You send emails, expecting them to reach your customers’ inboxes, ready to inform them about your products or offers. But what if I told you that a good chunk of those emails are never seen by their intended recipients?
Let’s have a quick chat about something that’s been silently chipping away at your business—poor email deliverability.
What Exactly is Email Deliverability?
Before diving into the nitty-gritty, let’s get on the same page on what email deliverability means.
At its core, email deliverability is the ability to get your emails into your subscribers’ inboxes. It’s not just about ensuring your message doesn’t bounce; it’s about making sure it doesn’t land in the dreaded spam folder, Promotions Tab, or get blocked by the recipient’s email server.
The Surface-Level Costs
When talking about poor email deliverability, the first costs that come to mind are obvious: the effort and money spent crafting, designing, and sending emails that never reach your audience. But that’s scratching the surface.
1. Lost Revenue
Think about it this way: every email campaign you run typically has a goal—pushing a product, promoting a service, or nurturing leads through your funnel. Poor deliverability means fewer eyes on your offer, which directly translates to lost sales opportunities.
If an email intended to convert doesn’t get seen, it’s like you’ve thrown money out the window.
2. Wasted Marketing Budget
What’s your monthly spend on email marketing? Consider the tools, the creative process, and the time invested—each dollar you spend on a campaign that lands in spam is wasted. Think of email deliverability as your return on investment multiplier.
Poor deliverability slashes that ROI down to fractions.
3. Degraded Sender Reputation
Your sender reputation is to email what your credit score is to financial health. Poor deliverability tarnishes your sender score, making it even harder for subsequent emails to reach inboxes.
It’s a vicious cycle: bad deliverability today leads to worse deliverability tomorrow.
The Top 3 Hidden Costs
Now, let’s peel back the layers to uncover the hidden costs of poor email deliverability, the ones you might not be aware of but are just as detrimental—maybe even more so.
1. Customer Trust and Engagement
When your emails consistently fail to reach the inbox, your subscribers miss out on valuable content. Over time, this leads to disengagement. They might begin to think your brand has gone silent or, worse, forgotten about them. Consistency is key to maintaining customer trust and engagement.
2. Long-Term Brand Damage
Poor deliverability doesn’t just affect your current campaign; it taints your brand’s email history. Domains can become blacklisted, and recovering from that can be an uphill battle. Over time, this could hurt your brand’s credibility and reliability, both essential ingredients to building customer loyalty.
3. Promotion Isolation
Ever noticed how some emails are labeled “Promotions” and tucked away into a separate tab, hardly ever seen by the recipient? Poorly optimized deliverability can cause your emails to automatically be sorted as promotional material rather than important updates or personalized content, reducing their visibility even further.
Why Good Email Deliverability Matters
Let’s flip the script for a second. Your goal is to boost deliverability for your email lists, so imagine you’ve nailed it. Here are the perks you reap:
- Higher Engagement Rates: More opens, more clicks, more conversions. Every email has the potential to drive action.
- Stronger ROI: Efficient spending and better returns on your marketing budget.
- Improved Brand Image: Consistent, valuable communication strengthens trust and loyalty
- Enhanced Visibility: Being seen more frequently in the primary inbox maintains top-of-mind awareness.
5 Ways to Improve Your Email Deliverability
So you’re probably wondering how to avoid these pitfalls, right? Here are five actionable steps to boost your email deliverability to ensure you’re getting the most out of your marketing efforts.
1. Verify Your Email List
Remove invalid addresses and ensure your list consists of engaged users. A cleaner list means fewer bounces and a better sender reputation. Use tools for email verification or regularly audit your list for inactive users.
2. Authenticate Your Emails
Utilize SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records to authenticate your emails. These protocols establish your email’s credibility with receiving servers, effectively saying, “Hey, it’s really me, not a spoofer. Let me through!”
3. Create Quality Content that Encourages Interaction
Content is king, remember? Avoid spammy language, excessive exclamations, and misleading headers. Craft engaging, valuable, and relevant content that resonates with your audience.
High-quality content not only provides value to your audience but also stimulates conversation and engagement. Incorporate questions, polls, and call-to-action prompts that invite your audience to participate and share their thoughts. You’ll create a sense of community and loyalty.
This extra effort boosts engagement metrics and signals to email servers that recipients value your emails.
4. Manage Sending Frequency
Bombarding your subscribers with irrelevant emails can lead to complaints and unsubscribes. Find a balance that maintains engagement without overwhelming your readers with information they weren’t expecting. Monitor your email cadence and respect user preferences.
5. Monitor Your Sender Reputation
Use email deliverability tools for marketers to keep an eye on your sender reputation. Understand how it fluctuates and take active steps to maintain or improve it.
Don’t Lose Money on Deliverability
Cracking the code on email deliverability might seem daunting initially, but trust me, the benefits far outweigh the initial efforts. By sharpening your strategies, verifying your lists, authenticating your send-outs, and consistently adding value through quality content, you’re not just avoiding the hidden costs of poor deliverability—you’re putting in the work for your email marketing success. Need some help? Consider some of the best email deliverability software to give you a leg up.
Get proactive, stay vigilant, and focus on ensuring that your emails reach the inbox every single time!
Infographic
Poor email deliverability can lead to wasted time and money on emails that never reach your audience. If you’re looking to improve this issue, discover in this infographic five actionable steps to enhance your email deliverability and maximize your marketing efforts.
