Making sure your emails arrive in your contacts' inboxes is important when it comes to online marketing, and there are a few things to consider when it comes to deliverability questions like, "why are email addresses bouncing," or "why aren't my contacts receiving the email?". Let’s take a quick look at some of those underlying issues, as well as a few tips to overcome them.
You may have recently gotten a notification that your latest email or contact list experienced a higher-than-normal bounce rate, or a number of feedback-loops (spam alerts). This can mean a couple things that we are going to cover in this tutorial. Please feel free to use this as an opportunity to evaluate your current practices to see if you are following best practices, and therefore helping to ensure your contacts get your message. If you want the quick version you can hop over to our blog on how to Boost Email Deliverability.
Possible Reason #1: The contact list needs work.
Specifically, this can mean a couple things; that the contact list is old and many of the email addresses are no longer good, or that the list was purchased / obtained from a third party and the people on that list haven't agreed to receive emails from you.
How to Fix:
1. Old contact lists can be cleaned out, and it's important to continually add in your newsest leads & contacts, which can be done manually or through connecting your CRM / lead source to your account. Removing old contacts, or contacts who have never engaged with your content will help as well. And of course the platform will remove unsubscribers and hard bounced contacts for you. To learn more about the differences, check out our blog article on Bounce Backs.
2. Use an opt-in email. Purchasing or "acquiring" lists from a third party is a different story. You may not consider your message to be spam, but according to the CAN-SPAM Act, if a person hasn't agreed to receive emails from you, then sending them marketing emails or solicitations is a type of spam. Luckily, there is a very easy way to obtain permission, while at the same time introducing them to your awesomeness! Just ask your eMerge coaching team help you put together a quick opt-in email that you can send to your third party list and get their permission to email them!
3. Sign-up form. The absolute best way to make sure your contacts are clean and getting your content is to use a sign-up form that sends the new contact a confirmation email. This is called Double Opt-in, because it is making doubly-sure that it's them that are asking for your content. All you have to do is make one in your eMerge account and place it on your website or a landing page! Here's a tutorial on how to make one! Watch Now!
Possible Reason #2: Content might need work.
Spam filters have certain things they look for in subject lines, as well as the actual body of the email. Luckily, this is pretty easy to fix.
How To Fix:
1. Subject Lines are the very first thing your contacts will see of your email, so you want to make them appealing and eye-catching, right? Absolutely, just be careful that when you do that you follow the rules that spam filters look for. This article is a great place to start!
2. Sending an email that is one giant image is a big red flag for spam filters because spammers will try to sneak bad things past filters this way. The filter needs to be able to read what is in the email, so your best options are to break up the one big image into smaller images and also include text, or reiterate the message of the image below it in a text box.
3. Balance between images and text is very important as well. Having too many images will hurt your deliverability if it isn't balanced with text that your readers can see and engage with. You can only link an image once, but you can link text with different calls to action, websites, or contact info!
Possible Reason #3: Your online reputation might not be sparkling.
This one is tricky because while it may be effecting you now, the reason it started might be from previous platforms or bad practices in years past that are still haunting your email domain.
How To Fix:
1. Check your personal domain reputation. There is a nifty website called Reputation Authority which will help you see what your current online reputation is for your email address. Or you can use Sender Score to see what your private domain reputation is (i.e. www.yourcompanyrealty.com) If it has a low score, you may need to do some of the other best practices we've listed in this article to help boost it, or...
2. Try a different address. A simple change over to something different can help as well in the interim, but you will still need to look at improving your domain reputation for the long-term. This can also be used in lieu of sending from a free email account. Private domains are treated with more esteem then free accounts because it is tied to a user who is paying for that domain (you). So if your mynamerealtor@gmail.com is having issues, your private domain instead!
Possible Reason #4: Email servers want confirmation that eMerge can send emails for your domain.
Servers and filters look for what is called "Spoofing", or emails being sent on your behalf from someone disguised as you. Usually catching these is good thing! But sometimes they mark emails from programs you want to be sending out for you. To prevent this all you have to do is...
How To Fix:
1. Update your SPF record. This should actually be pretty easy because chances are you wont have to do anything, whoever is running your website can take care of it for you! Just send them this link with the eMerge help doc for updating the SPF record, and they can take care of the rest! After the record is updated that lets everyone know that eMerge is approved by your domain to send emails for you.
- If you still have more questions, don't hesitate to reach out to our support team.
Comments
0 comments
Article is closed for comments.