Last Updated on July 8, 2019 by Santhosh Muralidhar

E-mail marketing is one of the oldest marketing methods. However, this method of marketing offers such great unique features that no other modern marketing channels like Social media or SEM offer. Some of those key unique features could be low cost to send e-mails, helps in maintaining trust and transparency with the audience, nurturing leads etc. But one of the Biggest Challenge and question faced by E-mail Marketers is “How to Improve E-mail deliverability rate?”.

In this article let us take an insight into the various methods through which the E-mail Deliverability rate can be increased.

1. SPF & DKIM Signatures

SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework. It is basically a DNS record. The main purpose of having an SPF Signature to Validate that a tool like MailChimp is Authorised to send e-mails to your subscribers on behalf of your domain. One can identify the SPF Signature by the term “signed-by” in any normal E-mail.

DKIM Stands for Domain Key Identified Mail. It is mainly used for Authentication Purpose. In layman terms, the Sender of the E-mail will be allowed to associate his domain Adress in the E-mail Sent through tools like MailChimp. Thus Authenticating the Sender’s details. One can Identify the DKIM Signature by the term “mailed-by” in any normal E-mail.

2. Cold IP and Warm IP

This is one of the common reason why actually E-mail lands up in a spam folder. Assume that Your Boss has ordered you to do an E-mail blast this week for 10k E-mail Subscribers. But Until now you and your company have been sending out only 3000 E-mails Per Week. But now your job is to Send 10000 E-mails in one week. Imagine what would happen when you suddenly put a pressure on your E-mail IP to send 10000 times e-mail in one week? The answer is simple. A Major portion of your E-mail will land up in the spam folder. Because the E-mail IP is not yet ready to send out 10k E-mails daily and is a Cold IP.

To Avoid your E-mails landing up in the spam folder, in this case, one needs to increase the number of e-mails being sent out in small variations. Say, for example, if the IP is handling and sending 3k e-mails per week then increase it to 3.5k E-mails in the first week. Send 4.5k in the Second Week. Next, send 6k E-mails in the third week. Then Send 7.5 k E-mails in the Fourth Week. Increase it to 9k E-mails in the Fifth Week. And finally, in the Sixth week, you can reach your goal by sending out 10k E-mails to your subscribers. Thus leading to a transformation of a Cold IP into a Warm IP. Now your E-mail IP has undergone the warm-up process. It is now eligible to send out 10k E-mails per week and there will be an increase in the deliverability rate of your E-mail.

3. Whitelist your IP

If an E-mail IP is in the blacklist database then there is a high chance that the E-mail will land up in spam folders.

One can easily check if an E-mail IP is on the blacklist or not by using tools like Mail-tester. There are a bunch of organizations and Agencies, filters that actually detected Spam, Suspicious and fake E-mail IP Adress. To list them a few popular ones are namely Spam Assasin, SORBS, SEM-BLACK, China Anti-Spam Alliance, Redhawk, Spamhaus etc.

It is quite common that E-mail Marketers do some Mistake while doing things practically. And these Mistakes leads to the E-mail IP being added to the blacklist database in SORBS database or any other Spam reporting Service Provider for that matter.

However one can get their E-mail IP being remove from blacklist database of SORBS, Spamhaus etc by either Paying a Penalty to them or by requesting them to Whitelist your E-mail IP.

4. Compliance with CAN-SPAM ACT of 2003 can increase E-mail deliverability rate

In order to Prevent Spamming through E-mails, the USA Government introduced the CAN-SPAM ACT in 2003. Since all the E-mail Servers like Mailchimp Server, Gmail Server etc are based out of the USA, every E-mail Marketer should know the CAN-SPAM Act.

The Act states that all commercial e-mails must comply with the following things:

• E-mail should have sender’s physical address.
• Must have an unsubscribe option in the e-mail.
• E-mails need to have a Relevant Subject line and relevant content.
• Should have Accurate From line.
• Should not contain Avoid false and deceptive headlines.
• Sender Must indicate if the E-mail is an Ad or promotional E-mail.
• Include labels for Adult E-mail.

Also, it states that the sender should honor Every Unsubscribe request within 10 days.

The act suggests that in the case when a third party company send’s e-mail on behalf of a company then both parties will adhere the laws of the CAN-SPAM Act.

Any In compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act could lead to your E-mails settling down in the SPAM Folders. Also, it could lead to huge penalty and punishments as per the federal laws.

5. Reduce the errors in the body of the E-mail and focus on Good content and Design.

A False content or an Erroneous E-mail content could also decrease the E-mail Deliverability rate. Also, broken links and error in the design of e-mail can also lead to low e-mail delivery rate. It is common that when we design an E-mail and add content to it there could be a lot of errors. These errors may not be visible directly to us unless we use some specific tools. Tools like Mail-Tester, Sendersocre, Sender forensic etc can easily show the errors in the content and design of your E-mail. They would also send us a report of the Errors that is present in the content and design of the E-mail.

Some of the common errors could be images without Alt Attribute, Broken Links, Grammar error in content, error in vocabulary & copywriting, low link quality, error in coding and layout, E-mail Infrastructure related issues.

It is important to reduce these errors in order to increase the E-mail Deliverability rate.

After reading this article, you would have gained some basic knowledge on Improving the E-mail Deliverability Rate. If you enjoyed reading this article please do share this article on Social Media Channels with your friends. Until Next time, Keep reading, Keep enjoying.

Thanks.