Good practices for email deliverability

The deliverability of an email refers to its ability to reach its recipients in the main inbox and not be filtered or put in a spam folder. The deliverability of email campaigns is an essential part of your marketing operations, and translates into an overall deliverability rate or inbox placement rate.

Many factors can influence the deliverability of your emails, including:

• The quality of the email address used (Use of an authenticated domain name)
• Hygiene of your email address database (contacts)
• The reputation of the IP addresses of the dispatch servers
• The rate of spam / bounced
• The use of spam words

Most importantly, the deliverability of your emails depends above all on your practices. From a technical point of view, we advise you to do three things:

• Use an authenticated domain name
• Clean your contact list regularly by removing contacts in the bounced and unsubscribed status
• Sending emails only to people who have explicitly permitted you to do so

1. Using a personalized and authenticated email address

Many receiving servers filter the emails according to the flow of reception by setting up anti-spam filters. To avoid your email being filtered as spam, it's mandatory to use an email address with a professional domain name and to authenticate it with our services. This way, you will gain credibility with your contacts, and from a technical point of view, the email reception servers will acknowledge the reputation of your domain.

2. Clean up your contact list

It's very important to have a clean contact base, so it's essential to keep a close eye on it. Sending emails to non-existent recipients will lower your deliverability rate and this can also damage the reputation of your email forwarding domain name.

Your contact database may contain two types of email addresses that limit your deliverability:

• Non-existent addresses that will be marked "Bounced".
• Inactive/unsubscribed addresses.

Email providers analyze your campaign data and penalize you when your emails are not opened, so it's essential to delete all contacts in either of the two groups.

2.1 Deleting non-existent addresses

There are two types of non-existent addresses: old/deleted email addresses and misspelled email addresses. On SystemeScale and thanks to the filters available on your contact list, you can get the list of your contacts in "Bounced" status with one click.

2.2 Deleting inactive addresses

Your inactive contacts cause your opening rate to drop, which directly impacts your reputation with email providers. Email addresses become inactive because your emails become spam, the customer is no longer interested, or your customer receives too many emails and doesn't have time to open yours.

To manage these inactive addresses, start by classifying them in a new list by adding tags. You can then undertake specific re-engagement campaigns or permanently delete these addresses using the filters offered by SystemeScale.

3. How do I respect good emailing practices?

Sending emails to your contacts is a great way to keep in touch with them so that you don't fall into oblivion, but it has to be done properly.

3.1 Targeted e-mailing

During an email marketing campaign, knowing your target audience is vital because it allows you to address only those people who correspond and are really interested in your content or offer. Good targeting means making sure that all the contacts on your list are interested in what you have to offer them, and therefore more likely to open your message, read it, or even reply to it.

If you send your email campaigns to all your contacts without any personalization, you will have bad open rates. To keep their interest, you must segment your contacts according to their preferences to better share your content by targeting their expectations; you can use tags for this purpose.

3.2 Take care of your subjects and content

The subject of an email is the first showcase of your message, but also of your business, and whether someone will open the email is often dependent on the subject.

There are several good practices to be followed:

• Don't leave the subject empty
• Make sure your email title matches the content of your message
• Avoid shock words, polemics, and capital letters
• Limit poignant characters, such as numerous exclamation and question marks

3.3 Beware of "spam words"

Spam detection by artificial intelligence has come a long way, and is based on the email context, the number of occurrences of the word, its placement in the email, and the spelling. Avoid "spam words" as they can contribute to your message ending up in spam.

3.4 Make it easy to unsubscribe

When a user receives an email they don't want, they are presented with three options: to unsubscribe, to not open any more emails, or report the email as spam. Being regularly reported as spam will have a catastrophic effect on your deliverability and may even get you blacklisted by email providers. If the customer just won't open your emails anymore, you will also lose deliverability, as your click-through rate will drop. That's why you need to highlight the unsubscribe option on your emails, and make sure it's clearly visible!