Making Sure Your Emails Are Being Delivered

In our most recent issue of Email Marketing Hints & Tips, we discussed some deliverability basics and some ways that you can avoid being branded a spammer. We received some great feedback about the issue, but some of our readers responded that they were confused because it looked like some of their emails weren’t being delivered at all. How do we explain this?

Well, this week, Return Path published its Email Deliverability Benchmark Report for the first half of the year and revealed that 20.7 percent of all email messages — even those that customers have asked for — are not making it to recipients’ inboxes. According to the report, between January and June, about 3.3 percent of all opt-in emails in the U.S. and Canada were sent to recipients’ “junk” or “bulk” email folders, while 17.4 percent did not get delivered at all. For the latter group, the senders had not received a bounce message or notification that their messages had not been delivered.

One reason for this is because Internet service providers (ISPs) are getting less tolerant about what commercial messages they are letting through to subscribers’ inboxes. For example, Gmail, the strictest of all the ISPs, blocked 23 percent of email marketing messages in the U.S. during the first half of the year.

But the news about Gmail is not all bad. In fact, Google’s email service also recently implemented an option that allows recipients to choose which emails they no longer wish to get, which means there could be fewer spam reports in the future. This could also improve users’ experiences and perhaps even increase open rates for those senders whose messages are wanted by their recipients.

Return Path has verified that Constant Contact’s deliverability rate is above 97 percent. But if you’re still concerned about improving your own emails’ deliverability, here are five quick tips:

1. Make sure your From line and Subject line are clear. The From line answers the question, “Do I know you?” and the Subject line answers the question, “Do I care?” Make sure both answers are yes when your recipient gets your email — otherwise they may relegate you and your messages to the junk or spam folder.

2. Avoid using words, phrases, or characters in your Subject line that are spam triggers, such as free, guarantee, spam, Viagra, sex, your income, subject to credit approval, check or money order, print out and fax, or call now. Also, don’t write in ALL CAPS or use excessive punctuation.

3. Remove any email addresses that are nonexistent or that routinely bounce. The “cleaner” your mailing list, the greater chance ISPs will allow your messages to go through to all recipients on your list.

4. Monitor the inbox where your replies go and honor unsubscribe requests that you may receive there within a day or two.

5. Monitor your campaign reports regularly. Knowing how many people are opening your emails and how many emails are bouncing, for example, will help you to narrow your list to just those customers who want your emails and who actually read them, thus improving your numbers overall.

Staying current with email communication best practices will help ensure that your emails are recognizable, pleasing, and unlikely to trigger an ISP’s spam filters. And most importantly, that they’ll get to their intended destination — your customers’ inboxes.