5 Things Your Email Needs to Land in the Inbox

Intro

Regardless of the industry, email marketing all comes down to sending emails that create enough of a reaction to spark a response in the recipient. But that’s easier said than done. First, your emails have to reach your subscribers.**

The prerequisite to any successful email marketing campaign is that your email actually lands in the inbox, where it has a chance of being opened. But there’s no guarantee that this will happen. It all comes down to how well you coordinate the different facets of your email marketing. If you don’t cover all of the bases, no matter how strong certain aspects of your emails are, it will be in vain.

So, what are the areas an effective email marketer must master to boost email deliverability? Let’s get into the best practices – so you can engage your audience and boost your email sales.

Check your email list

It’s a misconception that your email list stays fresh forever. If you want to set it aside for a few months, you can pick up where you left off, right? No. Marketers fall into that trap because many don’t know about the rhythmic cycle of email lists. Email lists aren’t static or evergreen.

Your data degrades fast – remember to verify your email list regularly.

Your email database is more like the fresh fruit in your refrigerator and less like jarred or canned fruit in your pantry. The fresh fruit in your fridge rotates all the time. If you have a carton of strawberries and one or two have mold on them, you pick them out. Email lists are a lot like that because people change their email addresses.

• Many change jobs, so their old contacts end up bouncing or becoming unresponsive.
• They stop using their school or work email.
• Or they drop their Yahoo email to sign up for ProtonMail.

Like the fruit analogy, you must pick out the undesirable emails.

Here’s why — you simply cannot consistently get good results if you have invalid emails on your list.

Aside from invalid emails, there are other types of emails – like spam traps and disposable emails – that are dangerous to your list health. Just because you don’t know they’re there doesn’t mean that they won’t cause your emails to start landing in spam.

For your newsletters and email campaigns to have high email deliverability, consider using an email validation service. It will root out and remove any nugatory or potentially harmful data.

It’s better to stay on top of email deliverability than to find yourself rushing to find out about each variety of bad emails that infest your list.

Use email authentication (including DMARC)

Starting February 1, 2024, companies sending mass emails must authenticate their domains to get past Google and Yahoo’s spam filters. DMARC stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance. The DMARC standard was set up to prevent domain spoofing — impersonators faking your domain and sending malicious messages.

In light of Google and Yahoo’s sending guidelines, it’s imperative that you set up DMARC to ensure you get good deliverability. It goes a long way in keeping your email security optimal. Email authentication helps your emails go where they need to go — the inbox.

Google and Yahoo both require mass email senders to authenticate their emails.

Keep spam complaints low

The rule coming from Google and Yahoo’s new sending guidelines is to keep your complaint rate (people marking the spam button) under 0.3%. However, the ideal spam complaint rate is no more than one spam complaint per thousand emails.

Few things will hurt your email deliverability more than having people mark your emails as spam. It indicates that you are a spammer, so email providers like Google and Yahoo will direct your messages to the junk folder. If the issue gets worse, your emails will simply be blocked.

People can easily report your emails as spam. To avoid that, build an opt-in email list and keep your content relevant.

There are a few things you can do to prevent this from happening:

• Always get permission to email someone. Also, your email sign-up forms should require double opt-in. When people subscribe, an automated email is sent with a unique link. In order to show intent, the subscriber must click the unique link.
• Use an email validation service to identify and regularly remove known complainers. These individuals habitually mark emails as spam, even those they signed up to receive.
• Send email that is on-brand and at regular intervals. If you disappear for three months and then resume sending, some people will forget they signed up. So they may hit the spam button because they forgot who you are.
• Connect an email validation API to all sign-up forms to prevent those known complainers from subscribing to your emails in the first place. A real-time email validator also requests a different email address if someone enters a bad or mistyped email.

If there’s any non-negotiable for getting your emails in the inbox, it’s to keep your spam complaints as close to zero as possible.

Enable one-click unsubscribe

Google and Yahoo require senders to allow people to unsubscribe with just one click. Then, you must remove unsubscribes within two days. One-click unsubscribes and keeping spam complaints low go hand in hand.

One-click unsubscribe is user-friendly and allows anyone to get off of your list at their convenience. It makes unsubscribing super easy. If someone doesn’t want to see your emails, remove them from your list as soon as possible.

Check with your email service provider (ESP) to ensure the unsubscribe policy is set up correctly. Your ESP will help you comply with Google and Yahoo’s sending requirements.

Ensure people can opt out of receiving emails from you with one click – and remove them from your list within two days.

**Send consistently compelling content **

Your emails' quality, usefulness, and relevance cannot be overstated. High-quality content boosts engagement and email deliverability. You can have all of the technical aspects listed above working together, but it won’t matter if your emails aren’t resonating with your audience.

So hold your email marketing to the highest standards possible. If you don’t feel what you’re sending your subscribers is a home run, this means your emails need more thought and work. Understand your audience and then craft your emails with their agenda in mind, not yours. Of course, you’ve got ROI goals, but you won’t reach them if your emails favor your own motives ahead of the recipients.

Your content must be compelling in every way because the average person receives up to 10 dozen emails a day. Think about how many that is. If your emails are lacking, they won’t stand out.

It’s not enough to be occasionally compelling. You have to send emails consistently, too. You'll miss the inbox if you disappear or your emails are received with frequent ambivalence. Sending at regular intervals signals the internet service providers that you’re not a spammer. Similarly, if you send your emails like clockwork, but they’re often off-message or off-brand, people won’t open them. And when people don’t engage with your content, it’s a trigger that what you send isn’t what people want.

If you send consistently compelling content and check the other four boxes listed above, your emails will not only land in the inbox, but you’ll be well on your way to getting good metrics and obtaining your goals.