Improve Your Email Deliverability and Sender Reputation

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Describe the business value of good email deliverability.
Explain how sender reputation can influence deliverability.
Follow best practices for maintaining an optimal sender reputation.

Email Is Still a Key Revenue Driver

In 2021, email celebrated its 50th birthday—and it still continues to play a vital role in how we regularly communicate with each other and how businesses sell and promote their products and services.

Office workers at their desks

Email marketing in particular remains one of the most effective and profitable tools in the digital world today. According to Litmus Software, Inc., every US$1 spent on email marketing generates nearly $42 in return. This high return on investment (ROI) shows that email remains a significant contributor to the bottom line of any business. The key to maximizing its potential? The art of deliverability.

What Exactly Is Deliverability?

Deliverability is how you navigate the path to the subscriber’s inbox and get your email in front of the eyes of your subscribers. When your email lands in their inbox, you’ve completed the first step toward generating a potential open and from there a lead conversion.

All delivered emails are not equal, however. It’s entirely possible for your email to land in a subscriber’s Spam or Junk folder. When emails are filtered as Spam or Junk, then naturally they are less visible to the subscriber and less likely to be engaged with. A high rate of filtering and a low rate of engagement means less revenue from email marketing for your business.

There are ultimately many factors that can influence email deliverability (your ability to get to a customer’s inbox), but the most important one by far is your sender reputation.

So, What Is Sender Reputation?

Think of sender reputation as your unique email identity. It’s how the internet service providers (ISPs) perceive you as a sender based on the level of trust that you’ve built with them over time. They form this perception of you by analyzing your recent send history; your sending infrastructure, including your IP and domain reputation; and how subscribers interact and engage with the emails that you send.

The more positive the subscriber signals, the better your potential for reaching inboxes, and on a permanent basis too. Conversely, too many negative signals like high bounce rates, spam traps, spam complaints, and a lack of engagement can all cause drops in your sender reputation, and in some cases result in poor deliverability indefinitely.

Build and Maintain a Positive Sender Reputation

To establish a healthy sender reputation, consider and exercise the following fundamentals.

Send from Stable Email Infrastructure

Make sure you’re set up for success from a technical capacity before you start sending mass emails. Ensure you’re using the right type of IP for your needs (dedicated vs shared) and have the right number of dedicated IPs to deliver those higher volumes. Ensure emails contain correct email authentication (SPF/DKIM/DMARC) and that you have the appropriate DNS configuration in place too.

Establish Good List-Hygiene Practices

Use a clear and explicit opt-in only. Do not purchase or rent email lists from third-party sources. Grow your base organically, and implement subscriber lifecycle management processes to help maintain an active and engaged user base. Do periodic checks to remove inactive subscribers from your lists.

Send Relevant, Personalized Content

Emails that are personalized and sent to the right audience drive the best results. The more relevant the content is to your subscribers, the better their engagement. An email that is not wanted or that does not meet subscriber expectations is more likely to be ignored, deleted, or, worst case, flagged as spam.

Engage in IP and Domain Warming

If you’re a new sender, it’s important to undertake some form of warming to help build up your reputation and volume across the sending IP(s), the domain, and the ISPs you’re sending to. The timelines for warming can vary, but generally you want to build up about 4 to 6 weeks of sending history.

As trust with the ISP starts to grow, your capacity as a sender to add more volume grows in parallel. Start conservatively and increase your volume gradually while sending and prioritizing recently opted-in and engaged audiences. This maximizes the results of the warming process.

To help establish trust with the ISPs, it’s important to send your emails to clean lists with minimal bounces and to generate good levels of positive subscriber engagement. In terms of volumes, consider starting at 2,500 per IP on day one and grow volume slowly, increasing at 25% daily increments until you are in a position to send to your largest daily requirement.

Set Up a Robust Bounce Process

Make sure to automatically suppress repeating bounces. For example, hard bounces from trusted sources should be immediately suppressed after the first instance. Allow only a limited number of soft bounces to minimize the potential impact of repeating offenders.

Apply these fundamentals and you’ve got the foundation for deliverability success! The role that your sender reputation plays in determining whether an email gets delivered to the inbox cannot be underestimated. Next, find out more about the root causes of common deliverability issues and the best practices to address them.