Key takeaways
- Focus on message quality over send frequency: well-formatted content and selective opt‑ins improve inbox placement.
- Purge hard bounces immediately: remove addresses after even one hard bounce to protect deliverability.
- Avoid spam traps: never buy lists and drop contacts inactive for more than six months.
- Personalize the “To” field with the recipient’s name to signal consent and boost acceptance by providers.
- Consider IP bonding (using multiple IPs) when sending very large volumes to diversify reputation and avoid per‑IP connection caps.
- Small operational fixes (proofreading, choosy membership criteria, list hygiene) can reverse sagging deliverability.
Introduction
Dealing with stagnant – or even dipping – email deliverability rates is one of the most disheartening experiences possible to slog through for both seasoned veterans and new members of the email marketing community alike. Unfortunately, with Jess Nelson of Media Post’s Email Marketing Daily blog reporting that deliverability rates fell by as much as four percent worldwide in 2015, far too many brands are currently facing down this unwelcome reality heading into 2016.
If your recent deliverability rates reside in this stagnant or sagging company, don’t worry – there’s plenty of time to rebound and return to a more engaged and efficient standing in the inbox. To help you along with this email marketing restoration, here are five ideas that can enhance and improve your deliverability outlook moving forward.
Focus on Quality and Not Quantity
The first tip for improving email deliverability rates is all about focusing on the quality of your inbox offerings, and not on how often you send these messages. As Nelson goes on to explain, poorly formatted emails ensure that your content ends up getting caught by the spam filter, while a sub-standard opt-in process inhibits your ability to pair up relevant subject matter with your greater inbox audience.
Fixing the first issue and cutting down on avoidable errors is fairly straightforward; take some time to review and proofread your content multiple times before hitting that “send” button. As far as cutting down on awkward or irrelevant inbox connections, being choosy with your membership criteria ensures that you have a contact list chock full of responsive and engaged readers and not disinterested or tangentially related individuals.
Purge Hard Bounces after the First Bounce
When it comes to bounces, Pamella Neely of Web Marketing Today suggests that letting hard bounces stick around is one of the quickest ways to drop your deliverability rate in the tank. Instead, you’re much better off purging these hard bounce addresses after even just one such bounce.
The reason behind this “scorched earth” policy relating to hard bounces rests solely on the fact that the big email service providers – Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, etc. – all keep track of these events and suppress delivery of all of your emails if you trigger too many bounces. The numbers on how many it takes to end up on the wrong side of these service providers can vary based on the company and the situation, so you’re simply better off removing these outdated addresses as soon as possible.
Avoid Spam Traps at All Costs
Much like the closed or inactive addresses that serve as the source of hard bounces, accounts that have been taken over by service providers and converted into spam traps also represent a potentially covert threat to your email deliverability rates. If you don’t want to watch your Sender Score drop by up to 20 points after getting caught in one of these easily avoidable traps, the solution is actually pretty simple: Don’t buy an email list from a third-party source and enact good contact list hygiene by removing all contacts that haven’t been active for more than six months.
Personalize the “To” Section of Your Emails
One of the smallest – yet most effective – ways to boost deliverability comes in the form of personalizing the “To” section of your outgoing messages. In his look at this process, Justin Zhu of Marketing Land explains that service providers prefer seeing the actual name of the recipient in this field when compared to a base email address since this distinction helps solidify the fact that your brand is reaching out to individuals who have clearly given consent to receive your marketed content.
Consider IP Bonding
The final suggestion to make its way on the list – again from Zhu – posits that IP bonding enhances deliverability by removing the limitations of utilizing just one IP address. If you’re not familiar with the term, IP bonding refers to the tactic of harnessing multiple IP addresses to send large quantities of marketed messages.
The key takeaway here is that leveraging multiple addresses during a large outpouring of emails diversifies your reputation and speeds up the process, all while circumventing the cap on individual connections that some service providers place on incoming messages and inbox content.
Naturally, what works and what doesn’t for your brand depends entirely on your unique situation and prior deliverability history. Even so, with these tips and tricks leading the way, there’s nothing that can stop you and your future email marketing campaigns from taking the first step toward a more engaged and efficient stance on deliverability.
FAQ
Prioritize quality: send well‑formatted, proofread content and rely on selective opt‑ins so your list contains responsive, engaged readers rather than a high volume of tangential or disinterested contacts. Providers penalize poorly formatted messages and irrelevant recipients.
Remove hard bounce addresses immediately: purge them after even one hard bounce. Big email service providers track bounces and will suppress your delivery if you trigger too many, so prompt removal protects your reputation.
Do not buy third‑party email lists and perform regular list hygiene: remove contacts that haven’t been active for more than six months. Spam traps are often created from inactive or converted accounts and can drop your Sender Score (drops of up to 20 points after being caught).
Personalize the “To” field with the recipient’s name rather than a bare email address. Service providers prefer seeing a name because it helps demonstrate that your messages target individuals who consented to receive them, which supports deliverability.
IP bonding is sending large volumes of email across multiple IP addresses. It diversifies sending reputation, speeds delivery during large outpourings and helps circumvent per‑IP connection caps imposed by some providers, useful when you need to send very large quantities of messages.
Be choosy with membership criteria so your list is filled with responsive, engaged readers rather than disinterested or tangentially related individuals. Selective opt‑in practices help pair relevant subject matter with a willing audience.
Jess Nelson reported that deliverability rates fell by as much as four percent worldwide in 2015, leaving many brands facing sagging deliverability entering 2016.
