Effective strategies for optimizing email deliverability and maximizing engagement are crucial for holiday campaign success.
Key takeaways:
Adopting deliverability best practices ensures emails reach the inbox and that the intended audience is engaged.
The five best practices for email deliverability include focusing on engagement, managing frequency and cadence, monitoring and responding to deferrals promptly, adhering to standards and regulations, and ensuring list hygiene.
Five essential tips include implementing double opt-in, analyzing the “days since last opened” attribute, reviewing block and bounce records, utilizing personalization tags, and taking deliverability alerts seriously.
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Are you ready for the 2024 holiday season?
In part II of our series on email deliverability, we introduced recipient actions that indicate positive email engagement and outlined three warning signs of potential deliverability issues.
In today’s installment, we share five best practices and five essential tips for achieving deliverability that drives email campaign success.
The 5 best practices for email deliverability
1) Focus on engagement
ISPs assess whether your emails are wanted based on recipient engagement. Crafting content that resonates with them is fundamental to driving interaction and ensuring email deliverability.
From the subject line and preview text to images and messaging, all the content should be targeted to each specific segment. This will increase the likelihood that they will engage and that the ISP will be confident that you know your database well.
Here are some strategies to enhance engagement:
Target recently engaged users: prioritize outreach to those who have recently interacted with your emails.
Send relevant, engaging content: tailor messages to meet the interests and needs of your subscribers.
Utilize personalization: make messages feel individual by incorporating personalized elements.
Planning your sending patterns based on how recipients engage with your emails—not your website, brand, or product—is crucial for improving deliverability. Overwhelming subscribers with too many messages increases their likelihood of complaining, which can lead spam filters to flag your emails as potentially spam-like content.
Additionally, ensure your users receive messages at the frequency they expect and want. When increasing send volumes, do so incrementally, at no more than twice the typical rate. ISPs monitor consistent trends in email sending volumes over time, and a sudden spike can trigger red flags.
3) Monitor and respond to deferrals promptly
When an ISP like Gmail defers an email, it means it suspects poor sending behaviors and has started slowing down delivery to assess engagement patterns.
While occasional deferrals can be expected, a sudden increase may indicate a deeper issue. For time-sensitive campaigns like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, this can be detrimental, as it significantly impacts revenue.
Regularly cleaning and validating your email database will mitigate deferral risk and improve deliverability.
4) Adhere to standards and regulations
Adhering to standards and regulations is imperative. Let’s take DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) as an example.
DMARC is an email authentication, policy, and reporting protocol that adds a vital layer of protection against unauthorized use. It instructs receiving servers on how to handle messages that fail authentication checks, thereby reducing the risk of phishing attacks and safeguarding brand reputation.
If marketers don’t have DMARC in place, they won’t be able to display their logos in subscriber inboxes, which negatively impacts the branding effort and ultimately affects engagement.
5) Ensure list hygiene
Poor list hygiene leads to blacklisting, repeated spam trap hits, and a decrease in inbox deliverability.
Marketers should regularly evaluate how they acquire subscribers and maintain list hygiene. This practice involves removing invalid addresses and suppressing non-engaging users to prevent deliverability issues.
Adopting regular list hygiene practices—monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly—will enhance deliverability and engagement performance.
The Guide to Advance Customer Segmentation
Go in depth on advanced segmentation with this guide which was written based on analyzing tens of thousands of segments across Optimove’s customer base.
In addition to the five best practices, these five essential tips will also help you improve deliverability:
Implement double opt-in: boost engagement and reduce spam complaints by ensuring your subscribers confirm their interest.
Analyze the “days since last opened” attribute: use this data to inform your sending cadence and strategies for specific ISPs.
Review block and bounce records: regularly assess these metrics for indicators of potential deliverability issues.
Utilize personalization tags: leverage conditional language in your templates to create more engaging content.
Take deliverability alerts seriously: act promptly on any alert from your Customer Success Manager (CSM) or deliverability expert regarding spam complaints.
In summary
With ISPs closely monitoring your sending behavior, following the five email deliverability best practices —engaging content, frequency management, deferral monitoring, adhering to standards, and rigorous list hygiene— will help you safeguard your deliverability.
Combined with essential tips like implementing double opt-in and responding swiftly to email deliverability alerts, you’ll be well-equipped to navigate challenging holiday efforts, maximize inbox placement, and boost campaign success.
To learn how Optimove can help you improve email deliverability rates and increase engagement, contact us to request a demo.
Dana Carr is Optimove’s Director of Email Marketing. Dana has over 20 years of experience managing the email marketing strategies of many recognizable global B2C and B2B brands. As the Director of Email Marketing, Dana is bridging the gap for Optimove’s customers by providing a data-driven marketing plan and timely implementation grounded in best practices, targeted content, and visually engaging design.
