The success of your email marketing campaigns rest heavily on deliverability; whether your emails are being delivered to the intended recipient or not. Simply put, if your emails don't hit your list subscribers' inbox, your chances of converting and making sales is 0%. Executing email marketing campaigns is far beyond randomly sending content with your latest deals or special insight on your industry but requires a calculated effort to be legitimate and relevant for your target audience.
With overall average email open rates across major industries at just 20%, you really cannot afford for your mails to be going to junk. Therefore, for a complete email strategy, you need to focus on what the industry and major email service providers consider to be spam and how to ensure your company, name and domain are always on the whitelist.
The main foundation on which you should be building your email lists in the first place should be based on an ethical and customer-friendly attitude. Forget about buying lists, your subscribers need to be acquired naturally and based on their permission. Solicitation emails from unknown sources are usually deleted, blocked and marked as spam by the average user since not only has privacy been invaded but also the fact that random sales pitches via email are just annoying.
Here are 6 ways to ensure maximum deliverability for your email campaigns.Choose a Reputable Email Service Provider
A well-known and high quality email marketing service provider like GetResponse, for example, spends a great deal of time, effort and dollars to ensure that their IP's and domains being used to execute delivery are always white-list certified. They invest a lot in their ecosystem and infrastructure to manage and quickly mitigate anyone who may be out to abuse their services. They are strict on ethical and safe email marketing practices and they'll always be on call. GetResponse's spam checker tool is also useful for testing whether your email domain, name and content have been previously blacklisted; along with tools to help you develop safe campaigns according to industry standards.
This ensures that your emails always use real and reputable domains without the need to personally manage the technical task.
Be Consistent with your "From field"
It's best to appear human with a recognizable name used throughout all your emails when communicating with your subscribers. Be clear and transparent on who you are and the brand you represent. Also, ensure that the name you're using does not have any previous spam complaints associated with it. Learn more about how the international community treats and responds to spam here.
Always Include an "Unsubscribe" Link & Honor it
Ensure that you offer a quick and easy method for users to unsubscribe from your mails. It may sound counter-productive by allowing users to easily unsubscribe but in the long-term, by honoring it when they do, your name and business and spared from appearing on any black-lists.
Do not continuously email persons who unsubscribe from your emails. Annoying users is the fastest way for your email domain to be blocked and your email marketing campaign rendered completely ineffective.
Clear Subject Line
Never try to manipulate readers by using deceptive subject lines that are unrelated to the content within your emails. Using correct grammar and spelling, all caps, excessive punctuation, use of spammy buzzwords / phrases such as "free prize" or "amazing benefits!!!" are all areas you should focus on perfecting and avoiding.
The delivery of content fluid with subject lines will improve engagement with your emails while being more relevant to your subscribers.
Avoid Poorly Coded HTML & Low Text to Image Ratios
Poorly coded HTML emails and those directly exported from an app like Microsoft Word can raise spam flags on your emails. This is why it is important to use professionally created email templates, especially those offered by email marketing service providers.
Also, ensure that your content has a greater amount of text than images for subscribers to actually have content to read in plain text.
Do not use Purchased Email Lists
Though acquiring a list of 10,000 email subscribers quickly sounds attractive, the repercussions for your brand name and service provider as detrimental. Email marketing, and any general form of marketing, works best when you are communicated with a targeted group of people of whom you're familiar with and have an idea of what they need. Through purchasing email lists, you can neither verify who the subscribers are, whether their emails are active, if they belong to actual people, if those persons are on a do not email list or if they're blacklisted. Using this approach is like shooting in the black vastness of space with the bullets striking you in the back as the result. It's a bad business practice that ends in poor return on investment and lack of information that leads to your business being blacklisted and marketing dollars wasted.
Email marketing is a delicate business and requires great attention to detail and dedication to quality. With up to 69% of email recipients reporting email as spam based solely on the subject line, you'll certainly have your work cut out for you. However, taking the time to build a close community of subscribers based on trust and respect will ensure your journey is more rewarding.