Improving Email Deliverability In Your Marketing

With email servers and filters getting more sophisticated there are now more chances for your marketing email to be intercepted by the recipients mail server or mail service provider and your message being marked as spam or even blocked.  

Email deliverability is now an essential consideration of email marketing that has to be in place before you press the send button on an email campaign.  Your email deliverability will directly impact your domain reputation and, make no mistake, your own your domain reputation, not your bulk email provider.  It's you who will make or break your domain reputation.

What is Email Deliverability?

Simply put, email deliverability is how successful you are at getting your marketing emails to arrive in your contacts inbox!

How do bulk emails like those sent from ActiveDEMAND accounts arrive in your contacts inbox?

Before you send a bulk email to your contacts, you will have established a trust relationship between your domain and ActiveDEMAND.  As part of your initial account set up, you will have created several DNS settings called CNAME Records and Text Records + SPF in particular is now a minimum which have to be in place and recognised by ActiveDEMAND before we can even send a bulk email.

SPF Record

ActiveDEMAND uses SendGrid to send all emails on behalf of your domain name. SPF (Sender Policy Framework) records effectively act as a sign of 'permission' for us to send emails on your behalf. This can help bypass things like firewalls and filters that might otherwise see these emails as being spoofed by someone else.  Click here to check or add you SPF record

Just an SPF record is no longer enough.  Most emails servers including Gmail and Yahoo require that your emails are authenticated by SPF, DKIM and DMARC too.

What Happens once you press Activate on an ActiveDEMAND Email Campaign?

A number of internal checks are preformed such as; your CNAME Records are correct and in place, that the email you are sending contains an Unsubscribe link, etc.

Once your email passes the internal tests it's transmitted and received at your recipients email server or provider.  There it will undergo a further series of tests called Gateway Filters where your email and Domain are checked to ensure your IP Address and Domain are not on a Blacklist or preferably on their Whitelist and at a minimum your SPF record is recognised. There are other Trust Settings such as DKIM and DMARC we may consider.

Further filters may be applied in larger corporate organisations to reject emails that contain: html, certain key words (Think; Viagra, Sale, Cryptocurrency....etc).  Much of this depends on how aggressive the anti-spam settings are set on the recipients email server/provider.

How Can I Validate My Email Deliverability?

ActiveDEMAND has teamed up with mailtester.com and have integrated their spam test and deliverability tool directly into the email editor screen.  You can now validate every email in a campaign for its Spamminess (If there is such a word) and deliverability at the click of the button and find any specific issues effecting your general deliverability which you can then correct before sending your email.

See your deliverability score

See area's for improvement

Dig deeper for the details and how to resolve

Simply click and follow the instructions presented by Amber or Red areas.  Once corrected, test the Email again.  Scores over 8.0 are good, but getting closer to 10/10 is the goal.

What Impacts Your Email Reputation

Ultimately your Email Deliverability will impact your domain reputation as an email sender.  If you have a lot of complaints, unsubscribes or bounces this will directly impact your reputation and that of your bulk email sender.  To maintain your domain/email reputation consider the following good practice points:

• Verify your domain and bulk email using SPF, DKIM or DMARC.
• Use an email address associated with your domain.  ActiveDEMAND will not allow you to send from public ISP's like @gmail, @outlook, @hotmail etc.
• Get familiar and practice good email list hygiene:
  • Regularly review for contacts not opening your emails and remove inactive contacts.
  • Ideally, only send to contacts who have subscribed to your emails.
  • If you have not sent a bulk email for sometime (Like 30-days), validate all your contacts again using an email validation service.  We use zerobounce.net.  People change jobs and some companies sadly no longer exist.  Pay attention to the email validation results and take action where you get Invalid results.
  • While ActiveDEMAND will automatically unsubscribe bounced email addresses, you should look into the bounce codes for any trends to see if you need to take other actions associated with your domain reputation and email deliverability.
  • Avoid using purchased email lists.  If you must grow your email campaigns using purchased lists, YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST validate all the email addresses using a service like Neverbounce or Zero Bounce and only use confirmed Valid addresses.  By using a new purchased list, even after validation, you should expect some Unsubscribes and Bounces and be aware this will impact your reputation.  Please contact us for best practice when using purchased lists before you send.

If you have any questions about deliverability or would like to find out more about ActiveDEMAND's marketing automation platform, just schedule a call with us

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