The Importance of an Email Deliverability Consultant
A high email deliverability rate is the dream of every marketer and entrepreneur. It means emails reach customers, and conversion rates get higher. However, the complexity of email deliverability can make it tricky to achieve maximum inbox efficiency. It could be low engagement, high complaint rates, or a cluttered list swamping your success. In this case, sending mass emails can become a problem.
Worry not!
An email deliverability consultant can help your emails reach recipients’ inboxes. Significantly, using email deliverability services can improve open rates and consequently — increase revenue.
To help you make informed choices, we will explain email deliverability challenges, how an expert can help, best practices to follow, and which ESP to choose.
Email Deliverability Challenges
A well-planned email sequence increases your chances of engaging with your target audience. You could have the best design elements and quality content, but if they get lost in the void, your customers will never see them.
That’s why it’s critical to be aware of the following issues before hitting the send button:
- Spam traps: ISPs regularly update their algorithms to determine whether your emails should be sent to the recipient’s inbox or the spam folder. Their complex algorithms use factors like the sender’s reputation, email content, and user feedback to decide if your emails are trustworthy.
- High complaint rates: The average complaint rate for commercial emails is 0.12%. That means 1 in every 833 emails is a complaint and that is already too high. If you have a high complaint rate, chances are that you have been sending irrelevant content or too many emails in a short period. At Campaign Refinery, we have a stringent rule of terminating user accounts with complaint rates above 0.1%. Fortunately, all our clients fall below the minimum threshold, thanks to our refined services including email list cleaning and expert support.
- Email infrastructure issues: Email infrastructure refers to the technical setup of your email servers. It includes the number of IP addresses and authentication protocols such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. An error in any of these protocols can result in email deliverability problems. To avoid these pitfalls, Campaign Refinery makes it mandatory to undergo domain authentication.
- Permission-based problems: When you send emails without people’s consent, they are considered spam. Your emails could end up in spam due to pre-checked opt-in boxes, misleading content, or failure to provide easy unsubscribe options.
- Recipient address issues: A poorly maintained email list could lead to a high bounce rate, lower inbox placement, and decreased trust in your business. Constantly sending emails to wrong or dormant addresses can also affect email deliverability. For example, Campaign Refinery uses automatic list-cleaning services that remove harmful emails before sending them. This unique feature has helped our clients have a safe email list while maintaining sender reputation.
- Email content issues: Using words like free, act now, casino, etc. can trigger spam detectors. Poor content structure and irrelevant information can also contribute to it.
Reducing complaint rates and improving domain reputation establishes a higher deliverability rate. However, unforeseen threats could potentially damage your sender reputation. In this case, working with an email deliverability expert will be your best bet.
How Does an Email Deliverability Expert Help You?
While sending emails is simple for individuals, businesses lack that flexibility. They must look out for threats related to authentication and IP reputation. For this reason, most businesses hire an email deliverability expert to oversee the entire process.
Email deliverability consultants are responsible for ensuring the emails land in the recipient’s inbox. Their responsibilities include:
- Analyzing client emails,
- Improving email performance,
- Email infrastructure configuration,
- Refining email sequences for consistent communication flow,
- Maintaining email list hygiene,
- Sender reputation management,
- Content and design optimization,
- Authentication and compliance,
- A/B testing and optimization,
- Managing email delivery reports and troubleshooting issues.
They also assist businesses in identifying strategic opportunities and, if necessary, train teams.
By working with an email deliverability consultant, you’ll be able to:
1. Receive Strategic Guidance: These specialists use their technical and strategic expertise to create a well-rounded plan for your email success. They help build segmented subscriber lists, create optimized lead magnets, implement automation, and develop mobile-friendly email designs.
2. Increase Mailbox Performance: Our standard for good email open rates is around 30%. Anything below 10% is considered an issue. To fix this, consultants analyze your emails and read your inbox to increase email open rates.
3. Improve Domain Reputation: A good domain reputation involves a combination of factors such as email sending frequency, email content, unsubscribe options, and reduced spam complaints. An email deliverability consultant helps clean up email lists, improving the health of your domain.
4. Build Customer Relationships: Engaging customers the right way can help increase conversions as well as trust in your brand. Experts achieve this through various marketing strategies like welcome emails, loyalty programs, and engagement gamification. Campaign Refinery actually added a unique gamification feature our clients can use to engage their subscribers to earn points for opening and clicking on emails.
Which Email Deliverability Service Provider is Best for Your Business?
In the email marketing game, humans are always competing against machine learning. Increasingly, algorithms are getting smarter at detecting spam emails. A lapse in the marketing metrics can result in reduced email performance. That also means you could get flagged despite having good intentions.
One way to avoid this is to switch to an ESP with high deliverability rates.
It’s important to note that deliverability rates vary between email service providers. With tons of ESPs on the market, it could get overwhelming and confusing. That’s why we put together this feature comparison guide to help you choose the best.
| ESP | Friendly UI | Easy email editor | Automation features | Automatic list cleaning | Gamification | Mandatory Domain Authentication | Customer credit system |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MailChimp | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Constant Contact | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| MailerLite | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Campaign Refinery | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Note: Once you sign up with an email service and move your email lists, it can become hard to switch to another provider. We recommend you evaluate options thoroughly before getting started. With all the unique features, Campaign Refinery immediately increases engagement, deliverability, and revenue after joining.
How to Fix Email Deliverability Issues
Email deliverability issues are common and can affect even the most experienced marketers. And if you’re new to the email marketing world, it can be tough to spot errors. Your well-crafted emails can suddenly go missing or be marked as spam. And the majority of the time, you would be unaware of it.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed with troubleshooting, working with an email deliverability consultant can help. But if you decide to go the DIY route, here are the most common ways to fix deliverability issues.
1. Authenticate the Email Domain
Email domain authentication refers to the process of verifying the sender’s identity. It ensures recipients receive emails from trusted sources only, eliminating malicious ones. Implementing email authentication mechanisms prevents phishing and other email attacks, keeping your email infrastructure intact.
2. Send Emails to Highly Engaged Recipients
According to Emailtooltester, an acceptable deliverability rate is between 83% – 89%. Anything short of that needs tremendous improvement. When starting, the best way is to send small batches of emails to engaged recipients, also known as ‘IP warm up’. As the open rates increase for these emails, ISPs will slowly start trusting your IP. After building credibility, you can increase the number of emails you send out.
3. Monitor the Sender Reputation
Sender reputation is a way ISPs examine the authenticity of emails. ISPs use a series of metrics like spam complaints, emailing unknown users, etc. Continually monitoring your sender reputation will help you spot gaps and fix them immediately.
Sender Score, a reliable reputation check tool, defines a good score as one that is greater than 80. To achieve a score in this range, you must master email best practices.
4. Avoid Blacklists
A common question many senders have is — how long will the blacklist last?
It depends on the email host and can take anywhere between a few hours and a few months. To avoid being in this situation, try the following:
- Only send emails to subscribers
- Refrain from manually entering emails into your database
- Validate subscribers’ email IDs before emailing them
5. Or — Rely on Expert Guidance
As experienced email marketers, we are happy to share knowledge with our audience and if you find value in the points we made thus far, let us offer you a gift: The Inbox Formula, Our expert guide on how to fix deliverability by yourself!
In it, you will learn::
- What are the four things to have on your website to reduce spam complaints.
- How to navigate all things technical – DKIM, DMARC, SPF.
- Proven ways other email marketers used to scale their business.
We use the strategy from The Inbox Formula, so we know it works. You can make an effort and implement it yourself or get in touch and apply to become the client of our exclusive, premium service!
Email Deliverability Consultants: How to Achieve More Open Rates?
A good email deliverability rate will significantly boost the chances of conversions and better ROI. It’s a continuous process, and good results take time. If handling everything on your own is difficult, you can always rely on us for a dedicated email deliverability consultant.
We say this with confidence because our decades-long experience, our love for emails, dedicated support we give to our clients, and unshakable quality of service have made Campaign Refinery a new favorite ESP amongst businesses.
More good news: The premium ‘done for you’ service is now available for Campaign Refinery VIP customers. The results have been unbelievable so far — it has taken email lists from average revenue to millions of dollars per year, as per our customer feedback.
Our clients believe we’ve got everything they need to get the highest ROI from email campaigns. Apply for our exclusive service and check out why they’re so convinced!
Until then, happy emailing!
Written by Divya Shakthi.
