Email marketing occupies a significant place in modern marketing strategies. The success of an email outreach program is determined by email deliverability. Indeed, you will never get a response from your potential customers if they haven’t received your emails. Therefore, one of a marketer’s primary goals is to ensure that the emails they send actually reach the targeted people. The two further cornerstones include motivating the reader:
- To open the email;
- To take a specific action.
A recent study shows that 66% of marketers have experienced email deliverability problems taking root mainly in poor data quality. Although the possible sources may vary, being aware of the issue is the first step towards finding a solution. When using Outlook, you can apply a range of approaches and tools directed to the problem identification, cure, and prevention, to combat issues that impede the deliverability of your emails. Then, you can also utilize Outlook’s instrumentation such as email automation to effortlessly boost your email marketing.
Possible Sources of Outlook Deliverability Problems
When speaking of email deliverability, we mean the rate of emails reaching a subscriber’s or customer’s inbox. For the overall success of an email marketing campaign, marketers should ensure that their content is properly delivered to the targeted individuals. The potential deliverability problems of the campaign can be determined in two major ways.
Study your bounce reports carefully and regularly
A bounce occurs when an email isn’t delivered to the recipient. A soft bounce is a temporary error that may simply delay an email delivery, while a hard bounce implies an undeliverable email due to an invalid recipient’s address. There are also blocked bounces indicating that a recipient’s email server is blocking email from your server.
Hard bounces are not necessarily a sign of a deliverability problem. In fact, deliverability issues themselves can be caused by excessive hard bounces. Thus, if you continually send email messages that lead to a hard bounce, the receiving internet service providers of such recipients may give you a worse email reputation. Consequently, your email can be either blocked from those recipients’ inboxes or moved to their junk folders. Therefore, you should regularly examine your bounces to distinguish between the blocked bounces and hard bounces versus soft bounces.
Compare your unique open rates by domain
The unique open rate is a handy metric that demonstrates the unique number of recipients who opened your email message at least once. You can analyze unique open rates by comparing the respective numbers in various domains for each of your mailings. For instance, if a certain domain shows a significantly lower rate than the others, it points to a problem. Supposedly, an internet service provider (ISP) is moving your emails to the spam or junk box. This occurrence can be fixed, in particular, by maintaining a good email reputation.
Increase Email Deliverability in Outlook
In their effort to fight spam, Microsoft has implemented content filtering with authentication and reputation for a combined score, according to which the messages are managed, and Outlook deliverability is determined. Therefore, the simple path to improving the deliverability of your emails is to comply with the world’s best practices. Overall, your subscribers should receive only the content they expect and when they expect it. The following range of the best practices of email deliverability will help maintain a high email reputation and improve the deliverability of your emails.
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- Reengage inactive users on your contact list. Inactive users are subscribers that haven’t opened your messages for about six months or more. A high number of such subscribers can harm your email marketing deliverability, therefore, should be properly and timely addressed.
- Handle email bounce rates. By studying the bounce reports, identify the reasons for a bounce and, if necessary, remove bounced addresses from your list.
- Avoid using shortened URLs as they are usually associated with spam. Try to make the URL description as consistent with the subject of your email as possible.
- Regularly check the sending IP against blacklists to keep healthy IPs.
- Include a clear “unsubscribe” option in your emails. By hiding this section, you will not retain the readers but rather increase the likelihood of being marked as spam.
- Quickly remove unsubscribed individuals. According to CAN/SPAM regulations, you have to remove the names of persons who unsubscribe within 10 days. In most cases, you can automate this process.
- Enhance the appeal of your email-marketing program. Create engaging tailored content that would urge individuals on your contact list to click on your messages.
- Send emails exclusively upon permission. Besides this, you should preferably confirm your recipients’ permission with a double opt-in.
- Get through the providers’ filters with relevant content. Outlook manages about 1.8 billion emails per day, nearly 80% of which are reported as spam. Relevance and user engagement are key factors that will help you avoid getting into that group.
- Manage cold emails. Although cold emailing is a hard type of communication, it can still work well. Create a customized message to your recipient, offer them an actual solution to the problem, be laconic and clear, and suggest an easy action to attain the desired result.
- Optimize GIFs. Images, especially GIFs, may appeal to your target audience. However, Outlook has an issue with this type of file, as some versions do not support them. To keep your communication nice and clear, place the main information on the very first frame of your GIF.
Save Time and Effort with Email Automation
The future of many important processes in our work and life lies in automation. Email automation will help you scale your business in a wiser and faster manner.
Automating your email outreach campaigns extends your opportunities to effectively embrace your target consumers, contact them at the right time, build engagement, and eventually close more deals. Statistics testify in favor of automated email campaigns, showing that they provide a 70.5% larger open rate and a 152% greater click-through rate.
Email automation allows you to build a relationship with your customers by setting up a specific communication strategy, such as arranging a sequence of emails, or a series of follow-ups based on behavioral triggers. Consequently, you will fuel up your leads and enhance your productivity.
Conclusion
The big goal of every email outreach campaign is basically composed of three parts. First, the email should reach the recipient’s inbox. Second, the message should be opened. Finally, the recipient should respond or act in the desired way. By realizing and preventing the potential deliverability issues, marketers can ensure that their email messages get to the destination. By engaging subscribers, marketers urge them to open a message. By competently developing incentives, marketers create motivation for the desired behavior.
Our professional team is here to aid you in the development of your email strategy and maximizing the deliverability of your emails.