Email communication isn’t hard. What’s hard is Ten Tips to Improve Email keeping your delivery rates consistent regardless of the scale of your campaigns. So if your delivery and open rates have dropped, don’t worry. It happens to the best of us.
Regardless of the goal of your outreach ( sales prospecting , PR, link building, content promotion, etc.), your deliverability rates will eventually see a drop, whether due to spam filters, poor email list health, or any number of other reasons.
In this article, we’ll discuss some useful ways to increase your email deliverability , ensure your emails don’t end up in spam folders, as well as some tips to increase your open and engagement rates, as these things are closely interconnected.
1. Maintain a healthy email list
One of the most common mistakes outreach specialists make is filling their outreach lists with as many prospects as they can find, rather than focusing on relevance. And of course, since the average response rate for most outreach campaigns is just 1 per 10 to 15 emails, trying to find as many prospects as possible is the logical thing to do if you expect results.
But, as much as we might like it too, quantity Ten Tips to Improve Email doesn’t always translate to quality. Therefore, during the prospecting stage of your outreach campaigns, it’s extremely important to check and verify your email list .
Imagine yourself in the shoes of the person you’re emailing. Would your message be relevant to them and what they do? If you’re sending a link building proposal to the CEO of a company, it would be a better idea to seek out their digital marketing team, SEO, or partnership managers.
Another factor that contributes to the health of your email list is whether the person has responded to your previous outreach. If you’ve already reached out to them in one of your previous campaigns and received no response (even after a follow-up email ), chances are they’re not particularly interested in what you have to say and it would be best to remove them from your list.
“But what if they don’t see my email?” – This is a question I’ve found myself thinking about quite often. But in reality, firing them up over and over again will just get you flagged as spam, which is the opposite of productive.
2. Find the right contact information
Okay, this sounds pretty obvious. In order for your emails to get through, you need to find a valid email address , right? Good. But did you know that even if you’re finding all the perfect contacts right now, the ones you guessed (and didn’t deliver) in your previous campaign can be affecting your current delivery rates?
This is because for Email Service Providers , emails sent to invalid addresses are a sign that you are trying to guess your prospect’s email, which is considered spam.
Therefore, you need to be absolutely sure that the email address you send your proposal to is correct. Luckily, there are quite a few ways to do this:
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- Check out their Contact and About pages;
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- Google Search works pretty well for business email addresses of influencers;
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- Find them on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn;
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- Use an email lookup tool or plugin;
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- Subscribe to your prospect’s email list and see which address their newsletters are coming from;
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- Look them up in the WHOIS database;
- Use an email switcher and put suggested addresses into Gmail until you find one that stands out as an account.
Things like email lookup tools can show both verified and likely-to-be-the-right email addresses. If you’re doing large-scale outreach, I suggest sticking to verified addresses only, as any undeliverable emails can have an effect on your future campaigns.
3. Include an email signature with a physical address
Email signatures are more than just a way to let your potential customers know who you are or an enticing call to action to get them to check out your resource/product. In fact, not having a proper email signature with your business’s physical address can affect your deliverability rates. A lot.
It is actually an FTC requirement to include your home address or your business’s physical address in your emails. Not including it is considered a violation, so it is practically mandatory to include it somewhere in your email (preferably in the signature).
4. Configure SPF, DMARC and DKIM for your domain
If you are not familiar with these terms, this may be the reason why your email delivery rates are low. They represent:
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- Sender Policy Framework;
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- Domain-based message authentication reporting and compliance;
- Email identified by DomainKeys.
Essentially, doing DMARC Setup or configuring them authorizes you to email service providers as a legitimate sender. I won’t go into too much detail on how each of these works as that’s a topic for another article on its own, but configuring them is extremely important for business outreach.
5. Avoid attachments in cold emails
There’s nothing inherently wrong with sending attachments via email. That is, if you’ve already spoken to the person and they’re waiting for you to send them something.
However, attaching files to your cold emails can have a very negative impact on your delivery rates. Even if you don’t send any malicious files, your proposals can still be blocked because this is the strategy that countless scammers and hackers have used before.
So, keep attachments out of your initial email and only send files once you’ve already interacted with that person.
6. Avoid excess images
Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong turkey email list with using images in your emails . And unlike attachments, you don’t need to keep them completely away from your cold emails.
Images can help your email proposals stand out from the rest, make it easier to read, and make the information easier to digest.
But it is necessary to maintain a good proportion of text and image. If all or most of your message is an image, there is a high probability that it will be sent directly to the spam folder.
This is because email service providers and their algorithms have no way of knowing what is actually displayed in your images. And again, many spammers have sent emails consisting solely of images with unwanted or inappropriate content.
Therefore, the majority of your message should consist of text.
7. Change the content of your emails
If you’re running large-scale sales or marketing campaigns , the easiest course of action is to come up with a pitch and keep sending it out over and over again. And, for a while, it will work just fine.
However, over time, if you keep sending the same message to everyone, you’ll start to notice that your open rates are getting lower and lower.
The reason behind this is very simple: it’s spam. Or, at least, considered spam, even if it’s a legitimate cold email. To avoid hitting a spam wall, make sure to change up your tones and subject lines from time to time.
8. Stay away from spam words
Spam filters are fairly easy to trigger. Even excessive use of capital letters in your subject line can cause your email to end up in the spam folder . Although you want your email marketing tops my 2016 resolution list subject line to be eye-catching and stand out in your potential client’s inbox, use capital letters only where you really need them.
Also, avoid spam words as much as possible. Spam filters look for words like “free,” “instant,” “money,” “lowest price,” “investment,” “deal,” along with hundreds of others.
If your proposal touches on a potentially controversial topic (in the eyes of spam filters), you can always run it through a spam checker to see exactly which words you should consider changing.
9. Check your emails!
This should go without saying, but double-checking your pitches should be something you do every time. Obviously, if people notice typos in your pitches, it will look unprofessional to them and your emails will seem rushed.
But grammar and spelling mistakes can hurt more than just your reputation. In fact, a poorly written email is much more likely to end up in spam. If English is not your native language (and even if it is), you should always pay extra attention to your writing.
This is because many spam emails are translated from other languages via online tools, which makes the end result riddled with all kinds of errors. That’s why spam filters also look for these types of errors in addition to specific words.
10. Use reliable email broadcast software
Managing every aspect of an email outreach be numbers campaign is difficult and time-consuming. So, to make life easier for outreach specialists, there are several email outreach software solutions that can help you at every stage of your campaigns.
From prospecting to building email sequences, finding contact information, customizing presentations, and reviewing your campaign statistics, everything can be streamlined to near automation, without compromising the quality of your outreach.
Conclusion
There are many things that can make or break your sender reputation. These are just a few tips on how to improve your email deliverability, but if you follow them all, you should see an increase in your deliverability as well as open and engagement rates.
Author Bio:
Managing Brand Partnerships in Response , Vlad Orlov is a passionate writer and link builder. He started writing articles at the age of 13 and his former hobby became a central part of his professional life.
