Escape The Inbox Void: 3 Tips For Improving Email Deliverability
Creating a relevant campaign, crafting a compelling message, selecting engaging imagery—it’s all wasted effort if your email doesn’t reach the inbox.
When targeting customers, email is one of the most effective channels available. But successful email marketing relies on deliverability. And delivering ads into your ideal buyer’s inbox isn’t always easy.
It’s also not impossible. Here are three tips that will optimize your emails for inbox penetration and increase deliverability.
1. Clean Your Data
Plenty of companies have email addresses, mountains of them in fact. Unfortunately, having a pile of addresses doesn’t equal an effective email campaign.
In fact, poorly constructed email lists based on insufficient data points can damage your chances of reaching the inbox and render your campaign ineffective. (Don’t believe us? See tip #3.)
You can maintain the health of your data by:
Eliminating duplicate records
Removing incomplete or outdated data
Ensuring new subscribers are accurately mapped to appropriate data selects
Removing spam traps and undeliverable domains
Additionally, expelling known complainers and unsubscribes from your mailing lists reduces complaints and increases your chances of getting your email in front of buyers.
2. Segment Your List
The more subscribers engage with your emails, the more ISPs and email providers will make sure your emails are delivered into their inboxes—instead of their spam folders.
So how do you get subscribers to engage with your emails? By sending content that is relevant to their wants, needs and challenges.
Establishing an email database with extensive demographic and behavioral selects like gender, geography, age, income and marital status helps you target your message, select your imagery and engage your audience through a more authentic customer connection.
Consumers are tired of content, pitches and promotions that have nothing to do with them. When you understand your customers’ demographics, almost every part of your email marketing campaign can be personalized to improve their experience.
And all that personalization pays off in the form of increased inbox delivery.
3. Improve Your Reputation
Your business’ reputation is always important. But in email marketing, reputation is everything. It’s the difference between connecting with new consumers and hitting a brick inbox wall.
Senders with a bad reputation are often marked as spam, relegating their emails to blocked or junk status. Senders with a good reputation are more likely to have their emails delivered directly to the recipient’s inbox.
Cleaning up your email list is one way to improve your reputation. Criteria such as opt-outs, spam complaints and high bounce rates are evaluated by servers and impact whether or not recipients see your email.
Compliance with the CAN-SPAM law is another. You are legally obligated to ensure the email addresses you—or a third party acting on your behalf—use were obtained with the proper consent. So be sure to use a double opt-in and make unsubscribing from your emails easy.
Avoid The Void
You spend a lot of time, money and effort preparing your marketing campaigns. Don’t let it go to waste.
When it comes to email marketing, deliverability is everything. By creating a clean database of highly targeted and engaged email subscribers, complying with the CAN-SPAM Act and continuously evaluating your program, you can escape the inbox void and land safely in your customers inboxes.