Understanding & Fixing Email Delivery & Deliverability Issues

Email Delivery Versus Deliverability

Figuring out the language of marketing emails can feel like learning a new language. For one thing, your email’s delivery rate and deliverability are two related but different metrics.

• Email delivery rate is the percentage of your business’ emails that are successfully accepted by the recipients’ servers. If the email is not accepted, you’ll get a bounce back message after you attempt to send, making it relatively easy to figure out if there’s a delivery issue.
• Email deliverability is about where the email goes after the server accepts it. If it goes to the primary inbox, it has a much better chance of being read than if it goes to the spam inbox. It could also go to another inbox category like Promotions or Social. Landing in one of those places is better than landing in spam, but not as good as landing in the user’s primary inbox.

An email that’s marked as sent should not be confused as an email that’s been delivered to the best place, just like how sending a package to a family member doesn’t mean the package successfully ended up on their doorstep and was opened by the intended recipient.

Does email delivery or deliverability matter more?

They’re both important, but bounce back messages mean it’s generally more obvious when something isn’t getting delivered at all. For instance, if you get a message saying you’ve sent the email to an invalid address, that’s known as a hard bounce and you should immediately remove the address from your list.

Nailing down deliverability problems can be trickier, so we’ll focus more on that below.

Troubleshooting Questions to Improve Deliverability

If your emails aren’t getting where you want them to go, ask yourself the following questions.

Is Your Email Authenticated?

You need to go through your email service provider (ESP) to set up certain authentication protocols. If you don’t, other email servers, including heavy hitters like Gmail and Yahoo, are likely to send your emails straight to the spam box.

There are three main authentication protocols you need to set up: SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance). SPF specifies which servers can send emails on your behalf, while DKIM adds a digital signature that verifies your identity. If SPF and DKIM checks don’t work, DMARC protects your domain from unauthorized usage by bad actors.

Note: You can’t adjust authentication protocols through a free email service. You need to pay for a secure business email provider instead. You’ll then go through the email provider to update your DNS (Domain Name System) records. The process will vary a bit depending on your email host, so it’s best to contact them for more information.

Can People Opt Into Your Email?

Are you sure the people getting your emails are actually happy about it? For starters, you shouldn’t be emailing people unless they both gave you their email address and understand that by doing so, they’re consenting to receive communication from you.

If they did both those things, they’re opting in. But if you want to improve your deliverability, you can ask them to opt in a second time. What does this mean? It means that after they sign up, new subscribers receive a confirmation email asking them to click on a link. Clicking on the link confirms that they do, in fact, want to be on your email list and didn’t sign up accidentally.

If the person doesn’t want to be on the list, they can simply ignore the confirmation email.

• What if a subscriber wants to get off my email list?

You should make it easy to get off the email list by offering a one-click unsubscribe option. This allows users to simply click a single link usually located at the bottom of the email. Once they click, they get a message that they’ve been taken off the subscription list. They don’t need to enter their information again or explain why they’re leaving.

If you’re sending a lot of emails to people who aren’t clicking on them, that can also hurt your reputation. If possible, remove inactive subscribers every few months to practice good email list hygiene.

Did You Warm Up Your Email?

If you start sending hundreds of emails a day from a brand new account, that can trash your reputation with Internet Service Providers (ISPs). And once ISPs get suspicious of your email account, it’s tough to recover.

One way you can avoid that is by “warming up” the email account you’ll be using for your business. If you’re baking a pie, you shouldn’t skip preheating the oven, and you also shouldn’t skip this step.

• How do I warm up my email account?

To warm up your business email account, start by sending a small number of emails (no more than 20) to contacts you already know. This is key because you want those initial recipients to open your messages, click your links, and even send a reply to you when it makes sense.

Once you have that pattern established, you can double the amount of emails you send every few days until you reach a number that you expect to hit regularly.

Learn more about warming up business email accounts.

Are People Marking Your Emails as Spam?

To improve your deliverability, strive for a low spam complaint rate.

• What is a spam complaint rate?

A spam complain rate is the percentage of recipients who mark your email as junk or spam. In other words, they’re not just content to ignore it, but something about it bothers them enough that they want to report it.

It goes without saying that you really don’t want people to do this to your emails. Even 1 percent of emails being marked as spam is considered way too high. In fact, you should strive for no more than 1 in 1,000 emails (or 0.1 percent) being marked as spam. In some cases, even that may be too high.

• How can I measure my spam complaint rate?

Go through your email hosting service. They should be able to provide spam complaint metrics. You may be able to find them by logging in to your account and viewing the analytics dashboard, but if not, reach out to customer support for guidance.

If one person marks your email as spam, that might not feel like a problem. You might think “Oh, they’re just having a bad day and took it out on their inbox.” But if more people do it, ESPs and ISPs (they’re both involved in this) will start to think that you’re an untrustworthy sender.

In some cases, you can even be put on a blocklist. If you’re on a blocklist, your domain is seen as annoying and/or harmful, and email providers want to protect their customers from that kind of content.

Are Your Subject Lines Scammy?

You want to send quality content in your emails. But that quality content also extends to the subject lines.

Avoid using obviously scammy words like “FREE” or “LIMITED TIME OFFER ACT NOW.” Also avoid writing in all caps, because then you sound like one of those used car ads on the radio that screams at people who just wanted to listen to Journey on their morning commute.

Other tips for creating non-spammy subject lines:

• Be concise
• Use the recipient’s name
• Use your company name

Remember that you want people on your email list to view you as trustworthy. Writing specific, useful subject lines that pique people’s curiosity are one way you can earn that trust.

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