As a small business you spend a lot of time communicating, whether on social media, via email, or within the local community. With all the effort you put forth, you want to make sure your audience is seeing your work! Email deliverability or placement is the rate at which emails arrive in the recipient’s inboxes and is one of the most important metrics when analyzing email marketing. After all, there is no open or click rate when your content is sitting in the spam folder.
THREE PARTS OF DELIVERABILITY:
- Identification – This is what proves you are who you say you are. This is determined by things such as Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC).
- Reputation – You establish a sender reputation that scores how trustworthy your emails are. Different organizations and internet service providers (ISP) may score you differently but more recipients marking you as a trusted sender shall work in favor of your sender reputation.
- Content – Make sure your content and messaging work together to deliver a quality experience to the reader. If they are engaged, they’re more inclined to open your email.
How to improve your email deliverability
Now that we’ve established an understanding of what affects email deliverability, we can ensure that you’re optimizing your school’s communications. Use these 5 best practices and tips to land your content into more inboxes today!
1. HAVE AN UPDATED EMAIL LIST
Permission to email a recipient is essential in marketing. But even then, permissions can expire! Inactive subscribers can hurt your deliverability by skewing your engagement metrics. To combat this and declutter your contacts, you can remove or suppress unengaged users or run a reconfirmation campaign.
2. MAKE UNSUBSCRIBING SIMPLE
It may seem counterproductive to allow your audience to unsubscribe, but it’s a blessing in disguise. Sending campaigns to an audience that wants to receive your emails will affect your metrics positively, such as increasing your opens and clicks. Offering an easy way to unsubscribe, such as a link at the bottom, helps boost your engagement and keep your email list clean. Not to mention, it’s better to have a smaller, engaged email list than a large one where you’re more likely to be reported as spam!
3. PERSONALIZE YOUR EMAILS
Quality content is key! Sending relevant content provides value to your customers. Consider what they care about most, such as training tips, community updates, and school news. Emails are sent in mass, but maintaining personal content will positively increase subscriber engagement, relationships with readers, and deliverability.
4. ENGAGING EMAIL HOOKS
Crafting the perfect email can be tricky and first impressions are made right from the jump. You want to catch your reader’s eye with an engaging subject line and headline. Implementing a call to action or hinting at the content inside are both simple ways to draw your audience into opening the email.
With these four tips, you can improve the quality of your email content while increasing your business’s email deliverability. Your content is valuable and deserves to be seen by as many eyes as possible, not wasting away in a spam folder!