{"id":9489,"date":"2022-09-30T12:18:45","date_gmt":"2022-09-30T12:18:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gosquared.com\/blog\/?p=9489"},"modified":"2022-10-03T11:45:20","modified_gmt":"2022-10-03T11:45:20","slug":"email-deliverability-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gosquared.com\/blog\/email-deliverability-guide","title":{"rendered":"The Official GoSquared Guide: Improve your email deliverability"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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There\u2019s nothing more frustrating than spending weeks crafting excellent copy, kitted out with a juicy CTA and your latest, hard-earned testimonial – only to see your email campaign scattergun all over the place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soft bounces, transient bounces, hard bounces, spam blocks, the dreaded \u201csilent discard\u201d (we\u2019ll get to that<\/em> one later)\u2026 These are all lead balloons to your email marketing ROI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Email Deliverability was a time & place, it would be the Wild Wild West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are no hard & fast rules nor much consistency across email providers, so ensuring your emails deliver currently remains more art than science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, even if you can never guarantee full email deliverability, there are a few proven techniques to stack the odds in your favour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And stack the odds we must. For nothing good ever came from an email which missed its target.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So join us, as we dive into GoSquared\u2019s best-practise tips for increasing your email deliverability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Why don\u2019t some of my emails deliver? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Bounces 🛑<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

First of all, there are 3 different types of bounce. Some are message dependent, such as \u201cattachment too large\u201d – typically a Soft Bounce<\/strong>. Some are marked as Transient Bounce<\/strong>, such as \u201cmailbox full\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your ESP will attempt to resend the email according to their own schedule and determined number of times. An example might be 6 attempts over the consecutive 3 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You could also hit Hard Bounces<\/strong> if your recipient\u2019s email address no longer exists. Or your sending IP may have a low reputation, meaning the Internet Service Provider (ISP) decided not to allow the email to deliver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also worth noting that the level of information you receive on Bounces will often vary according to the recipients\u2019 inbox email providers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To add further confusion, ESPs often treat bounces differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some soft bounces may get automatically retried. Others may temporarily block a particular recipient address. Some hard bounces may trigger an address to be permanently removed from your list – all of which is highly dependent on the sending provider you use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSilently Discarded\u201d 😱<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

This category is one of the reasons why Email Deliverability is such a Wild West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silent discard is essentially when an ISP blocks receipt of an email, but without marking the reason for doing so, nor hard-bouncing the email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a double-whammy; these emails don\u2019t get delivered, but without giving you any visibility or insight into the reason why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some email platforms are a bit more notorious than others for silently discarding emails, Ycombinator forum has a helpful thread on this here<\/a>. (NB. This is an external, public forum – the language at times in the comments can be a little\u2026 spicy.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spam Complaints 🙅‍♀️<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Having your emails marked as Spam isn\u2019t just a case of compromising a Marketing campaign or two. Poor email deliverability can lead to your emails getting outright banned<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Email Service Providers (ie. the back-end platforms that actually send out your emails) are unforgiving. Anything as seemingly inoffensive as a Spam Complaint rate of 0.5%, and your ESP could decide to boot your company permanently off of their services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You read that right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That means not only your Marketing campaigns out the window, but all emails<\/strong> set-up on that platform go too. Welcome emails, subscription update reminders, payment confirmations\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So this is a serious matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following best practices – The DON\u2019TS ❌<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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I shouldn\u2019t think I need to stress why high email deliverability rates are important, dear reader. As a Marketing professional, I know I\u2019m preaching to the choir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But just in case the point needed reiterating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The finest copy, meticulous re-writes, sparkling landing pages, intricate Sales funnels, and (most of all) Marketing budget; all get tanked if your emails do not land in your recipients\u2019 inboxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with most things, the first port of call for finding a solution tends to be the \u201cdo not do\u2019s\u201d. So let\u2019s take a dive into these first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) Avoid Email Marketing dark arts 🧙‍♂️<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Although this is becoming less & less common, some Marketeers still fall back on buying email lists, or worse, scraping sites for email addresses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The former is well, just a terrible idea. Purchased lists are almost always chock full of low quality email addresses, meaning you\u2019re targeting users who are unlikely to fit your ICP or be interested in your service. So targeting them makes little sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worse still, because these users won\u2019t know who you are, that makes them all the more likely to mark your emails as Spam; damaging your email reputation and future deliverability rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for email scraping, this strategy is riddled with spam traps<\/a>, not to mention outright illegal<\/a> in many countries. Enough said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) DON\u2019T WRITE COPY LIKE THIS!!!!?!<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Guess what happens to spammy copy? It ends up exactly where it belongs\u2026 in the spam folder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gone are the days of dodgy direct marketing tactics, today\u2019s ESPs are primed to filter out suspicious looking content. Excessive use of caps-lock and exclamation points is guaranteed to set alarm bells ringing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At best you\u2019ll get ignored, at worst you\u2019ll see spam complaints sent from your recipients to your Email Service Provider. And, as we\u2019ve said before, ESPs are not forgiving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Avoid those trigger words 🤢<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Similar to the above, ESPs are always on the look-out for \u2018trigger words\u2019 and sensitive to anything which seems remotely suspicious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remember the last super-spam-email you received? Chances are it included one of more of the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n