Creating to Market
Deliverability can make or break your email marketing plan, no matter how good your writing is
Your email list is the most valuable asset to your email marketing strategy. But do you know if your newsletter has gained a bad reputation?
It’s easy to miss, but if internet service providers (ISPs) give you a low enough reputation score, your hard work in crafting your copy might be going straight to the spam folder.
Positive Reputation Builders
You can build up positive or negative reputation scores for your email domain.
Positive reputation scores are primarily built up through engagement:
- click-throughs,
- replies, and
- open rates*
*Open rates are less accurate to measure performance since mid-2021. This is mainly due to the Apple device privacy update, which will report all emails as automatically opened to the tracker. Email services like HEY, which focus on blocking trackers, are also growing. However, Android devices don’t have this issue in general.
Negative Reputation
A negative reputation score can keep you trapped in the Promotions tab, or sent right to spam. Negative scores come from:
- Hard bounces (recipient no longer exists),
- complaints, and
- subscriber deleting without opening
That’s why a smaller, targeted audience can preserve a reputation score more effectively than a huge general following.
Perils of a Free Email Domain
Your inbox uses DMARC records (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) to manage email spoofing and spam.
A lack of a record will affect deliverability- especially if you’re sending from a free email account like Gmail. Using and verifying your own email domain will help keep your newsletter in the clear, and continue to reach your audience.
Google Postmaster
Google Postmaster is one way to check your reputation score.
Once you verify your domain, you can find out how often your emails are sent to spam, and the reputations of your IP and domain.
Reputation Repair
Got a bad reputation? Don’t panic.
Knowing what drives a bad reputation is the first step to repairing it. According to Growclass, there are several things you can do that help keep your newsletter healthy.
Keeping a warm list
Your subscribers won’t open your email if they’ve forgotten that they signed up in the first place. Make sure to communicate with them on a regular basis (weekly, or monthly if you’re busy).
Confirming their subscription with a double opt-in (where the first email requests the reader to click and confirm the subscription) helps to automatically qualify your newsletter as okay. This is also a means of preventing bots from signing up for your list.
Don’t over-do your messages
Consistent communication is good, but spamming the recipient with emails is even worse. Sending multiple messages per day (or even daily) is the surest way to ensure that your emails get marked down as spam.
Make sure that you pace your messaging. This is exactly why it’s better to send consistent emails out monthly rather than more often, so long as you’re creating value for the reader.
Keep it clean
People change jobs, and emails can age. If a segment of your readership hasn’t opened their emails in over a year, it’s possible that those emails are inactive. Segmenting out and/or removing these emails out of regular rotation will help keep your active list healthy.
Better yet, check in on the inactive group to see how they’re doing. It’s possible that they have simply forgotten why they signed up for your email and can be prompted back into taking an interest.
(Spam) trigger warning
Email providers have a list of words that often appear in scam emails. Activecampaign estimates that nearly 200 spam trigger words are being tracked in 2022. Words and phrases that set off the filter can include:
- Order Now
- Promotion
- Winner
- Free Gift
- Promotion
These words on their own won’t necessarily trigger the spam filter if a few are used selectively, and your reputation score is already good. Keyword stuffing and an existing low score, however, can make things much worse.
Maintaining a clean reputation score sounds like a lot of work, but much of the requirements are consistent with maintaining solid writing habits, and a good relationship with your audience. Approaching your newsletters with this intent will go a long way toward making email deliverability something that will help, rather than hinder, your connection to your audience.
Originally posted on Medium on October 7, 2022.