How Do I Fix Email Deliverability Issues?

Are you having email deliverability issues? You’re not alone. Many marketers can sometimes struggle with email bounces and landing in spam folders. Fortunately, there are ways you can fix these issues and track metrics to find out how you’re progressing. 

In this article, we’ll break down how to fix email deliverability issues and other best practices that can help you ensure email marketing success. Let’s get started. 

How Do You Measure Email Deliverability?

At its base, the email deliverability rate is measured as the percentage of emails that land in inboxes out of the total number of emails sent. 

However, many other factors can contribute to email deliverability, such as long-term engagement rates and how many active subscribers and email addresses you have on your list. This makes it a more complex factor contributing to how well your marketing emails perform. 

The complexity of email deliverability is why there are many software programs and email address verification tools that offer the ability to measure your email deliverability score. 

How Is Email Deliverability Score Calculated?

Several factors contribute to the overall calculation of deliverability scores, including:

• Sender reputation: The sender’s history and reputation, including past email performance, complaint rates, and adherence to email best practices, impact the deliverability score.
• Engagement metrics: Recipient engagement, such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversions, are important indicators of email quality and can influence deliverability.
• Spam complaints: The number of recipients marking emails as spam or reporting them as unwanted plays a significant role in determining deliverability scores.
• List quality: The quality of the email list, including the presence of invalid or inactive email addresses, impacts deliverability as high bounce rates (check out our article on email bounce checker) and low engagement affect overall performance.
• Authentication and compliance: Implementation of proper authentication protocols (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and compliance with email regulations contribute to a positive deliverability score.

While these are the main factors, email deliverability scores have several factors that go into their calculations. Many tools will even have their ways of calculating their version of this score. So while it’s a good metric, it is just an estimate of your sender’s reputation. 

What Is a Good Email Deliverability Score?

When calculating the email deliverability rate at its base, a deliverability rate of 95% or better is considered good. 

On the other hand, when you use tools that calculate a deliverability score, like Sender Score, the number for a good score can differ. Typically, a good deliverability or sender score will be somewhere between 80-90+. 

What Is a Bad Email Deliverability?

A deliverability rate that’s below 90% shows that you have some minor adjustments you can do to improve it. Anything below 70% would be considered bad and need immediate attention. 

When looking at email deliverability scores through tools that calculate it, something below 80 would show room for improvement, and below 50 would show that it needs immediate attention. 

What Is the Common Reason for Bad Deliverability?

Some email marketers may be surprised at the most common reason for bad deliverability. It’s a low sending frequency. Typically, you’ll see deliverability drop significantly if you wait 3-6 months between sending content. 

That means sending consistent content is important. A best practice for pacing is once per week. You can email more often than that, but watch engagement metrics to ensure your subscribers respond well to increases in email volume. 

How Do I Fix Email Deliverability Issues?

If you’re struggling with deliverability and wondering how to improve email communication practices, there are some fixes you can deploy. Those include:

• Enhance sender reputation by sending relevant content, managing spam complaints, and maintaining a clean email list.
• Implement email authentication protocols (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) to verify sender identity and increase deliverability.
• Optimize email content and design for different devices, use segmentation and personalization techniques, and avoid triggering spam filters with overly promotional language.

If you’re wondering how to improve your content and email marketing strategies, AudiencePoint’s email insight software can help. Our insight software tracks how your subscribers interact with content and can recommend improvement ways, like optimizing send times, re-engaging inactive subscribers, and segmenting your email list. 

How Do I Improve Email Deliverability?

There are many best practices you can put in place to improve email deliverability or ensure your deliverability rates stay high. Those include:

• Maintain a healthy sending frequency and avoid sending too many emails in a short period to prevent overwhelming recipients and triggering spam filters.
• Regularly monitor and re-engage inactive subscribers and remove dormant email addresses from your subscriber list to improve deliverability and engagement rates.
• Segment your email list based on recipient preferences, demographics, or past interactions to send targeted and relevant content that resonates with specific groups.
• Continuously test and optimize your email campaigns, including subject lines, email copy, and calls-to-action, to maximize open rates, click-through rates, and overall recipient engagement.

If you need help, AudiencePoint can assist in implementing each of these best practices and more. 

How AudiencePoint Can Help

You don’t need to be an email deliverability specialist to improve your deliverability rates. AudiencePoint can provide you with actionable guidelines for improvement based on how your specific subscribers engage with content. 

Using insight software like AudiencePoint provides a multi-tiered approach to fixing or preventing deliverability issues. That includes: 

• Verifying your email list and identifying dormant addresses through second-party data, tracking engagement, and other best practices. 
• Leveraging Apple MPP to tell you if your emails are landing in the spam folder.
• Suppressing dormant email addresses on your list. 
• Attempting to re-engage any inactive subscribers. 
• Creating strategies to boost engagement, such as optimizing send times and segmenting your email list. 

When you implement these aspects, you can ensure higher engagement rates, fewer deliverability issues, and continued long-term success. 

Contact us today to learn more about how AudiencePoint can help.