End your worst nightmare now with 6 sure-fire methods to get your email delivered
One step will save your reputation
If you are sending emails from an ESP like AWeber or Getresponse etc. Be sure that there’s an ‘unsubscribe’ link in your email. Make sure it’s a one-click opt-out. Making it difficult for people by taking them through multiple steps to be removed from your list, only angers them. And easily visible in your email, but for allowing you to edit the link colors, don’t. Also, don’t try to disguise it by using small light text hidden where your subscriber can’t find it easily. All autoresponder emailing services automatically configure the unsubscribe for you. Let them unsubscribe, it’s 100 times better than marking you as spammer. They’re just tire kickers anyway and can ruin your domain reputation if they click ‘mark as spam’. Let them go gracefully.
There’s one score you can’t check
Interestingly enough, you can compare your sender’s reputation to your borrowing credit score. Only there’s no place you can go to check and see what it is. It’s kept hidden by the ISPs, (gmail etc). The better your sender reputation, the better chance your emails will be delivered to the inbox instead of the spam folder. Or not delivered at all. There are two types of reputation, first is IP reputation and second is domain reputation. IP is the IP address from which the email is sent. Your autoresponder, (commercial ESPs like Aweber, Getresponse, ActiveChampain, etc). Your domain reputation is tied to the domain name, (mydomain dot com, Mydomain dot net, org and such). The thing is you have no control over IP reputation. That’s up to the ESPs and why they’re so picky about what you say in your emails because all web-based autoresponders share their IP addresses with other clients. So what you say and act can ruin it for others. But your Domain reputation is another story. You do have some control. As in, don’t write crazy claims, and not follow a few simple rules. People engaging with your email is one of the top priorities
What can you do to Improve sender’s reputation?
What can one do to improve your domain reputation? One is engagement, probably the most important.
What does engagement mean?
- Think of your open rate, how many subscribers are opening the email and spending time reading it. Meaning they’re not just checking fast and deleting it.
- Your click rate is anyone clicking your links inside your emails.
- Is anyone replying to your emails? Ask questions to try to get a reply.
- If people just delete your email without opening it first, it will cause your reputation to go down a little. If emails are opened and deleted quickly, your reputation will go down.
- If subscribers open and spend time reading your email, your reputation will go up. If opened, and a link clicked, your reputation will go up.
- If opened and subscribers hit reply and write back to you, your reputation will start to improve.
The key is more engagement and more is better. But what if your current open rate is low?
Segment your list into two. Separate your openers from your non-openers subscribers. Set Up a High engagement segment and start sending emails to that segment. This will automatically send your open rate percentage up. (great subject lines are important too).
Yes, but how?
For instance instead of a 1% opening your emails, it goes up to 10% to 70% opens or more, just by list segmentation. The reason is these subscribers are your email openers. Doing this one thing can improve both your IP and your domain reputation score. Your goal is to keep open rates to at least 10% otherwise ISPs will consider your emails as low engagement which can bring down your sender’s reputation score. When this happens, your emails may start being delivered to spam or not delivered at all.
Google says it needs to verify senders to deliver emails to the inbox:
What to do!
- Consistently sent from the same IP Address
- Use the same “From” domain for each type of email
- Sign messages with DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail)
- Publish a SPF Record (Sender Policy Framework)
- Publish a DMARC Policy (Domain-based Message)
- Authentication, Reporting & Conformance
A New Beginning:
- Segment your list into high engagement
- Ask your subscribers to Whitelist your email address (add it their contacts)
- Authenticate your business email address
- As an affiliate, rewrite email swipes product vendors give you to use, (use words you would use)
- Stay away from using salesy type (spam) words and symbols until you build up your senders reputation, (creating history for your domain)
- Warm up your list by sending broadcast campaigns to small lists, especially if your using a new domain name. A domain name needs to build history in the eyes of ISPs.
Here’s a copy of my free reports bundle for more findings – How to: GET YOUR EMAILS DELIVERED, plus two other reports and training video on content marketing, (online business) – Click Here.
What do you think about this topic? Do you believe it’s possible to improve your email delivery or if you have any control at all?
Leave a comment below. Let me know what your think.
Until next time
Thank you for reading,
Ken Stronach
