Open rates and deliverability are strongly related when it comes to email marketing. When your email campaigns' open rates are low, you would likely assume that poor deliverability is the cause. This is sometimes true, but usually, it's the other way around. Many times, your deliverability suffers as a result of a low open rate.
Here's why:
When an ESP (Email Service Provider), like Gmail or Outlook, notices that your open rate is low, they can safely assume:
The messages you are delivering are "unwanted", and not many people want to receive them.
Your contact list hasn't been cleaned recently.
Both of these are warning signs, and Gmail and the majority of other ESPs will start to throw your message in the spam folder even if the list has fully opted in. This is how the spam filters work now.
In the past, spam filters would look for indicators in the content of your campaigns to decide whether or not to deliver your emails to the inbox.
Now, email providers such as Gmail and Outlook analyse the user engagement and previous interactions of your contacts with your previous campaigns.
They particularly consider the following factors:
Positive signs
Email service providers are more likely to keep delivering your emails to your customer's inboxes if they see the following signs in your email campaigns.
Read/Open - When a person reads your messages, it is taken as a positive sign that they are not spam and increases the likelihood that your emails will be delivered to inboxes.
Reply - Email providers view responses to your campaigns (through reply email) as a positive sign and help you build a better reputation.
Clicks - When a person clicks on a link in your email, it may be a sign that your email is relevant to them.
Not junk - When people move your email from the junk folder to the inbox, it is regarded as a very strong, positive signal that your campaigns are relevant.
Move to folder - When your recipients move your emails to different folders in their inbox, email providers interpret this as a sign that they value your emails
Add to address book - When your recipient adds your address to their address book, it indicates that they value getting emails from you.
Negative Signs
Your email's reputation with email service providers is negatively affected by the following signals:
Move to junk - When people move your email to the junk folder, it is interpreted as a very strong, negative indication that your email campaigns aren't wanted by the recipient.
Delete without open - When your recipients delete your email without opening it, it indicates that your email is not relevant.
Bounces - Increased bounce rates cause ESPs such as Gmail and Yahoo to become suspicious of the sender's contact intake and list cleaning process.
A subscriber who consistently opens your campaigns could help you build a solid reputation. However, if your reputation with the inbox provider is poor because they see that the majority of their users are sending your campaigns to the Junk folder, then your campaigns will not be delivered to the inbox (even the individuals who were engaged in the past).
Now that you understand why your open rates are low, let us proceed with how you can improve them.
Clean your contact database and remove inactive contacts
1. Review and clean your contact database
Review your CRM and make sure that the correct contact records are assigned to Digital Marketing Hub. It is usually unavoidable to have duplicate contact records in your CRM, so it is important to sort this out.
If you have a duplicate contact that you can't delete due to past opportunity records, just see to it that the most updated contact is the one assigned to Digital Marketing Hub. This is to ensure that you are sending your email campaigns to the right contacts with the correct information.
2. Remove inactive contacts
Major email providers will deliver your email communications if they are desired. If you send emails to a large number of inactive contacts who do not open them, email providers will consider your mail "unwanted" and route it to the spam/junk folder.
It is important to cleanse inactive subscribers from your regular communications list, such as the RBA category, and move them to a segment where they are mailed less frequently. If you want to have good deliverability, you should only send to contacts who have opened in the last 12-24 months. However, for higher engagement, I would strongly advise only sending emails to contacts who have opened in the last 6-12 months.
The older your data, the more difficult it is to deliver.
Only send emails to people who have granted you permission
Once you have filtered your inactive contacts, it’s the best time to reach out to them to ask if they would still prefer to receive email marketing from you. This is where regular opt-in/opt-out email comes in.
It is important to demonstrate that you value your customers' inboxes by giving them the option to opt out of your email marketing so you can retain only those who are willing to receive your emails.
By giving your customers an option to unsubscribe at any time, you can help alleviate some of the potential fear of being spammed and avoid the anger that comes with receiving unwanted emails.
Configure your account to send from your business domain
When you signup to email marketing platforms, your campaigns will be sent from one of the generic domains we maintain by default (such as acems1.com.). However, there is an option in your account that allows you to send campaigns from your own domain name (i.e. yourbusiness.com). You can do this by configuring your DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) authentication.
Know how to set this up from this guide: Setting up your DKIM Authentication
Use a familiar ‘From’ name
Given that opening a campaign sends strong positive signals to email providers, optimising the 'From' name is a vital part of your email campaigns. It is important that your customer recognises the 'From' name in your emails. To do this, ensure that your contacts are assigned to the correct relationship manager. Your RBA and eMag campaigns are configured to be sent from the relationship manager assigned to the contact.
Segment your contacts to send targeted, relevant campaigns
Rather than sending the same email to everyone on your list, try segmenting it and tailoring the campaign to those who you know will be interested.
Read more about segmenting your contacts here.
Consider your sending frequency
It is important to find the right sending frequency. If you send too often, your subscribers will get burned out and may unsubscribe or mark your email as spam. If you send too infrequently, you won't establish a good reputation. As a general rule, you want to contact your subscribers at least weekly, but that depends on the relationship you have with them.
Focus on good, engaging content
If your content is engaging and valuable your contacts will open and your emails will be delivered to the inbox. Make sure that you are only sending content that your subscribers signed up for.