Following email deliverability, best practices are only one side of the coin, even though it can sometimes be a lot of work.
Suppose you want to maximize the chances of your emails ending in a prospect's main inbox. In that case, you also need to keep a close eye on your email deliverability and your emails are performing. And what is a better way to do that than to keep an eye on email deliverability metrics? So let's take a closer look at what to focus on.
Why is email deliverability so important?
Without good deliverability, your email campaign might not reach your target audience, your receiver will not have a chance to read and consider your offer, and your efforts might be in vain.
Your goal is to reach the receiver inbox, not the spam or junk folder. Tracking key metrics helps you keep your deliverability on the pulse. So, without further ado, let's get to the dream of every analytics geek: metrics.
Deliverability metrics you should focus on
1. Delivery rate
That is easy to measure. Email delivery rate is the percentage of your emails successfully delivered to recipients' inboxes; H. they were not returned. You can see all the metrics in your Woodpecker stats (as delivered) or, better yet, track your deliverability on a dashboard which you can find under the Deliverability tab.
The (Monitor Deliverability) feature allows you to spot potential issues with your deliverability to track them to prevent them. For example, it tracks how many emails you've sent, delivered, opened, replied to, and bounced. See how this feature works and what to do if you see something is wrong with your deliverability.
- Inbox placement rate
Most people use it with the term deliverability rate. For example, the inbox placement rate (IPR) determines the percentage of emails delivered to the recipient's main inbox and not to the spam or junk folder. You can rate your inbox placement rate with tools like GlockApps (you test it by sending your emails to a seed list).
A low inbox placement rate can mean the following:
- First, the content you're sending is irrelevant.
- It would be best if you had a better IP or domain reputation.
- Third, you have sent messages to invalid email addresses.
You can increase your intellectual property by following these few steps:
- First, maintain proper prospect list hygiene: always validate email addresses (you can do this with Bouncer), group your audience, delete inactive contacts and interact with prospects to warm them up before reaching out.
- Monitor your bounce rate
- Check and improve your domain and email server reputation (you can do this with a tool like Talos).
- Only send emails once you resolve deliverability issues.
3. Spam placement rate
The spam placement rate is the number of emails sent to spam folders and marked as spam by humans or internet service providers (ISPs). Suppose you're using GlockApps to test your inbox placement. In that case, you'll also see an estimated spam placement rate marked as reading on the screen above.
As for the reasons, many factors can shift your emails into spam. Aside from the recipients who manually mark your messages as spam, some of them are:
Your DKIM or SPF might not be set up correctly. If you're a Woodpecker user and want to verify that you're ok with these records, you can do so in the app:
- You don't personalize your messages. Instead, you send them all at once; you use spam-causing words in the e -Mail-CopyMail-Tester can help you to check if spam words got into your email.
4. Hard bounces & soft bounces
In general, a bounce email is an email that cannot be delivered to the receiver. In Woodpecker, you can see them all in the left bottom corner of the stats view: Hard bounces are caused by persistent reasons, e.g. B. if the address does not exist, the server has blocked you or delivery in general.
You must immediately remove hard bounce emails from your email list, manually or automatically. Otherwise, your domain will be flagged as spam. A soft bounce is a temporary problem on the recipient's server side, e.g. B. a full mailbox or a lengthy message file that could not be delivered. If your email address continues to soft bounce, it will be considered a hard bounce, and you need to remove it from your list.
- Engagement rate
This metric specifically determines inbox placement. The engagement rate is the percentage of recipients who interacted with your email somehow.
6. Open rate
Open rate is the easiest email marketing KPI, and the success of your email campaigns depends on it (i.e. right after the emails land in a prospect's main inbox). Most email campaigns in 2021 achieved an open rate of just over 24%. However, out of 100 emails sent, only 24 were opened.
7. Complaint rate
Spam complaints occur when recipients find your email irrelevant or disruptive and report it as spam. And no one is safe from such ailments, even if you do everything by the book. The complaint rate is the number of receivers who reported your email as spam out of the total number of messages you sent.
The most common way receivers can report email as spam is by clicking the spam report or the Spam button in their inbox. In addition, the recipient can send emails to spam agencies (e.g. SpamCop) or use the Microsoft Spam Fighters program.
You can prevent high complaint rates by:
- Providing value to recipients
- Sending relevant, personalized messages
- Adding an unsubscribe link to encourage your contacts to unsubscribe from your current list instead of marking your emails as spam
8. Spam trap rate
Spam traps are used by major internet service providers (ISPs) or anti-spam organizations to identify spammers. Spam traps look like real emails but don't belong to real people. Unfortunately, even a well-crafted email can end up in a spam trap, affecting your sender's reputation and email deliverability.
You can't arack this metric, but you can avoid f spam trap by building quality prospect lists (rather than buying ready-made ones). , using email validation tools before sending the campaign and cleaning up your prospect list.
How can you take care of your email deliverability?
A while back, Cathy wrote an in-depth article with 14 deliverability checks to do before sending your cold email campaign.
Here's what to look out for.
- Once you have a new company and newly set up outgoing email accounts, you might need to warm them up;
- There are many free tools on the web that you can use to assess your domain's reputation and your SMTP server's IP.
- Add SPF and DKIM to your email server configuration to ensure you don't look like a spammer to other email servers. Email provider provides their message restrictions.
- Your emails' words, images, and links can alert spam filters.
- Not a part of your email should contain spam triggers words. If you do this, do this right Plain emails look more natural to spam filters.
- You can use a plain text signature, but make sure the HTML file of the signature is neat and well organized.
- Mind the quantity and quality of your Contact List
- Prepare a campaign for a specific audience. Buy something other than ready-made prospect lists with thousands of records.
- Your emails should be addressed to individuals in a company.
What tool might strengthen your efforts to keep top email deliverability?
One that:
- has a deliverability-based sending algorithm that will
- check for you if the email addresses on the list are valid. Best in real-time, as Woodpecker
- allows you to see if your SPF and DKIM records are set up nicely(as a Woodpecker user, you can do this directly in the app),
- alerts you when you try to exceed your email provider's sending limits (when setting up a Woodpecker campaign, users will see a notification if they exceed the limit).
What's in it for you?
Email deliverability is complex, and figuring it out may seem scary or tedious. But with the best email deliverability practices, monitoring your campaigns' performance, and using a tool geared towards the best deliverability, your emails will get delivered straight to your prospects' inboxes.