What Factors Affect the Deliverability of an Email?

There are many factors that affect the deliverability of an email.  Deliverability is a tough aspect to overcome because a lot of the control is with the ISPs.  Once they are blocking your emails, it is very hard to earn back your reputation.  The following are some things you can watch to help your emails make it to your recipient’s inboxes.

Bounces

Bounces are one indicator that your emails are not reaching the intended recipients inboxes.  If you have a bounce rate over 5%, you will want to dig deeper into this problem.  This causes additional problems with an ISP is blocking your emails to all of its recipients.  If they see that you have a high bounce rate, they may consider you as a spammer.

Another thing ISPs may do with bounced or abandoned accounts is set up spam traps.  They use abandoned accounts to see if you continue to mail inactive accounts.  If you do continue to mail these accounts, they will block you.

Spam Complaints

It is important to keep your spam complaint rate low in order to maintain a good reputation with the ISPs.  If you have a complaint rate of over 2% this could cause problems for you.  This also indicates to the ISPs that you may be a spammer, so they block your emails.

There are great reputation services out there such as Return Path’s Sender Score and Goodmail that will work with you to keep your spam complaints low and also report on how many spam complaints you have received after each email.

Opt-Out Rate

ISPs may not know what your opt-rate for your email program is.  However, it is a good indicator for you to keep your reputation in check.  If you have a high opt-out rate and the email is performing poorly in other areas as well, you will want to analyze that email and decide if you should not send this type of email in the future.

Opt-out rate and spam complaints can go hand-in-hand because recipients may use the “This is Spam” button rather than your opt-out link to unsubscribe from your email.

Spam Compliancy

Make sure that you are complying with all of the CAN-SPAM Act laws.  Not only can this save you from legal problems, but it can also save you from looking like a spammer and being blocked by the ISPs.

For a refresher, you can visit:  www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus61.shtm.

Email Reputation

If you work with an Email Service Provider, you may want to set up a few different accounts so that you can build your email reputation.  If you have a poor reputation and are known as a spammer, your emails are likely to not get through the ISPs.  My recommendation is to send your emails with the best reputation from your best account, and then if you have some that need a little work, have another account that you can send those from, so you don’t ruin your account with the good reputation.

I am certainly not condoning any spamming from a less reputable account; I am just saying that if you have emails that have higher opt-out rates and don’t perform as well, you may want to send those out from another account while still making sure you comply with all of your ESPs terms and conditions.

What can you do to Improve Deliverability?

For the majority of your email campaigns it is important that you keep your list clean as far as bounces, opt-outs and spam complaints.  One way to do this is to only mail to your engaged customers on a regular basis.  This could mean only mailing to those who have opened or clicked an email in a specified amount of time.  If you think about this, it is really a benefit to you as well because you are not paying to send emails to all of your dead weight.

Don’t completely forget about the rest of your list.  You can have special campaigns to reactivate and win them back.  Ask them if they want a great offer or if they would like to be removed from your list.  If you don’t constantly mail your dead weight, it shouldn’t effect your email reputation.

Another important thing to do is to make sure you keep your list clean.  If an email has bounced more than 2 or 3 times, it’s important not to email them anymore, otherwise you may get sucked into the spam traps mentioned above.

Hopefully this gives you some ideas on how to improve your email deliverability.