The Importance of Deliverability to Email Marketing

Picture this - you have everything in place - a good marketing campaign, you’ve built up a subscriber list, formed the perfect subject line with irresistible content and you even have the click tracking software in place to monitor results. You’ve tested it to a small group of people and received a positive response. These efforts however, will be wasted if you don’t successfully deliver it to the recipient. Email deliverability refers to the success of actually getting your emails delivered to the right person. In the world of email marketing, ‘almost’ is just not enough. Unless your email gets to the recipient, then your job is not done.

If you’re new to the world of email marketing, then you might wonder what the problem of email deliverability might be. You make an email and enter an email address and expect it to be delivered successfully. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way in email marketing; you send to hundreds, even thousands of recipients but not everyone will get your email. In fact, 10% will most likely not.

There are various reasons why your emails are not reaching the intended destinations. The email boxes of the people you’re sending are first assessing your emails and then classifying if it will be sent to your inbox, marked as spam, or automatically deleted.

In order to ensure a high rate of email deliverability you should not try to beat spam filters but rather learn how to work with them.
If you’re hiring the services of a company to manage your email marketing solution, then they must be able to monitor the number of emails that went out and the ones that bounced back due to issues such as full inboxes or bad email addresses.

Aside from these, there are organisations that follow blocking policies and all emails from blocked IP addresses are automatically deleted. Some use blacklist software to identify emails that need to be blocked. There is nothing you can do when your emails are blocked or deleted,. However, there are methods to improve your email marketing campaign in order to reach a far greater number of targeted readers. This is where an email tracking service comes in handy.
This can tremendously help improve your email marketing campaign and can identify other issues that affect email deliverability - such as Content Filters where certain phrases must be avoided so as not to be tagged as spam - and Permission Filters where all emails that didn’t originate from an authorised source are blocked immediately.
 
All your hard work creating an email marketing campaign and establishing your contact list will be wasted if you don’t track and monitor the deliverability of your email.

Choosing a Good Email Subject Line

Along with concise content and good timing, choosing a good subject line for your email is one of the most crucial things to consider. Email marketing is a convenient, yet problematic way of promoting your website or product.

The email subject line must grab the reader’s attention and keep retain it - meaning it has to be catchy and interesting enough for the recipient to take time to open and read your mail. On the basis that ‘You only have one chance to make a first impression’, the subject line is very often the only impression an email makes upon a customer - so mastering the magical one-liner is essential.

Some of the important points you should consider when writing your email subject line for a marketing campaign are:

Use the Recipient’s Name
Try to observe your own reactions when you’re reading the subject lines of emails that you’ve received, the ones that are sure to grab your attention are the ones with your name in the subject line.  Adding the recipient’s name gives conveys the impression that the email was sent personally to the reader. It’s important to note, however, that appending names on every email that has nothing else personalised in it, is a little too gimmicky. So be sure to include something personalised for the customer in the body of the email, otherwise don’t use their names to personalise the subject line.

Solution-Oriented Subject
Rather than using a brand or product name on the subject line, consider writing your subject to propose a solution. For instance, a website that sells and is promoting, antivirus software could have the following subject line; “How to get your computer protected from all viruses” rather than a product oriented subject such as “Brand New Antivirus software released”.

Keep it Intriguing
Leave the customers hanging by putting ellipsis on the subject line(...). This suggests that there is a continuation on the topic, thereby arousing curiosity.
Restrict information to Top ten lists

There is something interesting and attention grabbing about a top ten list because readers tend to like to see valuable information in scannable, bite-size chunks. A concise, informative list delivers more value than endless paragraphs - even if they contain the same amount of information.

KISS – Keep it Short and Simple
The ‘KISS Principle’ is well known in the field of marketing but seems harder to achieve in email marketing. Try to get your message across in two words rather than half-a-dozen as this will allow it to stand out from the rest of the content in the customer’s inbox.

The above points are just some of the basic guidelines you need to follow to create an email marketing campaign that is effective and won’t end up on the recipient’s trash folder. Try to keep in mind that choosing and using the right combination of words is vital in creating that all important, attention-grabbing, email subject line.

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