Email Deliverability 101
Email deliverability can be tricky to understand, especially if you’re just starting out growing your brand’s email list. But it’s actually really important, because the health and reputation of your email list has a huge impact on how many of your sent emails actually get read. So: are you feeling ready to dive in and learn more?
This guide will explain what email deliverability is, cover the causes of poor email deliverability, and cover a few key strategies you can use to improve your own list’s deliverability for maximum impact. Onward.
You and I both know that not everyone visiting your online store will become a buyer.
But what if I could help you to bump up that percentage?
What is email deliverability, and why does it matter?
Email deliverability is a measure of how many of the emails sent from a mailing list actually reach the intended recipient’s inbox. Deliverability indicates your reputation as a sender - the better your reputation, the more of your emails land in the correct place. If your list’s reputation is poor, more of your emails will be routed to spam folders - and this cycle can worsen over time.
If this seems overly technical, let me simplify: you should care about your list’s deliverability because, if it becomes too poor, you’ll be spending money to send emails that will never reach subscribers. Over time, if too many of your emails fail to deliver, your deliverability score could worsen to the point where messages are automatically routed to recipient’s Spam inboxes - a marketer’s worst nightmare! By keeping track of your list’s health you can ensure the most people possible are receiving your emails, which gives you the best chance that those emails will be effective.
The causes of poor email deliverability
What causes hits to your list’s deliverability reputation? A few things:
Bounces: emails bounce when, for whatever reason, they are not able to be delivered to the target inbox. There are two types of bounces - hard and soft:
Hard bounces are when an email is sent to an address that doesn’t exist: either there was a typo in the address, or the user has deleted their account.
Soft bounces happen when an email is temporarily unable to be delivered, like if a server is down, or the recipient’s inbox is full.
Spam complaints: this is pretty self-explanatory, but if lots of users are marking your brand’s emails as spam, it’s going to create problems for your deliverability reputation.
Bad content: this could include copy that seems like it was written by a robot, links to spam sites within the body of the email, and especially code issues. I also find that bad content influences the next cause…
Lack of engagement: if your list’s open or click rates are especially low, your deliverability will suffer. This is one of the more important issues to focus on because low engagement means there is something off with your email strategy: either you’re sending too many emails, or you’re sending to the wrong people, or something is off with your content approach. (More on all of these options in the strategy section.)
Volume of emails sent: spammers will often send out huge volumes of emails at once, so it’s a type of behavior that now gets flagged. This can be tough for those with huge lists to manage, but ideally you want to send relatively consistent volumes of emails over time.
Deliverability infrastructure: this one is pretty technical, but just know that the ESP (email service provider) that you use to send emails matters. Most ESPs - Mailchimp, Klaviyo, etc - automatically ensure proper authentication and infrastructure so that you don’t have to. If you’re in doubt, I cover this a bit more in Strategy #5.
One thing to note is that different Internet Service Providers (or ISPs, like Google, AT&T and more) determine deliverability metrics in different ways. American ISPs tend to care more about user-based metrics like engagement, while European ISPs can be more focused on deliverability infrastructure. You likely don’t need to worry about these types of regional discrepancies as long as you’re following best email-sending practices, though. (That’s why you’re reading this guide!)
Deliverability metrics to watch
Luckily, even though there are many causes of poor deliverability, it’s actually pretty simple to monitor your email metrics and ensure your list isn’t sliding in a spammy direction. Here are the main metrics you should monitor to ensure your deliverability is healthy:
Open rate measures how many of the people who received your emails actually clicked into (or opened) them.
Click rate indicates how many of the people who opened an email went on to click a link within.
Bounce rate indicates what percentage of emails bounced, rather than reaching their intended recipient. This could happen because the recipient’s email address was deleted, or because their inbox was full, or even just had a temporary technical issue.
Unsubscribe rate measures how many people unsubscribed from your list after receiving an email.
Spam complaint rate measures how many people marked a given email as “Spam.”
One more technical note on open rates: Apple is making privacy adjustments starting with iOS 15 which will prevent ESPs from seeing who actually opens emails received in the Mail app. This means that, if a large percentage of your list are Apple users, you may see artificially inflated open rates - because Apple will simply mark every email received as “opened” in an effort to protect users’ privacy. I wouldn’t be too concerned about this, but it is worth noting that metrics like click rate and placed order rate - as in, things that indicate actual engagement with a given email - will be more important to monitor instead of open rates going forward.
What metrics should I be aiming for?
Ideal metrics are going to vary for every email list, because list size matters. For example, if your list has only 50 subscribers, and you receive two spam complaints from a given email, you’re going to be in trouble - that’s a really high percentage of subscribers who are indicating your messages are spam. Conversely, large lists are going to struggle to get super-high open rates, just by virtue of how many people are subscribed.
Another thing to remember is that larger lists are already at a higher risk for email deliverability issues because of the high volumes of messages they send out. The larger the list grows, the more you’ll need to follow best sending practices to ensure your deliverability stays high.
Here’s a helpful graphic from Klaviyo with some benchmark metrics to keep in mind:
Strategies to improve your brand’s email deliverability
Strategy #1: Build and maintain a quality list.
The first step to improving your email delivery rate is to maintain good list hygiene. You want to make sure that your email list consists of only real emails, ideally belonging to actively engaged readers.
In practice, this looks like:
Enabling double opt-ins: to be honest, these aren’t my favorite - and if you’ve ever had to complete an additional opt-in to subscribe to a list, you’ll know what I mean - but, if your deliverability is suffering, this is a great way to ensure new subscribers are real people and not bots.
Making it easy to unsubscribe: every single email you send to your list must include an unsubscribe link. If users can’t unsubscribe easily, you risk them reporting your emails as spam - which is definitely going to hurt your deliverability.
Performing periodic list clean-ups: create a rule in your email service provider (ESP) to remove any email addresses that bounce more than twice. You can also use segmentation to help clean up your list - more on that below in Strategy #2.
A reminder: never, ever use purchased email lists. I’ve worked with clients who thought they could fast-track their list growth by purchasing email addresses, but this is 1000% always a bad idea. Why? Because any list you purchase will inevitably include lots of fake - or out-of-date - email addresses that will bounce as soon as you click “Send.” Then, many of the real users on the list will mark your emails as spam, because they know they didn’t sign up. The result? You tank your list’s deliverability in record time, and jeopardize the users that did purposefully subscribe. I’ll say it again: never buy email lists. It doesn’t work.
Strategy #2: Utilize segmentation.
If you’re seeing problem metrics like high unsubscribe rates and low click rates, it’s time to build a segmentation strategy so that users don’t feel overwhelmed by your content cadence.
You should be sending the majority of your emails to your most-engaged users, and tapering messaging down from there. Save only the most important messages - sale announcements, for example - to go out to your entire list, as you’ll likely see the best engagement rates even from less active readers. The easiest way to ensure you’re targeting users appropriately is to break them out into segments based on how recently they’ve opened an email and/or engaged with your site:
In the last 30 days (most engaged readers)
In the last 60 days
In the last 90 days
In the last 6 months (least engaged - and at risk of unsubscribing)
Once you’ve built out your segments, you can build your content calendar to correspond to which segment you’re targeting, when - more on that below.
Want to learn more about the ins and outs of email segmentation? Check out my guide here, which includes a lot more specific strategies to improve email metrics by segmenting.
Strategy #3: Maintain a consistent send schedule.
To avoid the appearance of spamminess, you’ll want to keep your list consistent both in send cadence and volume. This could look like sending a majority of your emails to engaged segments (as noted above), and sending messages to the entire list only as needed. Whatever you decide, make sure you create - and maintain - a standard schedule for your email content.
It’s also important to remember that, if you’re looking to ramp up your email cadence, or your list’s size expands suddenly, you’ll want to adjust your send strategy gradually. So, for example, if you’re gearing up for Black Friday promotions, you shouldn’t immediately switch from a 1x/week to a 7x/week sending cadence - you should take a few weeks and build up to that point.
Strategy #4: Audit and improve your email content.
Your goal in this strategy is to examine your current email content and figure out what’s working and what isn’t, so that you can increase engagement - and ultimately improve your list’s deliverability. Reminder: you need to avoid the impression of spamminess with your email content.
Think about spammy emails you’ve received: they may have titles like “CLICK NOW!!!,” or weird and sketchy links that you’re hesitant to click, or just a general vibe that they were written and formatted by a robot. You want to create email content that feels like the opposite of that: purposeful, human, and polished.
Take some time to examine emails you’ve previously sent that have performed well: what worked about them? Can you find any common denominators? For example, I have a client whose emails always perform better when they include a fun GIF. I’m no rocket scientist, but the pattern has been so clear over time that they always make sure to add one in now, and guess what? People always click on it. (I’m not saying this strategy will work for your brand, but maybe it’s worth a shot? I personally love looking at GIFs.)
When it doubt, run an A/B test so that you can pull real data on how different emails perform. You can try A/B testing things like:
Subject lines: does your audience respond better to something more direct, or something more punny (lol)?
Hero image (and/or GIFs): what types of images perform best? Alternatively, do your users prefer it if you just get straight to the copy?
CTA buttons: I like a very direct, action-oriented call to action like “Shop Now.” But maybe you can try switching the wording up and see what gets the most people to click.
Email length: your most engaged users may love to read wordy emails - but does everyone else?
If you need more granular advice on crafting engaging emails, check out my guide to designing emails that convert.
Strategy #5: Improve your list’s sending infrastructure.
If you're seeing especially low email placement rates - meaning open rates are super low because most user’s emails are routing to their spam inbox - it could be worth diving into the technical details of your list’s sending infrastructure.
First, confirm that the email address you’re sending from is valid and specific to your domain. You never want to be sending mass marketing emails from an @gmail.com address - your domain should be specific to your brand. Second, ensure that recipients can reply to your emails without a message failure - a sign of spam.
Next, check if your email domain is authenticated. Authentication steps will be different per service provider, so for specific steps, Google “how to authenticate an email domain in Klaviyo” (or whoever you’re using). Completing domain authentication certifies that you, the sender, are who you say you are, and can be helpful in reducing spam rates.
Have questions? Need help improving your list’s deliverability? Get in touch. I answer all messages personally.
