WHY IT MATTERS

20% of opt-in emails never make it to the inbox. A lot of us have email deliverability issues, but don't always know why, or how to solve it (building opt-in lists isn't enough).



People think that sending too many emails is what damages their sender reputation, but it’s not. Many senders do a low volume of emails, and still end up in spam.



What, then, is the key to getting into your leads' inboxes?



It's all about list hygiene.

LEADER OPINION

We spoke with Boris Savoie Doyer, Email/CRM Lead @ Aspiration, and former Senior Campaigner @ Change.org, about a few tactical things companies can do to improve their email deliverability.



BORIS SAVOIE DOYER, Email/CRM Lead @ Aspiration, and former Senior Campaigner @ Change.org:

“Send to only half the subscribers on your list, but email twice as often as you currently do. Your real number of mail-able users is half of what you think it is.



Look at it this way: if you don’t choose which of your recipients are going to be excluded, then Gmail / Hotmail / Outlook / AOL will do it for you. And they’re not going to pick based on your best interest!



Instead of sending to your entire list:



1) Remove all hard bounces.



If your email marketing tool isn't automatically cleaning out all hard bounces after every send that generates them, then you need to do so. Continuing to send to hard bounces is one of the most damaging actions for your deliverability.



2) Remove all people who haven't engaged with your emails in the past 9-12 months.



The cost/benefit of sending to people who haven’t engaged in 12 months is unreasonably high - you’ll just end up blacklisted and in the spam box.



3) Reputation is tied to domains now, not IP's, so you can't switch IP's to reset your sender score anymore. If you’re landing in spam a lot, send only to your best, most engaged recipients for a while.



The key to improving your deliverability over time is to segment out and focus on recipients who've opened an email in the last 3 months. These recipients are your real list.



When you send to that list only, sending “too many emails” is no longer a relevant worry. Your engaged recipients are the people on your list who can’t get enough of your emails, so you don't want to deprive them of email volume because of the dormant recipients on your list (who abandoned their email addresses long ago and aren't seeing any of your emails anyway)."

READ MORE