Call-to-actions, subject lines, and reader hooks are all more commonly discussed topics in email marketing. However, those factors are only influential if your emails actually reach your users’ inboxes at all.

In 2018, 85 percent of emails were reported to reach their intended target worldwide. So where does the other 15 percent go?

Many emails bounce right back to the sender or simply fail to reach their target. The question is, why?

1. Identify Common Email Deliverability Problems

Email deliverability determines the success rate of emails reaching users’ inboxes. Here are a couple of factors that could be affecting your email deliverability:

• Bogus accounts increasing your bounce rate
• Missing sender policy framework (SPF)
• DNS blacklists include your IP
• Irregular sending schedule

These factors can have unique fixes and resources, but most are related to your sender IP credibility.

2. Increase Your Sender IP Credibility

ISPs (internet service providers) monitor sender IPs to decrease the chances of spam. To do this, they flag IPs that are known to have collected a high volume of spam reports and compile a blacklist of these IPs to prevent them from sending in the future.

You need to make sure that your IP is not included on these lists.

To avoid spam reports, you should also make sure that your content regularly engages users by identifying your key audience. Users that meet positive KPIs (key performance indicators) should be consistently re-engaged with your content.

You need to maintain that engagement by sending your emails to interested users in batches rather than as periodic one-time emails.

This is where email campaigns come in handy. You can create a series of emails that are all connected to a single topic that intrigue your audience.

3. Improve Your Opt-in/Opt-out Actions

When users sign up to your email list, you should provide a confirmation action that verifies their opt-in.

Why? Confirmation verifies the user’s interest in your content so that your emails don’t bounce from an inactive account.

Also, this establishes confidence in the user by sending an additional request to collect the user’s email.

This is a great way to determine active from inactive users. If they regularly use their email, they’ll see your confirmation message and follow the confirmation action.

Likewise, users should have the option to opt-out of your content if they want to. Providing a simple “unsubscribe” link in the footer of your emails should bring them to a one-click or two-click opt-out process.

If users continue to receive unwanted content from you, you’re at risk of spam reports. Simplifying the unsubscribe process can help you avoid that.

4. Improve Your Timing

Consistent is key when it comes to email marketing. You should always have your emails scheduled through your email marketing software to send at the same time and frequency.

This way, you can prevent spikes in your broadcast activity that can lower your sender credibility. If your emails are random and inconsistent, your IP could be suspected of spam.

If you need to pick a day and a time, mid-morning on weekdays produce larger opening rates but weekends offer more engagement with content. These are proven to be typically the best times to send emails.

Get the Most Out of Email Deliverability

Email deliverability is crucial to the success of your email marketing campaigns. It may seem complicated, but there are a variety of creative solutions.

Much of the process involves your ability to engage with your audience and evaluate that engagement so you can establish trust.

Finding creative ways to engage audiences and establish trust between their favorite brands is all that we do. If you need a hand with your marketing services, contact us today so we can help you get more exposure and reach your audience!