Increase Your Email Deliverability
An Easy 7 Item Check List

5 Min. Read

It’s that time again, time for an email marketing campaign. You have fantastic products in stock in your Shopify store and you’re ready to tell your subscriber base all about them. But how do you ensure that your beautiful emails don’t have an email deliverability issue and end up in a dreaded spam folder somewhere? 

It happens to even the best businesses but don’t worry! This easy checklist will help increase email deliverability for your business.

Table of Contents

First, What Is Email Deliverability?

Deliverability really just means the amount of emails that actually land up in a customer’s inbox. The difference between email delivery and email deliverability is where your email goes. Email delivery simply means your customer has accepted the email – even if it’s sitting in some folder they never see. 

Email deliverability on the other hand, means your email is actually delivered to your customer’s primary mailbox. And once it’s there, you have a much higher chance of them opening your email and ordering your products.

Send Emails in Small Batches

When email service providers see hundreds of thousands of unopened emails from the same IP, they’re probably going to classify these as spam. How to get around it? As Neil Patel says, start small. Even if your email list is 100 000, start by sending a couple thousand one day, then slightly more the next day and so on. This way, any ISP is more likely to see your IP as a legitimate source.

Use The Right Email Address

It’s quick and really affordable to create a unique business domain that you can send your emails from. And trust me, this is something you’ll want to do – not only does a generic address almost guarantee a visit to the spam folder, it also portrays your brand as untrustworthy.  

This may sound really obvious but the truth is, doing a lot of simple things well is how you win the email marketing game.  One quick example is simply by verifying the email address of the person you’re reaching out to, which reduces bounce rate and ensures better email deliverability


Don’t Clog Up A Customer’s Inbox

Sending gazillions of emails is not going to improve your email deliverability. Just the opposite. In fact, your email etiquette plays a big part in whether customers and potential customers mark you as spam or not. Essentially, you should keep spam complaints below 08. – 1%. And what’s the number one reason a reader marks emails as spam? Simple – There are just too many of them. Not only will this almost definitely flag your IP as untrustworthy, it will also probably irritate readers to the point that they won’t even bother opening the next email you send.

Segment, Segment, Segment!

At an absolute minimum, your open rates should be between 12 and 14%. But you can get this number way, way higher. By giving your readers content they actually want to see through email segmentation, you can increase your open rates by up to 203%. 

You can organize your email lists based on purchase behavior and categories of products, browsed as well as geography and even abandoned carts.  For all these areas Conversific is invaluable for interpreting your analytics data.  And the more relevant your emails, the more likely customers are to buy your products. It’s just logic, really.

Not sure where to start? ESPs like Klaviyo provide ridiculously effective segmentation tools through real-time data and syncing with your customer’s other apps. You can check it out, as well as research a few other features here!

Check Your Subject Lines

Think of a subject line as your brand’s way of saying ‘hello’. It’s an important first impression that can have a big impact on email deliverability. People are much more likely to open an email with a witty or informative subject line than something that says DO NOT DELETE! Or even worse, URGENT!

Most importantly, your subject line shouldn’t mislead your customers. In fact, according to the CAN-SPAM act, this is against the law. Also, remember to always use your brand in your ‘delivery name’. For example, it’s best practice to mark your email from ‘Carly at Super Cycling’ instead of just ‘Carly’. 

By the way, this won’t only reduce your bounce rates, it will also increase your open rates, so that’s awesome!

Say ‘Bye’ To Inactive Users

Scrubbing isn’t just for spring-cleaning – your email lists need to be regularly scrubbed as well. Here’s how: identify anyone on your list who has been unresponsive for long periods of time. Then, send them one last email asking if they want to unsubscribe. If you don’t get a response, just remove them. Though you shouldn’t delete them entirely – if you plug them into Google and Facebook, you can still serve them personalized ads. We suggest moving them to an ‘inactive’ list.

Why is this important? Any dead weight in your list will increase your bounce rate which is the quickest way to get your IP classified as spam. The longer these subscribers remain on your list, the more damage it will do. Plus, the last thing you want is to be wasting your time and money sending emails to consumers who aren’t engaging with your brand.

Make Opting Out Easier

ALWAYS have a visible unsubscribe button or link in every email. It’s the law in the USA to do this but it will also stop your campaigns from triggering spam warnings.

Some people think it’s better to make unsubscribing as difficult as possible and hold on to users for as long as they can but that’s definitely not the case.

These links will help you scrub your lists even faster (like I mentioned before), so you’re not sending unwanted content and secondly, they’ll ensure that you maintain a good sender reputation – super important if you want your IP to be classified as trustworthy.

One Last Thing

Email campaigns WILL be effective for your business – as long as they end up in the right inboxes. In a nutshell: The better your deliverability, the better your open rates and ultimately, the better your conversion rates will be.

So make sure you spend as much time complying with ISP filters as you do crafting powerful copy and creating eye-catching designs. Following these steps will help you get more interested buyers and pave the way to success.

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, or if you liked this post, why not share it with your contacts?

Amy Searll is a content creator at CodeCrew, a leading San Francisco email marketing agency specializing in gorgeous, paper-free communication for brands that are passionate about saving our planet.

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Amy Searll

Amy Searll is a content creator at CodeCrew, a leading San Francisco email marketing agency specializing in gorgeous, paper-free communication for brands that are passionate about saving our planet.

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