Email Deliverability: What It Is and Why It Matters

Do you do “Email Marketing” or are you an “Email Now-and-Then-er”?

A key part of effective and successful marketing is the schedule. If you only email your customers once a year or are on an uneven schedule (e.g. January, February, July, November), they are less likely to open your email when it arrives than if you send on a regular schedule. They are also more likely to unsubscribe or worse, flag your email as spam.

They will forget you if you disappear then react the wrong way when you reappear.

You’ve probably heard about the importance of email deliverability, but do you know how it specifically applies to you, your email marketing strategy, and your customers?

Email Delivery vs. Email Deliverability

• Email delivery is when an email is successfully delivered to the receiving server.
• Email deliverability is when an email successfully arrives in the person’s inbox.

It’s possible to have good email delivery but poor deliverability because the email landed in a person’s spam folder rather than their inbox.

Engagement is the most important factor in email deliverability since it directly impacts sender reputation (both for the marketer and the Email Service Provider). A great sender reputation is key to great email deliverability. Your reputation is always on the line.

1. Successful Deliverability Equals Successful Email Marketing

Email deliverability is the foundation upon which email marketing is built. At a base level, a marketer is paying an ESP to send emails on their behalf but how a marketer manages their subscriber list and email program will determine whether or not the email is placed in subscribers’ inboxes.

Designing a thoughtful and attractive email only goes so far.

2. Win the Inbox Competition

Let’s face it, there is a LOT of email sent today (1.5 billion people use Gmail every month).

The savvy marketer knows they need to provide relevant and engaging content, delivered at the right frequency (i.e. on a schedule) to an interested audience, and build long-term relationships with their subscribers.

3. Design Thoughtful and Engaging Email Campaigns

For email marketing to be successful, people must actually open an email and engage with the content. Thus, if you want to be successful, a marketer must consider the experience from the recipient’s point of view.

1. Permission: Considerate marketers only send emails people actually want and only send to fully opted-in lists who you have permission to send to. Sending emails to non-permission based lists will result in low open rates, high unsubscribe rates, and high spam complaints, all of which indicate an unsuccessful email. Such poor stats will have an ongoing negative effect on sender reputation and will impact the sender’s deliverability in the future.
2. Frequency: A marketer also needs to balance maintaining their subscriber’s interest by sending regularly without sending too often, which can cause inbox fatigue.

Stick to a regular schedule, send relevant content that encourages an open, and keep trying to improve your deliverability.

A Final Word… on Permission Expiration

Permission is not considered permanent and can expire over time if regular contact is not maintained.

Here are Market 2 All, if you gathered the permission to send more than 12 months since your last campaign, then the recipient would need to be regularly emailed over the last 12 months in order to be considered fully permission-based. Re-engagement campaigns for those outside the 12 month period need to use a service outside of Market 2 All.

A tight ship results in much better deliverability and inbox placement for you as well, which is a win for everyone!

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Need help with a re-engagement campaign?

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Mailbox photo by Yannik Mika on Unsplash

Aeroplane photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash