Email deliverability is like ensuring your letter is in the right hands instead of ending up in the neighbor’s mailbox.
But usually, preventing email deliverability issues is easier said than done.
That’s why you need to monitor your email deliverability and keep an eye on your email performance. Then, you will know what to avoid and stay on top of your results.
Keep reading, and you will know how to monitor the deliverability of your email campaigns.
What is email deliverability, and why does it matter?
Email deliverability is the ability of your emails to reach the intended recipients’ inboxes successfully. It is a critical metric for email marketers and is influenced by several variables.
The process is really simple. After you hit “send,” your email travels through the internet and encounters various filters and checkpoints. They determine if your email lands in the inbox or not.
You can see your rank based on various email deliverability metrics.
Example
Imagine the case when you carefully craft your email marketing campaigns. You care about the layout, add images, answer important questions, prepare engaging content, and include enticing offers. In essence, you spend a lot of time building the perfect email.
Then, a big surprise: your message never manages to get to your subscribers’ inboxes, your efforts go to waste, and you don’t even know that the recipients didn’t receive the email.
This is where monitoring email deliverability comes into play.
Benefits
Let’s break down in detail what benefits you can gain with good email deliverability:
- You reach the right audience: successful email deliverability ensures that your important messages are seen by the people who have willingly subscribed to your content. Your communication reaches the audience it should and increases the likelihood of engagement. There are no more hard or soft bounces and you can safely navigate spam filters. Or for example, you don’t land in the promotions tab.
- You protect your sender reputation: internet service providers (ISPs) evaluate the sender’s reputation to decide whether an email should be delivered to the inbox. And a positive reputation, achieved through sending relevant and solicited content, is so crucial for good deliverability and a high inbox placement rate.
- You avoid spam folders: high deliverability also means steering clear of spam folders and a lower spam rate. When your emails consistently land in the email inbox, it indicates to ISPs that your content is legitimate and wanted by users. Your subject lines make email clients happy and your email program is a success.
- You enhance your email marketing success: the success of your email marketing campaigns depends on the deliverability of your messages. Even the most compelling content won’t drive results if it doesn’t reach your people.
- You optimize engagement rates of your email strategy: emails that are delivered to the inbox have a higher chance of being opened and clicked. This positively impacts engagement metrics like open rates and click-through rates and contributes to the overall success of your campaigns. A high percentage of emails lands in the primary inbox.
- You reduce complaints when you send legitimate emails: successful inbox placement and good deliverability practices reduce the possibility of complaints from recipients. Minimizing your spam complaint rate is also essential for maintaining a positive reputation. You bypass spam triggers and your marketing emails land you a strong sender reputation.
So, as you see – regular deliverability monitoring helps maintain a high email deliverability rate. If, by far, you thought you didn’t have to care about your deliverability rates, then well, you should change your mind.
How to monitor email deliverability?
Effective email marketing goes hand in hand with maintaining good email deliverability. But the big question is how to monitor email deliverability. Is it simple, or do you need to hire someone to do it for you?
It’s actually easier than you might think, no matter how many email domains you have.
Step 1: Use analytic tools to prevent poor sender reputation
For effective email deliverability monitoring, start by selecting a reliable analytic tool. Here, you may opt for services like Mailchimp or analytics offered by your preferred email service providers that offer a wealth of insights into your campaigns. With a good service, you will:
- assess email performance and spam placement rate,
- identify emerging trends with your target audience,
- make data-driven decisions that improve deliverability with your contact list,
- and gain valuable insights into various metrics such as user engagement.
To make the most out of your analytics, consider setting up custom tracking and reporting to monitor deliverability closely, in real time.
For instance, you can create automated reports that update your email delivery rates daily or weekly. They will enable you to spot trends and anomalies promptly, such as many inactive contacts firing up or deliverability scores going too low.
Also, leverage A/B testing capabilities to refine your email content and improve engagement – they will also impact deliverability positively and you’ll get everything in a comprehensive report.
Be regular in reviewing the analytics dashboard and learning it. You can then fine-tune your campaigns for better results.
Step 2: Check your deliverability metrics
With the appropriate analytics tool in place, it’s time to dive into your deliverability metrics. They are instrumental in carrying out the health of your email marketing efforts.
Take into account these key metrics:
- delivery rates – they measure the success of your email deliveries and give you detailed reports on what was delivered and what hit the spam folder,
- bounce rates – the email bounce rate unveils issues with failed deliveries to the recipient’s inbox, which can guide your future campaigns and help avoid potential issues with campaign performance,
- open rates – they provide insights into how many recipients opened the message,
- click-through rates – they gauge recipient interaction with your content.
If you monitor and analyze these metrics, you can make adjustments to your campaigns for optimal deliverability.
In addition to monitoring these metrics with deliverability services, it’s crucial to establish benchmarks based on industry standards and your past email performance. You then set realistic goals and track your progress over time, before running an email deliverability audit.
For example, if you’re experiencing a high bounce rate on various email marketing platforms, investigate the underlying causes and take corrective actions to reduce it. Something like thorough email list cleaning and removing invalid addresses can resolve these temporary issues.
Continuously analyze and interpret deliverability metrics, be responsive to changes in your email landscape, and adapt your strategies accordingly. For example, a simple bulk email verification can remove invalid addresses and boost your overall email performance.
Step 3: Monitor blacklists
Email blacklists can flag your domain or dedicated IP addresses as potential sources of spam, so they can negatively affect email deliverability. Most often, landing on these lists is a consequences of poor email list hygiene and is easily fixed with a nice email list cleaning.
To steer clear of blacklists, use tools that will help you stay informed about your blacklist status and address any issues swiftly. Also, consider setting up automated alerts or notifications to identify and address blacklist listings immediately.
Then, take prompt action and:
- investigate the root cause,
- solve any issues,
- and request removal from the blacklist.
Regularly check if your IP addresses or domains appear on public blacklists or private ones maintained by major mailbox providers.
After that, you will be closer to getting your emails delivered.
Step 4: Keep an eye on your reputation
What about your sender reputation? It’s another thing that should be taken into consideration. Internet service providers evaluate your sender score and domain reputation when they determine email placement.
So, you need to nurture a positive status with ISPs, as then your emails will land in recipients’ inboxes more frequently rather than their spam folders.
But that’s not all. In addition to monitoring:
➡️ actively work on improving your reputation by adhering to best practices in email marketing,
➡️ maintain a low complaint rate by respecting opt-in and opt-out requests, promptly unsubscribing recipients, and minimizing email frequency.
➡️ ensure that your email content is relevant and engaging to encourage recipients to interact with your messages positively. Send personalized messages to your intended audience and follow the double opt-in process.
To monitor your reputation, you must care about every step in the email deliverability process and use dedicated tools that provide insights into how ISPs perceive your sender identity.
Step 5: Constantly scan for spam traps in your lists
Regularly checking spam reports and cleaning your email lists for duplicate and invalid email addresses is also a must. If you don’t identify and remove spam traps, you won’t ensure your email list relevance. And you don’t want this to happen.
So, try to establish a routine schedule for scanning for spam traps. Conduct regular list hygiene checks, especially before sending out email campaigns. Implement double opt-in processes to confirm the authenticity of new subscribers and minimize the likelihood of spam trap hits. Also, review and update your email collection practices to prevent spam traps from infiltrating your lists.
Or choose Bouncer as your reliable partner in removing spam traps.
Step 6: Authenticate your emails
Enhance your email deliverability by implementing robust email authentication protocols. Why is it important?
Because comprehensive email authentication not only improves deliverability but also bolsters the security and trustworthiness of your email communication.
Many techniques help validate your emails and establish trust with ISPs. For example:
- Sender Policy Framework (SPF),
- DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM),
- Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC)
These protocols verify the authenticity of your email messages and reduce the chances of them being flagged as spam.
So, to maximize the benefits of email authentication, carefully configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records for your sending domain. If you implement them right away, you gain visibility into email authentication failures and won’t impact your email delivery.
You can also trust email deliverability testing tools or choose Bouncer, as it can verify your email server setup and authentication.
Step 7: Check your spam complaints
Don’t forget to address spam complaints promptly. High volumes of spam reports can tarnish your sender’s reputation and jeopardize your email marketing success. But there’s a simple way to overcome this:
- investigate the reasons behind these complaints,
- take corrective actions to rectify the issues,
- and implement strategies to prevent future complaints.
Then, you will save your image and reputation.
Other key tips about checking spam complaints include:
⭐ Establish clear processes for tracking and resolving complaints such as email spoofing.
⭐ Monitor feedback loops delivered by your mailbox provider to receive complaint data directly from recipients.
⭐ Investigate the nature of complaints – are customers unhappy because they are receiving unwanted emails or irrelevant material is included in the email? Take immediate steps to resolve these issues.
⭐ Implement robust unsubscribe mechanisms so recipients can opt-out easily.
⭐ Continuously analyze complaint data to identify trends and root causes to adjust your email content and targeting strategies.
⭐ Regularly review your email lists to ensure that recipients who have opted out are promptly removed.
If you actively manage spam complaints, you demonstrate your commitment to recipient preferences and are far away from future issues.
Step 8: Clean up your email list
Maintaining a clean and up-to-date email list is a must for maximizing email deliverability. To achieve this, leverage specialized tools like Bouncer – a reputable email verification service.
Bouncer can help you identify and remove duplicate email addresses and prospects with invalid or outdated information. With our email deliverability tool, you will enhance your list quality and reduce the risk of sending emails to inactive or erroneous addresses.
List cleaning should be a standard practice in your email marketing routine. Thus, schedule regular list hygiene checks to identify and rectify issues promptly. Use Bouncer’s verification capabilities to ensure that your lists remain free from problematic email addresses, including those that can trigger spam traps.
Regular list maintenance not only improves email deliverability but also enhances the efficiency of your email campaigns.
Step 9: Segment your lists
Divide your email lists into different groups, based on user behavior, preferences, demographics, or other relevant criteria. This personalized approach allows you to tailor your email content to specific recipient segments, increase the relevance of your messages, and boost stronger engagement.
But, to effectively implement list segmentation, begin by analyzing your subscriber data to identify meaningful segments. Your criteria may include:
- purchase history,
- geographic location,
- engagement frequency,
- and demographics.
Also, refine your segmentation strategies based on performance data and evolving recipient preferences when needed.
With such an action plan, you will create targeted email campaigns that address each group’s unique needs and interests.
Conclusion
Good email deliverability matters because if your emails land in the spam folder or are not delivered at all – your emails won’t reach your audience.
How to prevent it from happening? Implement our 9 steps and use Bouncer – a tool that will improve email deliverability much faster than you would do it alone.
If you want to improve deliverability, save sender reputation, clean lists, control spam traps, avoid spam filters or complaints, and eliminate duplicate email addresses – just try Bouncer. Our platform will help you verify emails, tell you which emails are safe to send, detect disposable addresses, help in inbox placement, conduct regular list hygiene checks, and more.
You won’t have to manually confirm the authenticity of subscribers, waste time on invalid recipients, or learn how to prevent spam traps from infiltrating your lists – our tool will handle all problems.
