Aspects of Email Deliverability

Use this guide to ensure your emails reach your prospects by adhering to best practices around authentication and sender reputation, monitoring, and Email Deliverability.

In today's tech-driven world, email has become the go-to way for professionals to communicate. Unfortunately, some people with ill intentions are trying to make you open their emails. You might have come across messages from individuals claiming to be part of the Nigerian royal family, promising wealth in exchange for a simple bank transaction.

To counter the rising instances of phishing, hacking, and spam, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are working hard to protect users from unwanted emails. This includes blocking large email campaigns from new domains and IPs. It's crucial to understand that ISPs are committed to safeguarding both their investors and users.

For businesses reaching out to potential customers through email, these security measures directly impact the chances of legitimate emails reaching the inbox.In the end, the success of your email deliverability hinges on your company's practices and engagement strategy. Three main factors play a role when combined:

1. Authentication & Sender Reputation
2. Monitoring & Cleanliness
3. Engagement

This guide will take a closer look at each category, exploring the behind-the-scenes aspects and evaluating how your interactions with prospects influence the delivery of your emails.

• Email authentication is a crucial technical standard ensuring your identity is verified, preventing your emails from being flagged as spam or phishing attempts.
• Without email authentication, malicious individuals can manipulate their email addresses to mimic legitimate senders and deceive recipients.

Implementation by the IT Team

• Your IT team is responsible for implementing email authentication.
• They configure mail servers to allow a recipient's email server to check incoming messages against established rules.
• Gmail and Microsoft typically set up these policies during mailbox configuration, but it's advisable to confirm, especially before large email campaigns.
• If using Exchange, coordinate with your IT team to ensure SPF and DKIM are set up before sending mailings.

Email Authentication Standards: DKIM, SPF and DMARC

• DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail)
  
  • An authentication protocol used by email receivers to verify the sender's legitimacy.
  • Utilizes a specialized key unique to each sender, assuring the recipient's mailbox of the message's authenticity.
    • Positively contributes to your anti-spam score.
      
      
• SPF (Sender Policy Framework)
  • Email validation system preventing spam and authenticating senders.
  • Checks the sender IP address to ensure it's authenticated and verified.
    • Incoming servers reject emails from unlisted SPF records, assuming they are spoofed or illegitimate.
      
      
• DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance)
  • Another authentication protocol enabling senders and receivers to report potentially fraudulent domains.
  • DMARC policies indicate authenticated messages via SPF and Bounced Email Notifications

When you send an email and it is rejected by your prospect's email server, you receive a bounced email notification. There are two primary types of bounces: hard bounces and soft bounces, the details of which are explained in the FAQ.

Identifying Bounce Types:

• Hard Bounces (5.x.x errors): Indicate that the email address no longer exists or never existed.
• Soft Bounces (4.x.x errors): Occur for reasons like the prospect's email server being down or their mailbox being full.

Bounce Rate Considerations

A clean email list typically maintains a bounce rate of about or under 1%. It's crucial to differentiate between hard and soft bounces, as a high bounce rate can impact your email deliverability. If the bounce rate exceeds 5%, it becomes more noticeable to email filters that you're sending to stale addresses. A hard bounce rate of more than 10% may lead to ISPs blocking your emails.

What You Can Do:

• Review bounce messages to determine if they are hard or soft bounces.
• Remove hard bounces from your email campaign immediately.
• Aim to keep soft bounces under 5% and hard bounces under 1% for every email campaign.

Using Postmaster Tools for Analysis

For those sending a large volume of emails, tools like Postmaster Tools can provide insights into email performance. These tools allow you to assess if customers mark your emails as spam, identify delivery issues, ensure secure email transmission, and verify adherence to your email provider's best practices.

What You Can Do:

• Utilize Postmaster Tools to analyze email performance and identify potential issues.
• Understand customer feedback and adapt email strategies accordingly.

In conclusion, understanding and managing bounce rates is essential for maintaining a healthy email delivery system. By actively monitoring and addressing bounce issues, you can enhance your email deliverability and ensure that your messages reach your intended audience.

DKIM, providing instructions for unverified messages (e.g., send to spam or reject).

• Implementation Recommendations

  • DKIM and SPF should be standard in your basic technical setup.
  • DMARC can be an additional option for enhanced security.
  • Contact your IT team to ensure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are configured for your email authentication.

In summary, a robust email authentication system, incorporating DKIM, SPF, and DMARC, is essential for securing your emails and maintaining trust with recipients. Regular communication with your IT team ensures these protocols are effectively implemented.

Importance of Permissions

• Obtaining permission to send emails enhances overall engagement and deliverability.
• Commonly known as "opting-in," it involves implicit or express consent from individual prospects, such as existing customers or those signing up for webinars.

Opt-ins and Engagement

• Opting-in leads to stronger engagement metrics like opens, clicks, and replies.
• Strong engagement positively influences sender reputation, a critical factor in email providers' inbox placement decisions.

Cold Emails and Best Practices

• Cold emails require extra care and attention.
• Researching, personalizing mail campaigns, and sharing relevant content with prospects who haven't opted in can prevent them from marking your emails as spam.

Impact of Cold Emails on Sender Reputation

• ISPs closely monitor customer interactions with emails.
• If recipients consistently mark your emails as spam, ISPs may divert your emails to the junk folder.

What You Can Do:

1. Avoid Purchasing Prospect Lists

   1. Lists may contain spam traps, bad data, and contacts without explicit or implicit permission.

   2. Engagement is less likely if prospects haven't expressed interest in your content.
      
      

2. Use LinkedIn for Initial Contact

   1. When prospecting unengaged users, consider using LinkedIn for the first point of contact.
   2. Build trust before transitioning to email campaigns.
      
      

3. Target Specific Personas

   1. When adding prospects to email campaigns, target specific personas for personalized communication.
   2. Conduct research and personalize emails to enhance engagement.
      
      

4. Include an Unsubscribe Link

   1. If sending emails in bulk, always include an unsubscribe link.

   2. Respecting recipients' preferences contributes to a positive sender reputation.

In summary, obtaining permission through opt-ins is crucial for successful email engagement. Avoid purchasing lists, utilize LinkedIn for initial contact, and personalize emails to enhance the overall impact of your campaigns while maintaining a positive sender reputation.

• Importance of Sender Reputation

  • Your email delivery success is closely linked to your reputation as a sender.
  • Spammers are becoming more sophisticated, emphasizing the need for a trustworthy sender image.
    
    

• Measurement of Sender Reputation

  • Sender reputation is a gauge of your email practices' trustworthiness, evaluated by ISPs and spam filters.
  • It is crucial for determining inbox placement, with a stronger reputation increasing the likelihood of landing in the inbox.
    
    

• Key Characteristics in Sender Reputation Evaluation

  • Complaints: Measure of emails marked as spam and deleted from a prospect's inbox.
  • Volume: Balancing the number of emails sent with the frequency of complaints.
  • Reputation: Comparison of your IP address to others, aiming for a blacklist-free status.
  • Rejections: Evaluation of bounced emails in comparison to others.
    
    

• Impact on Email Delivery

  • Sender reputation influences inbox placement, spam folder allocation, or outright rejection.
  • The prospect's mailbox configuration, often managed by IT teams, determines this decision.
  • Companies may set thresholds for sender reputation, rejecting or whitelisting based on scores.
    
    

• Throttling Deliveries

  • Sender reputation also affects the rate at which emails are delivered from an IP address to an inbox.
  • Higher reputations may permit more messages, while lower reputations may face restrictions.

What You Can Do:

• Monitor Sender Reputation
  • Utilize online resources to measure and monitor your sender's reputation.
  • Regularly engage with these tools to stay informed.
    
    
• Adjust Email Strategies
  • If unhappy with your sender's reputation, make informed adjustments to your email strategies and campaigns.
  • Proactively address issues to enhance your sender's reputation over time.

In summary, understanding and enhancing your sender's reputation is critical for successful email delivery. Regular monitoring and strategic adjustments to your email practices contribute to a positive sender image and improved engagement with your audience.

Risks of Purchased Lists

1. Purchased email lists pose inherent risks to deliverability.
2. Lists often include names and emails of prospects who haven't opted-in, leading to negative interactions.
3. Spam traps within purchased lists can trigger various consequences, from temporary blocks to domain blacklisting.

What You Can Do:

1. Build your own lists or use reputable list hygiene providers.
2. Verify data before trusting purchased lists to ensure validity and avoid reputation threats.

New Domain Address Warming

Introducing a new domain is like starting a car in winter; it requires a gradual warming process.

• Warming up a new domain establishes identity, gains trust, and positively impacts the sender's reputation and deliverability.
• ISPs scrutinize new domains with suspicion, making the warming process crucial for success.

What You Can Do:

1. Collaborate with your IT team for a successful warming strategy.
2. Review domain factors with your IT team, including age, sending history, and DKIM usage.
3. Use a domain older than six months for better spam filter perception.
4. Avoid using domains with a historically poor reputation.
5. Utilize subdomains for DKIM signing to maintain a better reputation.
6. Ramp up your new domain in a two-step process: Slowly increase email volume and actively monitor engagement.

Ramping Up Email Sends

1. The warming process spans approximately 30 days, adjusting based on volume, frequency, and prospect list quality.
2. Start with smaller volumes, target an engaged segment, and gradually increase the volume.
3. Double send volume every three or four days until reaching the regular email send rate.

Monitoring Campaigns

1. Beyond volume, consider the content and engagement of your emails during the warming process.
2. High engagement improves credibility with ISPs.
3. Don't be alarmed if initial emails land in spam; it's natural for a new domain.
4. Some providers test by delivering to spam folders to gauge legitimacy.

What You Can Do:

1. Monitor engagement metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and reply rates.
2. Adjust content and strategies based on engagement to enhance sender credibility.

In conclusion, maintaining cleanliness in your email practices and closely monitoring the warming process for new domains are vital steps toward ensuring successful email deliverability. By following these best practices, you can build a positive sender reputation and establish trust with both ISPs and your audience.

Bounced Email Notifications

When you send an email and it is rejected by your prospect's email server, you receive a bounced email notification. There are two primary types of bounces: hard bounces and soft bounces.

Identifying Bounce Types:

• Hard Bounces (5.x.x errors): Indicate that the email address no longer exists or never existed.
• Soft Bounces (4.x.x errors): Occur for reasons like the prospect's email server being down or their mailbox being full.

Bounce Rate Considerations

A clean email list typically maintains a bounce rate of about or under 1%. It's crucial to differentiate between hard and soft bounces, as a high bounce rate can impact your email deliverability. If the bounce rate exceeds 5%, it becomes more noticeable to email filters that you're sending to stale addresses. A hard bounce rate of more than 10% may lead to ISPs blocking your emails.

What You Can Do:

• Review bounce messages to determine if they are hard or soft bounces.
• Remove hard bounces from your email campaign immediately.
• Aim to keep soft bounces under 5% and hard bounces under 1% for every email campaign.

Using Postmaster Tools for Analysis

For those sending a large volume of emails, tools like Postmaster Tools can provide insights into email performance. These tools allow you to assess if customers mark your emails as spam, identify delivery issues, ensure secure email transmission, and verify adherence to your email provider's best practices.

What You Can Do:

• Utilize Postmaster Tools to analyze email performance and identify potential issues.
• Understand customer feedback and adapt email strategies accordingly.

In conclusion, understanding and managing bounce rates is essential for maintaining a healthy email delivery system. By actively monitoring and addressing bounce issues, you can enhance your email deliverability and ensure that your messages reach your intended audience.

Blacklists are compilations of domain names or IP addresses associated with identified "spammers." Email servers refer to these lists to identify and block potential spam. If your domain or IP address is on a blacklist, your emails may be blocked, affecting your ability to reach prospects.

Analogy: Return Address on an Envelope

Think of your domain and IP address as the return address on an envelope. Mail servers check this return address against various blacklists. If listed, your email could end up in the recipient's junk folder or be rejected outright.

Taking Action to Preserve Sender Reputation

What You Can Do:

1. Follow Best Practices: Adhere to email best practices to maintain a high sender reputation.
2. Monitor Blacklists: Regularly check your IP and domain against well-known blacklists using available tools.
3. Delisting Process: If blacklisted, submit a delisting request to have your IP address and domain removed. This process is typically completed on the blacklist's website. Some blacklists may have a timer for removal based on decreased email traffic or fewer complaints.

Following the Rules: CAN-SPAM, CASL, GDPR & CCPA

1. Emphasis on Data Privacy Laws
   Data privacy regulations, such as CAN-SPAM, CASL, GDPR, and CCPA, grant individuals the right to opt out of email communication and request data deletion. Violating these laws can result in significant fines, with GDPR imposing a 4% fine on your ARR for non-compliance.
   
   
2. Compliance Measures
   What You Can Do:
   1. Know the Laws: Understand the data privacy laws in your country and those of foreign countries, especially in the European Union.
   2. CAN-SPAM Compliance: Include your company's address and an unsubscribe link in all emails to comply with CAN-SPAM.
   3. GDPR Compliance: Ensure individuals receiving your emails have opted into your communication, aligning with GDPR requirements.
   4. Regulation Adherence: By complying with these regulations, you reduce the likelihood of complaints against your domain, improving your email placement in recipients' inboxes.

Understanding Prospect Engagement:

Prospect engagement serves as a vital indicator of your email success, influencing both inbox placement and overall deliverability. Low open rates, click rates, and reply rates send a clear message to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) that prospects are not actively engaging with your content.

Metrics Overview: Pay attention to key metrics such as emails, clicks, and replies to gauge prospect interaction.

Taking Action to Improve Engagement

What You Can Do:

1. Metric Analysis: Regularly review engagement metrics to assess prospect interaction with your content.
2. Content Adjustments: Make necessary adjustments to email content and subject lines based on metric trends.
3. A/B Testing: Conduct A/B testing on subject lines and email copy to identify optimal strategies for your goals.
4. Campaign Personalization: Target campaigns to specific buyer personas for more relevant and engaging content.
5. Considered Volume: Evaluate the volume of emails sent to prevent prospect fatigue and potential spam complaints.
6. Cadence and Timing: Adjust the cadence and timing of your email campaigns based on observed engagement patterns.
7. Content Refresh: Regularly update content to ensure its relevance and appeal to your target audience.

These steps contribute to a more personalized, engaging, and effective email strategy, ultimately improving your overall email deliverability.

Understanding Email Types: Transactional/Operational vs. Promotional

• Transactional/Operational Email: Facilitating Transactions and Providing Updates
  • Transactional/operational emails support agreed-upon transactions or update prospects on ongoing transactions.
  • Examples include password reset emails, contract redline updates, purchase receipts, and notifications.
  • Typically sent individually rather than as part of an email campaign.
  • Contains information specifically requested by the prospect.
    
• Promotional Email: Advertising Products or Services
  • Promotional emails have the primary purpose of advertising or promoting a commercial product or service.
  • Includes sales emails, product announcements, newsletters, and re-engagement emails.
  • Aims to encourage prospects to take a favorable action, such as making a purchase or downloading content.
  • Subject to legal requirements like the CAN-SPAM Act, CASL, and GDPR.

Legal Considerations for Promotional Emails: Unsubscribe Links

1. Unsubscribe Mechanism: Unsubscribe links serve as a means for prospects to indicate their preference not to receive further emails.
2. Compliance and Best Practice: In line with legal requirements and as a best practice to maintain the sender's reputation, include an unsubscribe or opt-out link.
3. Prospect Communication: Providing an unsubscribe link ensures that you respect the wishes of prospects who no longer wish to receive emails.
4. Reducing Complaints:Clear and user-friendly unsubscribe links help limit prospects' complaints to your ISP and mitigate the risk of being marked as spam.

Email Deliverability Unveiled: Email deliverability might seem complicated, but it all comes down to one main idea: Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are on a mission to safeguard their customers. Their aim is to ensure that relevant emails reach customers' inboxes, while undesired ones end up in spam folders or get rejected altogether.

Key Player: Sender Reputation: When you delve into your deliverability metrics, one aspect takes the spotlight—your sender reputation. It's the key factor in determining whether your emails land where you want them to: in the inbox. If your reputation isn't up to par, don't fret. You have the power to proactively tweak your emails, practices, and email systems, increasing your chances of hitting the inbox.

Proactive Adjustment for Success:To stay in the driver's seat of your email deliverability, consistently assess the three vital categories discussed in this document:

1. Authentication and sender reputation
2. Monitoring and cleanliness
3. Engagement

• This ongoing review ensures you maintain a grip on the fate of your emails.