Email Deliverability Guide 2024: Key Do’s & Don’ts

Imagine spending hours writing compelling copies only to find that your cold emails never reached your prospect’s inbox.

Creating the perfect email copy and hitting the send button is just the beginning. If you want to reach your prospect’s primary Inbox, you need to learn how email deliverability works.

But,  What? How? When? Relax, relax, keep reading. 

This guide will be your holy grail for achieving the highest standards in email deliverability. 

We have shared actionable steps to get your cold emails delivered to your prospect’s inbox. You can monitor your outreaches to trace the early signs of low deliverability and fix them on time.

Email Deliverability Guide: Table of Content

• What Is Email Deliverability?
• Email Delivery VS Email Deliverability
• Why Is Email Deliverability Important?
• How Does Email Deliverability Work? 
• What Affects Email Deliverability?
• What Are Some Email Deliverability Test Tools?
• How To Improve Your Email Deliverability?
• Key Metrics For Email Deliverability
• Advanced Email Deliverability Techniques
• Important To Know: Policies, Laws
• Key Takeaways: Do’s and Don’ts
• FAQs

What Is Email Deliverability?

Email deliverability, or cold email deliverability, refers to the success of an email in reaching its intended recipient’s inbox without being blocked or flagged as spam by the ESP.

After an email is sent, it passes through the ESP’s spam filters, which have several checking stages before reaching the recipient. 

If you pass the spam filter standards, your emails will appear in their inboxes. But if you fail, your email might get marked as spam and land in a spam folder or not be delivered to your prospects. 

Email Delivery vs Email Deliverability

Email Delivery: 

Email delivery is the process of successfully transferring an email from the sender’s server to the recipient’s server, ensuring that the email arrives at the recipient’s mail system.

Email Deliverability:

Email deliverability refers to the likelihood of an email successfully reaching the recipient’s inbox rather than being filtered out as spam or landing in the junk folder.

Why Is Email Deliverability Important?

Email deliverability plays a significant role in a successful outreach campaign. The goal is to send an email to many recipients and ensure the email is delivered to the inbox successfully. 

So, suppose you have prolonged cold email deliverability issues and keep ignoring them. In that case, it may have an irreversible impact on your ability to send cold emails if not addressed on time. 

That is why it is crucial to understand that,

A Poor Email Deliverability Could:

Damage Sender Reputation

You can damage your sender’s reputation if your emails are often marked as spam or bounce. As a result, future email campaigns may not be more successful.

Blocklisting

ESPs may blacklist your domain or IP address if your emails continuously land in the spam. As a result, you may have trouble getting your emails delivered with the same domain.

A Good Email Deliverability Could: 

Improved Email Reputation

You can achieve a positive sender reputation if you consistently reach and engage with your target audience’s inbox.

Increased Daily Sending Limits

Your ESP may increase your daily sending limit if you consistently send good emails. It can improve the reach and performance of your email campaigns.

Increased Audience Engagement

By reaching more inboxes, you enhance the likelihood of your emails being opened and clicked. This results in greater engagement and a more substantial return on investment (ROI). 

How Does Email Deliverability Work? 

The deliverability of your email depends on various factors. Let’s break it down into small steps for easier understanding.

1. When you send the email, your content reaches ESP filters and is evaluated. 

2. The next step is to check if your content matches the ESP set standards. 

3. If not, your email will be tagged as spam.

But here is the catch: other factors besides ESP filters can affect your email deliverability. Let’s address them one by one. 

What Affects Email Deliverability?

An email’s deliverability can be affected by many factors. All of them can be managed. So, you must learn about them and keep an eye on them. 

Low Sender Reputation

ESPs determine whether to deliver your emails based on email-sending behavior or reputation. A low sender score or history of spam can ruin your chances of landing in the prospect’s inbox.

Here are the numbers as per best email deliverability practices guidelines.

90-100: Excellent reputation. Emails are highly likely to reach the inbox.

80-89: Good reputation, but there may be occasional issues or areas for improvement.

70-79: Fair reputation, with a higher risk of emails being filtered into spam folders.

60-69: Poor reputation, with a significant risk of deliverability issues.

Below 60: Critical issues with deliverability, likely to face frequent filtering or blocking.

Anything above 80 on a scale of 100 is considered a good sender reputation score. 

IP Reputation

How trustworthy your IP address is will determine whether your email shows up or goes to the dump yard. 

The reputation of an IP is decided by its service provider’s historical behavior. If your IP has a crooked history with many complaints, you may have trouble getting emails into the inbox using that IP.

Email Authentication

The email authentication lets ESPs verify the sender’s identity to prevent spam. 

Authentication is mainly performed using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC; however, newer terms known as ARC, BIMI, and TLS are used to perform authentication in depth.

Poor Email Content

Content is actually the central part where many things go wrong for ESPs.

Many things can go wrong with an email’s content. That’s why we will discuss them separately to give you clarity.

Spam Triggers

There are some words that the public and ESPs associate with being spammy. If your content has those words, your content will take you down. 

A few examples of spammy words include Free, Unleash, Ultimate, Win, Discount, Limited Time, Urgent, Order now, Gift, Bonus, Act Now, Deal, Buy Now and many more. 

Image-To-Text Ratio

While in cold emailing, the usage of images is not much appreciated. However, if you must add an image, a 60-40 ratio is considered as an ideal image-to-text ratio. Though adding GIFs in the follow-ups are highly recommended. 

Maintaining this ratio will ensure the easy readability of your content for users and easy filtering from ESPs. 

Big Videos

Attaching videos directly in the emails is highly unadvised. You should keep the size of your email under 100 MegaBytes. 

But if you must share a video, you can attach a static image or GIF and link it to the original video to save space, improve deliverability, and achieve the purpose. 

High Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is a very important term to know when improving email deliverability. Hence, we will discuss it in more depth in the next session. 

Type Of Bounce Rate

So, there are 2 types of bounce rates.

1. Soft Bounce – A temporary delivery failure. Reasons like the recipient’s full inbox, server issues, message size, and other temporary network issues can cause a soft bounce. 
2. Hard Bounce – A permanent delivery failure. Reasons like blocked emails, invalid email addresses, and the inexistence of server or domain addresses can cause hard bounce.

Why Does Your Email Get Bounced?

Your cold emails get bounced for the following  reasons,

• Invalid Email Addresses
• Full Mailbox
• Spam Filters
• Server Issues
• Email Size
• Authentication Failures
• Blocked IP or Domain
• Configuration Errors
• Content Issues
• Temporary Failures
• Policy Restrictions

For now, Let’s note that if the bounce rate is high (between 2% and 5%), you will definitely suffer from a lousy sender’s reputation and low email deliverability. 

A bounce rate below 2% is considered good, while anything above 2% requires immediate action to reduce it.

High Complaint Rate

This is very important to notice: your complaint rate should be at most 0.1%. 

In cold emailing, a high complaint rate typically refers to the percentage of recipients marking your emails as spam or reporting them to their email provider. An acceptable complaint rate is generally below 0.1% (1 complaint per 1,000 emails sent). 

Here’s a more detailed breakdown: 

Ideal: Below 0.1% 

Concerning: 0.1% – 0.3% 

High: Above 0.3%

ESPs prioritize monitoring this factor to protect recipients from users who send emails that generate complaints.

Low Engagement Rate

Engagement rate in email deliverability is a combination of open rates, click-through rates, and click-to-open rates. 

You must ensure this rate stays within 10% to 15%. 

However, note that this metric matters more to people who send bulk emails daily, as people who send limited cold emails every day won’t face major difficulties in deliverability due to this metric. 

Irregular Sending Pattern

ESPs notice if you send emails left, right, and center. They don’t like the users who spam recipients with a truck of emails.

Note that not scheduling properly and, therefore, missing out on prime time when your recipient might check your cold email indirectly harms you. 

But if you have nothing fixed about the way you send emails, it will directly harm your email deliverability.

To avoid this, ensure you follow a pattern when sending your emails. This basically lets the ESP know that you have a goal and are not sending it to spam the recipients. 

In short, keep an eye on the volume and frequency of your emails. 

I hear you saying, “But how on earth will I check all these things?” I got you, buddy! You don’t have to do it individually; there are tools for it. Thank me later! 

What are Some Email Deliverability Test Tools?

Everyone fears a low email deliverability rate. It’s understandable. For that purpose, there are a ton of tools you can use to test your email deliverability.

1. Inbox Placement Tools

Did you know that inbox placement rates are important in measuring your email’s deliverability? Well, now you know!

An ideal inbox placement rate is around 95%. That means around 95 of 100 emails you send should 95 should enter your recipient’s inbox. Anything below 90% is considered a low inbox placement rate.

Now that we know its importance let’s check tools that can help you achieve that high score in inbox placement rate. 

Google Postmaster (Free)

Gmail Postmaster is a free tool for monitoring email deliverability. It provides information about your domain’s reputation, spam rate, and authentication.

Gmail classifies senders’ reputations based on their history of sending spam into four categories: Bad, Low, Medium/Fair, and High. 

When a sender sends a lot of spam, their mail will almost always be rejected or marked as spam due to their bad reputation.

You can track your delivery errors. The graph above shows the percentage of rejected or temporarily failed emails.

It also lists the reasons for email failures, such as rate limit exceeded, suspected spam, spammy content, unsupported attachments, DMARC rejection policy, low IP/domain reputation, and listing in public blocklists. A list of IP address records that are sent is also provided.

Google Postmaster helps you check the spam rate. Email spam rates are calculated by comparing the percentage of spam marked by users with the percentage of spam sent to the inbox of active users. 

Postmaster is easy to use. Here are the steps:

1. Sign up for a Google Account if you haven’t already
2. Login to Postmaster Tools
3. In the bottom right corner, click “Add.”
4. Enter your authentication domain DKIM or SPF (We will discuss authentications in detail in the later part)
5. Continue by clicking “Next.”
6. Make sure your domain is verified

2. Blacklist Detection Tool

Being blacklisted can stop you in a lot of places. Many things, including your domain reputation and email deliverability, will suffer poorly if your domain or IP address gets blacklisted. 

Hence, it is mandatory to remove any IP address or domain that gets blacklisted ASAP. 

Some tools will help you identify why any particular domain of yours or the IP address you are using got blacklisted. 

Here is one such tool. 

Spamhaus

Let’s see how Spamhaus can help you check email deliverability.

Follow these steps to determine if your IP address is on the Spamhaus Block List.

1. You can check your domain name or IP address at Spamhaus.
2. You have nothing to worry about if you see a message saying Your IP has no issues. 
3. If there are no issues with your IP, a message will display.
4. However, if it says that your IP address is on the SBL (Spamhaus Blacklist), you can find the possible reasons in the below message and rectify that.

3. Spam Content Detection Tool

One of the most important things to detect and monitor is the content of the email. Many things can go wrong with content, and ESPs are very active in detecting spam or unwanted content to protect the user’s interests. 

I know it’s difficult to remember so many things while writing content, but some tools can guide you. Mail Tester is one such tool.

Mail-tester Tool 

Let’s see how the Mail-tester Tool can help you check email deliverability.

The Mail-tester tool is a free tool that lets you check your email content for potential spam triggers. Your email is scored based on how likely it is to be marked as spam by the tool.

Follow these steps to test your email content using Mail-Tester:

1. First, create a new email in your email client.
2. Then, to test the email, send it to an email address provided by Mail-Tester.
3. The Mail Tester will process your email after a few seconds.
4. Finally, click “Refresh” on the Mail-Tester website.
5. After analyzing the content, Mail-Tester provides an email score based on various factors, including SPF and DKIM settings, message headers, and content quality.
6. Based on Mail-Tester’s score and recommendations, you may need to change your email content to improve your deliverability.

4. Seed Testing Tool

You can test the deliverability of your email campaigns using a seed testing tool by sending test emails to a set of “seed” addresses. 

A seed address is typically an email account belonging to a trusted third party. You can send test emails to the addresses collected from these seed testing tools, and you can determine whether they get delivered to the inbox or landed in the spam folder. 

GlockApps

Let’s see how GlockApps can help you check email deliverability.

You can test the deliverability of your emails across multiple email service providers using GlockApps. 

GlockApps seed testing steps are as follows:

1. First, log in to your GlockApps account.
2. At the top of the screen, click the “Email Tests” tab.
3. Start a new test by clicking the “New Test” button.
4. Send your email campaign by entering the subject line and sender address.
5. Please add your seed addresses to the seed list. It can either be entered manually or uploaded from a file.
6. Select the ESPs and email clients you want to test next.
7. Launch the test and wait to see the results.

5: Reputation Monitoring Tools

Who doesn’t want to be reputed, right? So why not your emails? 

Okay, keeping jokes aside, maintaining the sender’s reputation intact is crucial, as a low reputation can also reduce the chances of your email being delivered. 

It’s tricky to do, but it’s possible. Here is a tool that can do it for you. 

SenderScore

Let’s see how SenderScore can help you check email deliverability.

While Senederscore has many features, we will focus on its main feature, which is checking the sender’s reputation. 

Not that this tool is free to use. Yup, that’s right!

There are simple steps to check this.

1. Log in to Senderscore via the web.
2. Enter your IP address or domain name in the search bar. 
3. Click on view the partial report.
4. And that’s it. You will see your score.

Note that without registration, you can only view a few details; if you want a complete view, you will have to register. 

How To Improve Your Email Deliverability?

Now, you need to learn how to boost your email deliverability by weaving personalization into every message and chopping your list to keep it updated and engaged. 

Like a gardener, nurture your emails with proper authentication and targeted content, and watch your inbox bloom and flourish. 

Now, it’s time to talk and act on things to improve your email deliverability. 

You should know many essential things; hence, we must add details on each factor that will help you improve your email deliverability.

Setup Authentication 

3 authenticators are mainly famous, but new authenticators are becoming famous very fast; hence, you should learn about those as well. 

DKIM

DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): DKIM allows the ESP of an email recipient to verify that the domain owner indeed sent it.

To add DKIM, you need to log into your DNS settings and follow the instructions:

• Create a Text “TXT” or “CNAME” record per your hosting provider standards.
• Paste the value or setting for DKIM (from your hosting provider)
• Set your Host like in the given example is s1._domainkey where s1 is the DKIM selector, 
• Click the Save button. 
• You can check whether your DKIM is published here.

Latest Updates on DKIM – IETF DKIM Working Group

SPF

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is an email validation system that detects email spoofing. 

It allows the domain owner to specify which IP addresses are authorized to send emails on behalf of that domain.

To add SPF, log in to your DNS settings from your hosting provider or domain registrar, such as GoDaddy or Zoho.

Here are the next steps,

• Create a new record with the type “TXT.”
• Name: A record’s name is its hostname or prefix without the domain name. 
• You can enter @ or a prefix, such as mail, to place the record on your root domain.
• Value: The SPF rule to be applied, such as v=spf1 mx -all (it can be different for different providers), indicates emails are only allowed from your mail server. 
• TTL: Keep TTL at default settings
• Save the record

Latest Updates on SPF – Open SPF

DMARC

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance): DMARC is a policy that combines SPF and DKIM to determine the authenticity of an email message.

You can set these records in your DNS settings.

• You can add a DNS TXT record or modify an existing one by entering it in the TXT record for _dmarc:
• In the first field of the TXT record, enter _dmarc.yourdomain.com.
• In the second field, enter the text for your DMARC record.
• Depending on your DNS provider, the field names for DNS TXT records may vary for different providers. 

Example: v=DMARC1; p=none;rua=mailto:[email protected]

Make sure you save your changes.

Latest Updates on DMARC –DMARC.org

ARC

ARC ( Authenticated Received Chain) is not directly integrated into your DNS system, but rather, it helps your other authenticators like DKIM, DMRAC, and SPF to be intact even when your original email is forwarded or sent to a third party before it reaches your original prospects

Okay, I know it isn’t easy to understand. Let me explain it in straightforward terms. Why do you need to learn about this? 

When you send an email, let’s say it was forwarded or it reached another server like Microsoft, and due to the policies they have if they change anything in your email, 

Boom! Your authentication records are gone. It is because your authentication was for the original content, which has been changed. 

In this way, when your email finally tries to reach your prospect’s email, it might fail because you don’t have the DMARC authentication now, and you might get blocked. 

Because Microsoft trusts ARC-trusted sealers.

 Let’s break down how ARC works.

ARC has 3 headers, namely,

1. ARC Seal
2. Arc Message Signature,
3. And Authentication Results.

ARC Seal is the person who edits your email copy in between, and they are tagged as the ARC Sealers in the records. 

So, as a cold emailer, you can say whether you trust the ARC Sealer or not. If not, you can let the providers know that you don’t trust this sealer and want to block them. 

ARC Message Signature is just like your DKIM signature, with all the original content and records intact. 

ARC Authentication Results basically keeps all your records about the original authenticating results, such as DKIM, DMARC, or SPF. Did you pass it or not? And basically everything. 

Something vital here is how you trust an ARC sealer. Well, there is a small step that you will need to perform. 

You will have to go to your ARC sealer and find D= domain name. You must also put your domain name as the trusted ARC sealer. That’s it, you are done!

Latest Updates on ARC – RFC 8617: Authenticated Received Chain (ARC)

BIMI

BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) is an email specification that lets you set up your brand logo for your email clients. 

Key Features of BIMI

Brand Logo Display: When an email passes authentication checks, the brand’s logo is displayed in the recipient’s inbox, typically alongside the sender’s name or email address.

Enhanced Trust: The visual presence of a brand logo helps recipients quickly recognize and trust the email, reducing the likelihood of phishing attacks and increasing engagement rates.

Standardized Protocol: BIMI works in conjunction with existing email authentication protocols like DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) to ensure that only authenticated emails from verified domains display the brand logo.

In simpler words, BIMI will help you personalize and add a trust factor to your recipient’s mind by showing your logo when you send them emails. 

But here is something to note: to complete BIMI, you need to add 1 layer of authentication to your DMARC. 

Prerequisite: Obtain a VMC (Verified Mark Certificate) from a CA (certificate authority) that verifies the ownership of your logo domain. 

Steps

• Adding this to your DNS is simple. You’ll just need your logo on the SVG, in a valid 1.2 Format, in a square shape, uploaded to a trusted page and your DNS tool.
• Then, just click on add another record and choose “TEXT,” default._bimi. 
• In the content part, enter V=BIMI1; (location of your logo;)
• And save it.

Now, to check if this is done or not, just go online and check from DNS verifiers. Also, check the part in content “p” should be equal to “quarantine” or “reject.”

Latest Updates on BIMI – BIMI Group

TLS 

TLS (Transport Layer Security) is a newer and more advanced version of SSL.

In simple terms, TLS encrypts your data so that only the server with a CA certificate and the secret key can decrypt and view the content. 

This secret key is shared only with the sender and certified servers receiving the data, ensuring no unauthorized party can intercept or modify it. 

As many times important email communications have been hacked, securing the same became the priority for email providers and email receivers. 

Apart from TLS, SMTP (for sending), and IMAP, POP3 (for receiving) is also widely used to add another layer of security for securing email communications. 

Latest Updates on TLS – IETF TLS Working Group

Email Infrastructure

What is Email Infrastructure?

Email infrastructure is just a set of software and hardware components that ensure your email is delivered properly to your recipient’s inbox without getting lost in spam or blocked.

Basically, if your email infrastructure is set up properly, it will ensure your email deliverability from start to finish. 

How to Setup Email Infrastructure?

Talking about these technical concepts is always better in a visual format. So, we have prepared this awesome image for your ease of understanding.

First, set up your mail agents, such as MUA (Mail User Agent), MDA ( Mail Delivery Agent), MSA (Mail Submission Agent), and MTA (Mail Transfer Agent). 

Next, use SMTP to transfer the emails to the server, and then use IMAP and POP3 to send them to your IP address and domain.

After that, authenticate your emails with DKIM, DMARC, and SPF. Finally, complete the setup with a feedback loop, which you or someone else can manage.

Why Is Email Infrastructure Important?

Of course, systems are important when so many things can affect your chances of success. Email infrastructure is also one such system set up to help you succeed every time. 

Moreover, setting up an email infrastructure can also speed things up for you.

Set Up Secondary Domains

Creating a secondary domain to prevent your primary domain from being burned is helpful. 

This method allows you to continue sending emails with different domains even if your primary domain suffers reputation issues.

This way, you can save the domain reputation for your original business name while distributing your sending strategy with secondary domains.

You should send less than 50 emails from each email account from a domain per day. You can also use a cluster of secondary domains to send your emails for high deliverability.

So, If your business name is examplehq.com, you can buy secondary domains like example.co, getexamplehq.net, and more. 

Play around the main keyword of your brand and keep creating related secondary domains as per your requirements. 

Set Up Custom Tracking

Custom tracking domains ensure you send your links or images (if any) through your own domain instead of a shared one to ensure good deliverability. 

Add a CNAME record in your DNS settings with the value your email host gives. For Saleshandy, use watch.saleshandy.com and host field trk (or any other name you prefer) to create a custom domain.

Afterward, you can verify your custom domain records from Whatsmydns.

Warm Up Your Domains

Before sending a large volume of emails, you need to warm up your domain. 

Then, gradually increase the volume over a few weeks by sending small segments of your list small quantities of emails. As a result, you will maintain a positive relationship with the ESPs.

Manual warm-up is a highly tedious task. However, you can use automated warm-up tools to engage with your inbox humanly.

One such tool is TrulyInbox. You can sign up and connect your email accounts easily.

Clean Your Email List

Remember what we understood about hard bounces? Yes, your deliverability will be negatively impacted when a hard bounce occurs due to an invalid email address. 

Don’t wait for a hard bounce; the way you clean your home regularly, Keep your email list clean, and remove invalid addresses will reduce hard bounces.

Choosing reliable sources is the best way to build a healthy email list. Building an effective lead list ultimately helps reduce the bounce rate.

Segment Your Email List

Keeping your list clean can’t be avoided, as this step will determine the chances and percentage of your emails getting delivered to your prospect’s inbox. 

The better you segment your prospects, the better you will be able to target them. Also, with segmentation you can personalize content for them on another level. 

Segmentation also helps in scheduling emails when reaching out to clients in different countries and time zones. 

Optimize Your Email Content

Content reputation is one of the critical factors spam filters consider when scoring your domain reputation. 

Therefore, using these email deliverability best practices, you can create a high-deliverable message that positively impacts your delivered ESPs.

Avoid Spam Keywords

Don’t add words like Free, Discount, Hurry, Limited Time, Gift, Prize, Win, and similar kinds to avoid sounding salesy. 

You need to make sure people reading your emails don’t count you as a forceful salesman who is being too pushy!

Personalize Your Content

Don’t write generic content. No one likes it, and especially in cold emailing, no one will read it. 

The only hope is if you convince your recipients to an extent that you know their problems and you are the one who is going to help them then only they will connect with you.

That is why it is essential to personalize your cold emails. You can use features like merge tags, spintax, Custom HTML content, and more. 

Avoid Big Attachments

Avoid sharing too many links, as it is not recommended to send links to recipients when you are unknown to them. 

Similarly, sharing big videos increases the size of the email and eventually hampers your email deliverability.

Don’t Use No-Reply Emails

Apart from the user’s frustration about not being able to connect, no-reply emails can also be harmful due to being against GDPR and the CAN-SPAM Act. 

This also harms by decreasing the sender’s reputation as the ESPs think that you don’t want to interact and just spam people. 

Optimize Email Subject Lines

Email subject lines are your chance to convince your recipients that you have value to give. That is why choosing and writing the perfect email subject line is very important. 

Your email subject line should be short, relevant, and valuable. Another important thing is to use BIMI,  personalize your email subject lines, and not use any spammy words. 

Easy Unsubscription

No matter how long it took to get that lead, they should have an easy way to stop if they no longer want to receive your emails. In emailing terms, this means providing an Unsubscribe button.

However, you don’t have to let them go entirely. Instead, offer options where they can choose what types of content they want to receive and what they want to opt out of.

Test Emails

Test your emails before sending them to identify and correct any information that might have been wrongly put without considering the points of email deliverability. 

Testing also gives you a chance to look at your content on both email and mobile versions so that you can check how people using different mediums will see your cold email. 

Fixed Email Timings

Make sure you send emails in regular patterns to help your ESPs understand that you are not suddenly coming and spamming your recipients.

Note that sending at different times when connecting to international clients is different and useful. The point here is just not to spam them out of nowhere and then disappear for months. 

Ensure GDPR Compliance

Well, there’s no price guessing at this point. Ensure GDPR will help you be safe and reduce complaints from users. It will ensure data safety and a proper data management system. 

Key Metrics for Email Deliverability

Numbers are crucial when discussing technical matters. Because it’s an email deliverability guide, after all, how can we not talk about the numbers?

With that in mind, let’s delve into the key metrics determined by the best practices for email deliverability.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rates are considered high if they fall outside the 2% to 5% mark. Hence, always try to cap it at 2% max and clean your list once this number is high. 

Open Rate

An open rate between 15% to 25% is considered a good benchmark. However, it differs from industry to industry. 

Inbox Placement Rate

Reaching inboxes is crucial and the main focus of email deliverability. An inbox placement of 95% and above is a good number to follow. 

Click Through Rate

Again, as it varies from industry to industry, the average industry rate is around 1% to 5%. But if you want to set a quality benchmark, you can consider 2% to 3%.

Read Rate

A read rate of 20% and above is considered a quality benchmark to start with. This means five out of every 50 emails you send are getting engaged. 

Forwarding Rate

A 5% to 10% rate is generally considered as high as if 5 of 100 emails you sent are getting forwarded, which signifies that your recipients are interested in your email and find it valuable.

Complaint Rate

Anything over 0.1% is not good regarding the complaint rate. Anything above the number might get blocklisted. Spam complaints or any complaint should not cross this % in any case. 

Domain Reputation

The domain reputation score is counted on a scale of 100; anything above 70 indicates a good reputation. 

Authentication Success Rate

Authentication is no joke; authenticators like DKIM, DMARC, and SPF try to achieve 100% success. No risks allowed.

Advanced Email Deliverability Techniques

Want to go pro and ready to go the extra mile? You know, after following the email deliverability best practices, there is still more left that you can do.  Wanna know? Then keep reading!

Email Ramp/Up

Email ramp-up is used by slowly increasing and warming up the number of emails sent before sending them in bulk. 

How Does It Help In Email Deliverability?

It helps when you have a low sender’s reputation as it will increase it slowly. 

Sending Interval

How would you feel if you had 150 guests arriving at your home altogether? No one likes getting unwanted emails and reserve their inbox very heavily. 

That’s why sending emails at intervals is important, so ESPs don’t count you as someone who will spam recipients’ inboxes. 

How Does It Help In Email Deliverability?

It helps escape spam filters and maintain the sender’s reputation.

Set Sending Quota 

Sending quotas help you decide how many emails you want to send and set limits to avoid sending too many at once.

It prevents your Email Service Provider (ESP) from being triggered and ensures regular intervals between emails.

How Does It Help In Email Deliverability?

It helps preserve the sender’s reputation of email accounts. 

Sender Rotation

Sender rotation helps you send multiple email accounts with a distributed email volume. 

When you use multiple accounts, the chances of sending over emails using only one account and falling under spam are reduced by a big margin. 

How Does It Help In Email Deliverability?

It helps send unique messages from a new email account whenever you send an email.

Automated Personalization

Personalization is good, but you can’t scale without volume. And you can’t even sit and personalize each email by yourself, right?

Here is where tools like Saleshandy will help you personalize your email content and automate the flow so that you can relax and enjoy the fruits of personalization. 

How Does It Help In Email Deliverability?

It helps in Getting rid of manual work from your cold email outreach. 

Spintax 

Sometimes, using the email copy with just a few customizations with merge tags isn’t enough. Well, Spintax can help here. 

This feature allows you to create variations in your text. 

Have a look at it to understand it better in Saleshandy’s Spintax feature. 

Your imagination is the only limit; with spintax, you can offer different experiences to the same set of recipients.

How Does It Help In Email Deliverability?

It helps you draft unique messages for every prospect to save you from getting into spam.

A/Z Testing

Not sure if your recipients prefer ice cream or cake? Why take the risk?

Use A/Z testing to create up to 26 variations of your email copy and see what your recipients enjoy the most.

This feature is fantastic because you don’t have to guess what will work for your target audience. You can treat it as a mini-test to gauge their preferences and make future decisions based on data, not guesses.

How Does It Help In Email Deliverability?

It will help you understand which recipients will most open your emails. 

Sequence Score

Sequence score is your best friend who will not let you make mistakes in the first place. It will stand by you and correct you on every move you make.

The Sequence Score evaluates your email content and places it in green or red sections based on set standards, helping improve your email deliverability. 

How Does It Help In Email Deliverability?

It lets you check beforehand, so you always send a healthy email.

Important to Know: Policies, Laws

We know that Policies and Laws are decided by the country you are in. 

Every country has a specific set of guidelines and rules that they want all email senders to follow to better the receivers and secure their privacy.

Here are some laws and policies you need to keep in mind. (adding a country name to give you more clarity on where the law will be implemented.)

• CAN-SPAM Act (USA)
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU)
• Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL)
• Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) (UK)
• Australian Spam Act
• New Zealand’s Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act
• India follows – Information Technology (IT) Act 2000 and IT (Amendment) Act, 2008

Regarding technologies, generative AI is taking over personalization, segmenting, enriching profiles, and many more components.

Key Takeaways: Do’s and Don’ts

You’ve learned so much about email deliverability, but remembering all those details can feel like juggling cats, right? Do you still want to place the email deliverability best practices?

Don’t worry. I’m here to save the day! How about a quick list of do’s and don’ts that’s easy to understand and remember?

Sounds good? Okay, for best email deliverability 2024. Here you go! 

Ok, that was it. I’ve wrapped up our email deliverability guide here. I have added some common questions below. Check that out if you still have any questions. 

FAQs

1. What Is Meant By Email Deliverability?

Your email’s ability to be delivered to an inbox is known as its deliverability. For more knowledge, check here.

2. How Do You Ensure Email Deliverability?

There are many things you can do to ensure email deliverability.

Starting from authenticating your domains, having trustworthy email service providers, writing amazing email subject lines, keeping the content spam free, sending to the right set of people, and many more Click here to know more. 

3. What Is A Good Email Deliverability Rate For Email?

Everyone has the question about what is a good email deliverability rate in cold emailing.

A good email deliverability rate is somewhere between 95% to 99%. This means that for every 100 cold emails you send, at least 95 of them should reach the recipient’s inbox. 

4. What Hurts Email Deliverability?

Many factors can affect your email deliverability, such as a poor sender’s reputation, spam complaints, high bounce rates, and irregular sending patterns. 

5. What Are The Best Email Deliverability Practices?

While there are many best practices for email deliverability, I will help you with the most important ones here. 

• Have a proper Technical Setup. – Secure your emails using DKIM, DMARC, SPF, and ARC. Make sure you pass the authentication.
• Use a trustworthy and dedicated IP address.
• Maintain a clean and well-segmented email list.
• Create well-written, valuable, engaging, and relevant content.
• Optimize your subject line using personalization.
• Balance image and text ratio.
• Warm up your IP address before bulk sending.
• Use feedback loops.
• Ensure GDPR compliance.