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Dec 28, 2018 - 02:26 AM
Any email marketer worth their salt knows that email non-deliverability rate is sky high in 2018. In fact, the number of successfully delivered emails is on the decline as the global inbox placement rate is ever reducing.
An article I found while scouring this website explains the phenomenon of email bounce rates. However, I will solely focus on the solution side of the problem (email open rates). Every day we send out marketing emails and a huge chunk of it never make it beyond the spam box.
Email deliverability is increasingly becoming a headache to marketers who do not pay attention to simple rules to get past the spam filter – since I believe that this is the main culprit responsible for non-delivery of emails. Return Path conducted a study in 2015 where they found that only 79% of commercial emails actually land in the inbox. This implies that for every five emails that you send out, one either gets filtered as spam or is blocked entirely.
Why are emails not getting delivered? What to do?
Since you asked, of course you must be wondering why your emails seem not to be making it to the inbox and instead arrive at the spam box. The answer could be simple or maybe a lot more complicated. One of the core reasons why it is getting harder to avoid your marketing mails getting directed to spam is that spam filtering is continuously getting rigorous. The webmail providers seem to be cracking the whip on spam, and since these filters are not 100% accurate, a whole lot of legitimate mails are not spared either.
This is just one part of it, but it gets twisted from there. You see, email deliverability hinges widely on how subscribers engage with them. Most of the webmail providers rely on engagement levels and recipient behavior stats to determine which set of marketing emails actually make it to the inbox.
The top reasons why your emails do not see the other end of the tunnel include:
1. You Failed to Obtain Express Mailing Permission
I saw somewhere on this site that you should avoid buying Facebook pages likes for your business. The same rule applies for email marketing. Never buy a list of emails to send newsletter and promotional materials. Not only is it uncouth but also illegal. In Canada, one could pay up to $16,000 for violating the CAN-SPAM Act.
Simple ways to obtain express permission is by means of an opt-in form on your website where people can consciously subscribe to your mailing list.
2. Your IP Address Has Ever Been Flagged for Spam
Without sending spam yourself, your emails could still get flagged as spam if someone has ever used the IP address for sending spam.
Most email providers have a strict policy concerning sending spam emails through their servers. As such, they have put in place measures to prevent this. Therefore, sticking to one reputable email service provider will keep you in the white zone. I would recommend ConvertKit, MailChimp, Aweber, InfusionSoft, and ActiveCampaign.
3. Having Low Open Rates
Most of the email service providers I mentioned have a way to determine how many of your emails are opened once received as well as how many are deleted without being opened. This metric referred to as Email Open Rate, is very important in how the providers’ algorithms filter emails for spam.
Having lower open rates therefore, implies that you stand a higher risk of your emails being flagged as spam. Increasing email open rates would be the surest way to avoid your emails being marked as spam. You could do this by perfecting your subject lines, sending your emails at the right time, and keeping your list fresh and segmented.
4. Your Subscribers Complain About Your Emails
Subscribers have reported 21% of emails as spam. This is the second most reason that accounts for emails never arriving at the inbox. I will also admit that whenever I receive an email that I cannot recall signing up to, I always hit the report spam button and unsubscribe from the list. You should therefore try to find out whether this is why your subscribers are marking your emails as spam.
To improve your ratings on this issue, make sure to include an easily accessible “unsubscribe” link so that your subscribers can easily opt out if they are no longer interested in receiving your emails.
Jan 05, 2019 - 09:52 AM
You may also want to check if there are any issues with the sending domain by using these two tools:
http://www.reputationauthority.org
For one of our clients, their customers were not receiving a confirmation email and kept emailing support about this. When we checked the sending domain on these tools, one of their AWS servers had been blacklisted erroneously. We fixed the issue and emails started being delivered as expected.
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