How to Solve Email Deliverability Issues?

Nobody starts their cold email campaigns to end up facing deliverability issues. No one for sure!

But let’s be honest – avoiding email deliverability issues isn’t exactly a walk in the park. 

Of course, you didn’t sign up for this, but here you are.

I know sometimes you may feel like these issues will never end. 

That’s why I call this never-ending cycle the circle of email deliverability. 

(Problems  – Solutions – (New) Problems)

↪️Customers demand a safer inbox. 

↪️ISPs build stricter rules to deliver safety.

↪️Marketers face new issues due to the new rules. 

↪️Marketers learn to solve the issue. 

↪️Spammers misuse these solutions to spam the customers. 

In this blog. I’ll help you in the 4th stage of this cycle: Solving email deliverability problems. 

These aren’t theoretical tips. 

They’re hard-won strategies I’ve learned from years in the cold outreach industry. 

That’s enough chatter; Let’s get to real work. 

Email Deliverability Issues: TOC

• Understanding The Importance of Email Deliverability
• How to Spot Email Deliverability Issues?
• How to Solve The 7 Most Damaging Email Deliverability Issues?
• Key Learnings
• FAQs

Understanding The Importance of Email Deliverability

To understand its importance, let’s first start by learning what email deliverability is. 

In layman’s terminology, email deliverability is the ability to deliver emails into the inbox. It also includes learning how to pass the spam filters.

It’s tricky to learn how to achieve perfect email deliverability, though!

Every email you send gets inspected by multiple filters and checkpoints before it reaches its destination. 

If something seems off? Boom – your email may never see the INBOX.

We know it is important. But why for your business?  What should you learn about having the perfect email deliverability?

So, a perfect email deliverability can

• Help your email campaigns run optimally. 
• Improves your email sender reputation. 
• Help in increasing daily email sending limits. 
• Improving key metrics like click rates, engagement rates, and more.   

But, even if one piece is missing from the equation, the result will not match the efforts.

Now that email deliverability’s good outcomes are clear, let’s see how important they are. 

So, there are two types of people who face email deliverability issues,

1. People who rarely use emails and face everyday deliverability issues.
2. People who regularly use email as a core part of their work and still face new issues. 

So, if you fall in 1st category, you can check email deliverability issues and solutions here. 

But If you fall into 2nd category, you should not skip the next section.

How to Spot Email Deliverability Issues?

Prevention saves both time and trouble. So, spotting these issues before they go out of control can save your email campaigns. So, whatever the issues are, you know what to do after spotting them…

Good, You understood the job! Now let’s spot the issues.

For that, you can keep your eyes on

1. Higher Bounce Rates
2. Increased Spam Complaints
3. Decline In Key Metrics
4. Negative Feedback From Recipients
5. Blacklisting Notification

1. Higher Bounce Rates 

The standard email bounce rate is below 2%. 

If you notice anything more than that, you can check your email content, mailing list, and email authentication status to check where the issue lies. 

2. Increased Spam Complaints

Spam complaints are a massive contributor to damaging the sender reputation. 

That is why the ideal spam complaint rate is less than <0.1%. 

3. Decline In Key Metrics

When you notice a declined email click rate, inbox placement rate, engagement rates, or similar key metrics, it is a sign of having problems in deliverability. 

Various metrics are affected due to multiple reasons. (Find detailed guide below). Once you find them, quickly start solving. If not, one will affect the other, which can get out of control. 

4. Negative Feedback From Recipients

Recipient feedback often highlights issues such as:

• Sending emails without explicit consent.
• Sending irrelevant or spam-like content.

Take complaints seriously, as they directly harm your emails sender reputation. You can work on resolving issues by:

• Auditing your email acquisition processes.
• Ensuring content relevance and maintaining frequency balance. 

5. Blacklisting Notification

Email blacklisting happens at global, ISP , private/corporate, and email security tools level. All of these organizations maintain separate blacklists. 

Receiving notification of being on any of these lists means your email deliverability can struggle if not resolved quickly. 

Emailers also use these lists to clean their email lists as well.

How to Solve the 7 Most Damaging Email Deliverability Issues?

I have found the fixes for your problems that you can implement in the easiest ways possible. 

I have kept this section issue-wise. I have added sub-sections on understanding the issues, what caused them, and how to resolve them. 

You can click on the issue you are currently facing and find the solution.  Happy Solving! 

1. Your Campaigns Suddenly Start Landing In Spam.
2. Your Bounce Rate Is Spiking.
3. Your Emails are Flagged as Promotional Instead of Landing In the Primary Inbox.
4. Your Sender Reputation is Poor.
5. Recipients Stop Engaging With Your Emails.
6. You are Struggling With Poor Email Infrastructure.
7. You Get Inconsistent Email Rendering Across Devices and Email Clients.

1 Your Campaigns Suddenly Start Landing In Spam.

Understand the Issue

Spam email percentage should stay between <1% to 2%. Ideally, keep it below 1%. Anything more than that can cause this email deliverability issues. 

What Causes this Issue?

• Poor email content, 
• Unclean email list, 
• Poor sending history, 
• Spam complaints from the recipients and more cause this issue.  

How to Solve the Issue of Emails Landing in Spam?

You can do the following checks. 

• Check for Blacklisting: Use tools like MxToolbox to see if your domain or IP is blacklisted. If it is, reach out to the blacklist authorities to resolve it.

• Audit Complete Email Content: Avoid spammy triggering words, ensure a balanced text-to-image ratio, and include an easy-to-find unsubscribe link. 
  
  In addition, spam filters match fingerprints ( a small hash of 64bit created from a combination of email content, image, text color, header, footer, timestamp, and URLs using emails) and find matching fingerprints to mark them as spam. 
  That’s why you should personalize your emails. It helps you look unique and saves your emails from going to spam.
  
  
• Fix Authentication: Ensure SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI, and ARC records are correctly configured to verify your sender identity. You can also test your email deliverability using email deliverability tools. 

2 Your Bounce Rate is Spiking.

Understand the Issue

The ideal bounce rate is considered below 2%. So, if you notice this number increasing, you should learn that you are facing this problem.

What Causes this Issue? 

• Unclean email list, 
• Getting listed in blacklists, 
• Using mismatched ESPs (sometimes), and similar issues can cause this problem.  

How to Solve the Issue of Increased Bounce Rate?

• Clean Your Email List: Remove invalid, fake, or inactive addresses while verifying email. 
  
  The best practice is to remove emails if they haven’t engaged with you for more than 6 months. You can follow the next step if this sounds like too much effort.
  
  
• Purchase Lists From Quality Sources: If you don’t have your email list and decide to buy leads from a third-party tool, you should check the quality of the leads first. 
  
  How to do it? Many lead finder tools provide free trials of 7 to 14 days. You can take multiple trials using different tools before investing money in any of them.
  
  
• Resolve Blacklisting Issues: If, due to any reason, you have been blacklisted, your only solution is to connect with the tool that listed you. You can write to them about this. 
  
  Often, they help and remove you from the list if the issue is genuine. Meanwhile, you should immediately stop the ongoing campaigns to save hard email bounces. 

3 Your Emails are Flagged as Promotional Instead Of Landing in The Primary Inbox.

Understand the Issue

Google divides emails into promotional, social, spam, and inbox categories. If your emails land in the promotion folder, your recipients might miss your emails. 

Google does it to bifurcate emails properly for the ease of recipients based on some triggers. 

What Causes this Issue? 

• Salesy or marketing language
• An imbalanced image-to-text ratio triggers Google to flag your email as promotional. 

How to Solve the Issue of Landing in the Promotion Folder?

1. Learn What Kind Of Content Works: Follow these 3 simple points to understand what inbox worthy content is according to ISPs.
   1. Always maintain a 60:40 image-to-text ratio.
   2. Write short and relevant emails. 
   3. Avoid spam-triggering words like free, now, offers, discounts, etc. 

2. Engage with the Right Audience: Send emails to people who expect your content to improve engagement signals for inbox providers. 
   
   Also, ask your audience to manually mark your emails as important and not spam in Gmail. 

4 Your Sender Reputation is Poor.

Understand the Issue

Your sender reputation directly relates to your deliverability. Lower the reputation, lower the deliverability. Think of it as pieces having a domino effect. So, keeping it safe is essential. 

What Causes this Issue?

Things like,

• Getting spam complaints, 
• Getting hard bounces, 
• Being blacklisted, 
• Sending bulk emails without warmed-up domains, 
• Using shared IP addresses and more causes poor sender reputation can cause this issues.

How to Solve the Issue of Having a Poor Sender Reputation?

• Reduce Spam Complaints: You can do these things to reduce or eliminate spam complaints. Take double opt-in, use a clean email list, or send relevant and valuable content only. 

• Warm Up Your IP/Domain: If you’re using a new domain or IP, gradually increase your email volume to establish trust. But, if you use many secondary domains and multiple email addresses, I would not recommend warming up manually. 
  
  Instead, you can use tools specifically designed to warm up your emails. One such tool is Trulyinbox. It provides features like unlimited email accounts, customized email ramp-ups, and multiple opens on a single email. (mimicking humanlike behavior).
  
  
• Monitor Feedback Loops: Use tools from ISPs to understand why recipients report your emails as spam. For example, Google has postmaster tools, Yahoo has Yahoo complaint feedback loops, and Microsoft has Microsoft SNDS.   

5 Recipients Stop Engaging With Your Emails.

Understand the Issue

Less engagement means your recipients are not engaged enough with your content. That is why you might be getting fewer responses as well. Engagement also says that you might be targeting the wrong people.

What Causes this Issue? – 

• Non-relevant content, 
• Improper CTA, 
• Sending at the wrong timings, 
• Sending to the wrong people, 
• Or emails not landing in the inbox can cause this issue. 

How to Solve the Issue of Decreased Email Engagement?

• Segment Your Audience: To write engaging content, you will need research and personalized experience for them. For that, you can do two  things. 
  
  First, segment your audience to create highly targeted individual emails. 
  
  Second, use email personalization tools to enhance your messages.  
  
  One such tool is Saleshandy. Using that, you can personalize your content with Merge tags, Variable Tags, and Spintax. Also, you can personalize on the campaign level using A/Z testing.
   
• Re-Engage Inactive Subscribers: Use re-engagement campaigns to win back subscribers or remove them from your list after repeated inactivity. An ideal time to wait before removing them from the list is 6 to 12 months.

• Offer Value in Every Email: Don’t write for yourself. Remember you are writing for them. So, through the email, your reader should get the value.
  
  Solve their pain points. Do proper research and be clear in your CTA (Call To Action)

6 You are Struggling With Poor Email Infrastructure.

Understand the Issue

Your email system isn’t correctly set up. This happens when your DNS (Domain Name System) settings, which verify and authenticate emails, are either invalid or not working. 

Additionally, your IP and domain addresses need to be verified, which hasn’t been done correctly. If you don’t monitor and manage these critical technical details, your email system won’t function as it should. 

What Causes this Issue?

• Not having a proper DNS and reverse DNS setup, 
• Inadequate server setup, 
• Not using strong ESP, 
• Ignoring monitoring and maintenance of technical things can cause this issue. 

How to Solve the Issue of Having Bad Email Infrastructure?

• Set Up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC: These records help ISPs verify that you’re a legitimate sender. You should authenticate both the domain and IP address. 
  
  Apart from the standard, you also have an ARC seal and BIMI. These things also help add another layer of protection while your email is transferred from your domain to your recipients.
   
• Test Deliverability Regularly: But how to test email deliverability? I’ll tell you. You can use tools like Saleshandy, TrulyInbox, or MxToolbox to check your email’s authentication, backlist checks, and deliverability. 

• Use Reliable ESPs: Using a reliable ESP (Email Service Provider) is of great help. It helps support great email infrastructure and improves key deliverability metrics. 

7 You Get Inconsistent Email Rendering Across Devices and Email Clients.

Understand the Issue

Sometimes, because different email clients or recipients use various devices, the emails don’t appear in the inbox as they should. 

That means the text is not visible correctly, the image doesn’t load, or the email layout appears broken. 

What Causes this Issue?

• Unoptimized content for different devices.
• Also, using different email clients like Google, Yahoo, Outlook, and more can cause it. 

Because these email clients interpret emails differently. 

How to Solve the Issue of Email Rendering?

• Optimize content for all devices – Frame your sentences and spaces in a way that makes your content look good, no matter the device. 
  
  Also, if you use cold email software to send your emails, you can use their preview feature to see how your content will look on different devices.
   
• Using consistent email clients –  This means you can send emails to matching ESPs. Yes, this is important as every email client uses different technology, so emails look different on them. 
  
  If you match ESP and send emails, you can be sure your emails will appear the way you want.
  
  
• Checking code compatibility across devices – Every device has certain limitations. Hence, if you are targeting any crowd that uses a particular device like mobile, then any email codes should be compatible with that device. 

• Minimize dynamic elements – Many emailers use dynamic images/videos/GIFs in emails these days. However, these elements do not work the same on all the devices. 

So, if you must use them, segment your list as per devices and then use them. 

Key Learnings

To wrap up, I’ve summarized our discussion into a concise table of Do’s and Don’ts. 

This also serves as a quick guide to address email deliverability challenges effectively. 

You can use this ultimate email deliverability checklist before sending your future campaigns. 

I hope this blog helps solve the issue you are facing. If not, mention in the comment we keep updating our content to solve the recent issues. 

FAQs

1. Why do I keep getting mail delivery failure emails?

If your emails are not being delivered, you will get these emails. 

There are many reasons for email delivery failures.  Things like, 

• Inability to attain successful authentication records. 
• Having poor email infrastructure. 
• Sending to invalid or Inactive users, and more. 

If you solve these problems, your email will not fail, and you will no longer receive these emails. 

2. Are there any tools that can help with email deliverability issues?

Yes, tools like 

• Saleshandy, 
• MxToolbox, 
• Glockapps, 

and more provide email deliverability solutions. Using those, you can solve issues around your email deliverability quickly and accurately. 

3. How do we prevent email delivery problems?

To prevent email deliverability problems, 

• Don’t send generic emails
• Always have proper email infrastructure
• Provide value in your emails. 
• Don’t blast bulk emails without adequately warming up emails. 
• Clean your email list regularly to avoid hard bounces. 
• Go for double opt-in to avoid getting spam complaints or feedback from recipients. 

4. Are email delivery and email deliverability both the same?

No, both of them are different. Email delivery means successfully transferring emails from the sender’s to the recipient’s inboxes. 
On the other hand, email deliverability shows the likelihood of emails passing through the ISP filters and reaching prospects’ inboxes.