that are allowed to reach a recipient’s inbox. It reduces the problem of phishing and spoofing also.
• DMARC: Domain-Based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance ensures that the DKIM and SPF are appropriately aligned. It detects any faults in the implementation of these two processes to further boost email security.

5. Ignoring the Testing Aspects

There isn’t a shortcut to better email deliverability. Neither is it permanent.

You need to constantly monitor the metrics and introduce relevant changes to your deliverability game.

• Sender Reputation Score: It is the fundamental parameter that tells you how likely your message will reach the subscriber’s inbox. There are online tools that can analyze your setup and score it.

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• You must also keep an eye on other crucial parameters like bounce rate, unsubscribe percentage, and open rate.
• You can even send yourself a test email to see where it will land in your mailbox.
• Use A/B testing of the email draft, design, and mailing list to eliminate flawed content and audience.

What Else Can You Do?

There might be no shortcut to boosting your email deliverability, but you can definitely aid the process with the right tools.

Invest in a reliable tool to test and improve your email deliverability from the get-go so that you don’t lose even a single lead to junk. Look for a tool that can

• Help you build a better reputation.
• Implement authentication policies like DKIM and SPF by default.
• Support flexible resource allocation so that you can switch from shared to private IP seamlessly.
• Even save your time and content reputation with ready-to-use templates.

If you are looking for a recommendation, go for SendPost. It has clean APIs with proper documentation so that you can integrate them easily with your existing system. It supports over 14 programming languages for additional flexibility and even lets you configure custom alerts and notifications for real-time updates.

And the 14-day free trial with 24/7 support is perfect for you to make an informed decision.