8 Best Practices to Improve Your Email Deliverability

Mastering the intricate dance of commercial real estate email marketing presents a critical challenge: ensuring your meticulously crafted messages reach the coveted inbox of your target recipients. It can be disheartening to witness your carefully crafted emails ending up in spam folders, despite the considerable effort and time you’ve invested.

This guide will provide expert tips provide a distinct pathway to improve your email deliverability, guaranteeing that your carefully curated content finds its home in the recipient’s inbox, bypassing the detours of the spam folder.

What is email deliverability?

Email deliverability refers to the ability of an email message to successfully reach the recipient’s inbox without being filtered out as spam or being bounced back.

What factors contribute to email deliverability?

Several factors contribute to email deliverability, including sender reputation, the quality of the email content, list management practices, and technical considerations like proper authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC). A high email deliverability rate ensures that your messages are not only sent but also received and seen by your target audience, maximizing the impact of your email marketing campaigns.

How can you improve your email deliverability?

Improving email deliverability involves implementing a combination of best practices to ensure that your emails reach the intended recipients’ inboxes. Here are some effective strategies:

1. Don’t Use Purchased Lists

When you buy email lists, you often acquire contacts who have not explicitly opted in to receive emails from you. This can result in a higher likelihood of recipients marking your emails as spam or unsubscribing, negatively impacting your sender reputation.

Purchased lists are also more likely to contain outdated or inaccurate information, increasing the likelihood of bounced emails and further damaging your sender reputation.

2. Use the Same Sender

Make sure to use a consistent “From” name and email address for your emails. If your sender name switches all the time, you will increase the possibility of getting flagged by spam filters and make it less likely that your emails will be delivered.

3. Send Consistently

When emails go out in erratic spikes, you might see higher rates of rejection and a lower overall sender score. Sending consistently over time is an important way to avoid this and reduces chances of getting identified as spam.

4. Avoid Spam Trigger Words

Email service providers (ESPs) and spam filters are designed to identify and filter out emails that exhibit characteristics commonly associated with spam. Using words or phrases that are commonly found in spam emails can trigger these filters, leading to your emails being marked as spam or, in some cases, blocked entirely.

• Words that include “discount”, “promotion”, “limited time”, “act now”, etc.
• Using characters in your subject line like “, >,! etc.
• Writing in All CAPS

5. Manage Your Email Lists Effectively

Maintaining list quality is the utmost and most important factor for deliverability. Regular list cleaning contributes to higher deliverability rates and better overall email marketing performance. Here are a few ways to clean your lists:

• Remover Hard Bouncers
  Regularly review your bounce reports and promptly remove hard bouncers from your list. By addressing hard bouncers promptly, you contribute to a cleaner and more accurate email list, which positively influences your sender reputation and, in turn, improves email deliverability.
• Remove Inactive Subscribers
  Identifying and removing subscribers who haven’t engaged with your emails in a long time helps improve engagement rates. Inactive subscribers can contribute to lower open rates, which may signal to email service providers (ESPs) that your content is not relevant.
• Update Contact Information:
  Keep your contact information up-to-date by removing invalid or outdated email addresses. High bounce rates can negatively impact your sender reputation and deliverability.

6. Segment Your Lists

Segmentation strategies allow you create a more personalized and relevant content for your target recipients that positively influences your sender reputation and contributes to improved email deliverability. For CRE emails, you can consider segmenting your list by investment/buying criteria, property types, geography and stages in buyer journey.

7. Authenticate Your Domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC

Authenticating your domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC significantly helps with email deliverability. These authentication protocols play a crucial role in verifying the legitimacy of your emails and preventing unauthorized parties from sending emails on your behalf.

Luckily, for SharpLaunch customers the platform has a robust email infrastructure with these authentications in place.

8. Make it Easy to Unsubscribe

By including a clear and functional unsubscribe link in your emails, you not only comply with CAN-SPAM regulations but also contribute to a positive sender reputation and maintain a healthy email list.