Businesses spend a lot of time, money, and resources on building out sales email campaigns. But if your emails aren\u2019t landing in your prospects\u2019 inboxes, what\u2019s the point? No matter how perfect your templates are, beautiful emails can go to waste when they wind up in spam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s not email marketings fault. In fact, email marketing is the most direct way to engage with prospects and it will only continue to grow. By 2024, 4.5B people<\/a> will be using email. If you want your future customers to connect with what your company has to offer, it\u2019s imperative to improve your email deliverability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, what gives?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are the top three reasons why emails end up in spam folders, our best tips on what not to do, how you can improve your deliverability today\u2013and the tools to do it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Email deliverability<\/a> refers to the percentage of your emails that end up in recipients\u2019 spam folders. Email service providers (ESPs) use algorithms and filters to protect their users from scams, junk mail, and malicious third parties. Typically, filters will flag an email as spam if it\u2019s generic, not personalized, and provides little meaningful value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can avoid this fate by always doing your research before sending an email, making sure that your email list is up-to-date, that you\u2019re contacting the right people, and writing content that is thoughtful and helpful. It\u2019s important to note that you must always give your recipients an easy way to opt-out of future communications. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Email deliverability matters because it is a crucial part of most modern marketing strategies. Thirty-one percent of B2B marketers state that email newsletters<\/a> are the best way to nurture their leads and rank email as the most effective way to reach their ideal buyers. A poor email deliverability score will cut your company off from direct communication with prospects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Luckily, today\u2019s sales reps and marketers have access to email marketing software that can help keep track of your email reputation, and automate away some of the mistakes that can negatively affect your email deliverability rate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thoughtful and relevant emails are always the best way to avoid spam filters\u2014but sometimes even your best-written emails go to spam. Here are the three most common reasons why your emails won\u2019t make it to a prospect\u2019s inbox. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If this happens, it will have an immediate negative effect on your email deliverability reputation. Make sure that you\u2019re sending emails to the right people (i.e. ideal customers) who understand your offering. Clearly show how they can opt-out of receiving more messages and definitely don\u2019t add them back into your email list down the road. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ESPs will pay attention to how many of your emails are opened, read, and deleted. If your rates are low, you\u2019re at risk of being flagged as spam. To fix this, you need to increase your email engagement. Make sure that your content is relevant to your audience and that you\u2019re following sales email best practices<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you have a poor bounce rate and open rate, you probably need to clean up your email lists. First, get rid of any email addresses that are inactive or illegitimate. These will only negatively affect your email deliverability and reputation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, regularly clean and update your email lists. One of the most accurate sources for contact details is LinkedIn. With Wiza, you can easily build and segment lead lists and download them directly from LinkedIn Sales Navigator<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You can\u2019t always avoid spam filters but you can definitely reduce your risk of being flagged. Here are four things to avoid when creating your outbound sales email campaigns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ESPs will flag emails with too many images, especially if they\u2019re larger files. Some company email servers won\u2019t allow images to be displayed in emails at all. When building out your templates, only use high quality images and use them sparingly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n People avoid opening emails from someone they aren\u2019t familiar with. They also engage less with emails when the sender is a business, instead of a person. To avoid this, don\u2019t send an email that lists \u201cWiza\u201d as the sender, for example. Instead, a more effective email should include a name and business in the sender field, like \u201cStephen Hakami, Wiza.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s very easy to spoof email domains. ESPs will use email authentication to verify that a message is actually from the name listed in the \u201cfrom\u201d field. This protects their users from phishing attacks. Authentication helps catch these malicious emails and captures them in spam filters. You can authenticate your email domain by verifying with Google, a DNS lookup, or pinging your server.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When your emails have too many bounces, the internet service provider (ISP) will take note and stop your emails from reaching the intended inbox. That\u2019s why it\u2019s so important to keep your email lists updated, otherwise your email reputation can be damaged due to invalid or nonexistent email addresses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If your email deliverability score is low, don\u2019t worry\u2014you can fix it! By following best practices, you can improve your email score and reach your buyers. Here are a few ways to improve your score, plus the tools that can help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not sure where to start? Your first step should be to test your email score using mail-tester.com<\/a>. This site can also help you track your domain\u2019s reputation over time so you can come up with a strategy to improve your email deliverability. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s how to use this tool: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Your domain reputation hinges on appearing as a legitimate sender. Here are the three most important variables that can affect your reputation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A popular way to ensure that your domain name has a good reputation is to use a secondary domain for email communications. Treat it as a warm-up domain, especially if you\u2019re a new business. ESPs don\u2019t like receiving emails from a domain that has little to no engagement history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To warm up your domain, send emails using your typical patterns to a designated group of recipients who will interact with the message. Name your secondary domain something similar to your main domain. For example, if our main domain is Wiza.co we could use wiza-mail.co just for email communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keep track of your bounce rate. If this percentage gets too high you risk being blacklisted by ESPs. Since bounce rates happen when an email address is fake, no longer used, or out-of-date, the best way to avoid this problem is to have fresh contact details in your lead lists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n LinkedIn is the most popular social media platform for professionals and since a person\u2019s LinkedIn page moves with them as they change jobs over time, the contact details are always up-to-date. Wiza offers a LinkedIn extension<\/a> to easily download verified and scrubbed lead lists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wiza can help in other ways, too. We have a powerful email verification tool<\/a> that you can start using today to clean all of your email lists at the same time, in bulk, and for a low cost. You can even download specific segments of your lead lists with email validation levels like \u201crisky\u201d and \u201cunknown.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat is email deliverability?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Top 3 reasons why emails go to spam<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Email deliverability: What not to do<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How to improve your sales deliverability (and the tools to do it!)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Check your email score at mail-tester.com<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Review your domain reputation <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Protect your main domain<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Avoid sending to bounced emails<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Validate your emails with Wiza<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Build better email lists<\/h2>\n\n\n\n