Crystal Coleman

A common problem all email marketers face is email deliverability.  There’s nothing more frustrating to find out that the reason your leads and prospects are not responding to your email is because they don’t see them in their inbox.  Ugh.

There are some best practices you can employ to help improve your chances of hitting the inbox. The options will vary, depending on the email service provider you’re using, and some ESPs have a better track record than others when it comes to deliverability.

While they don’t like to talk about it, all email service providers tend to have trouble with certain email domains.  I have found yahoo, hotmail and sbglobal email addresses to be particularly troublesome in many of my clients’ businesses.

What you can do to increase email deliverability:

1. Do not buy your email list.  Full stop.  don’t. do. it.
2. Employ health cleanliness best practices.  This  includes scrubbing your list to:  (this can be done manually, or automated through your ESP or as a 3rd party tool)
   • Remove duplicate addresses.
   • Remove addresses with typos.
   • Fix addresses with typos.
   • Update invalid addresses.
   • Remove invalid addresses.
   • Delete emails from hard or soft bounces.
   • Remove old/inactive customers
3. Implement re-engagement campaigns and remove prospects that do not re-engage.
4. Encourage your leads to whitelist your domain.  Here’s a handy tool to create your own branded instructions: https://www.emaildeliveryjedi.com/email-whitelist.php
5. Set up your SPF and DKIM records with your email service provider. (Check with your specific email service provider for instructions.)
6. Don’t use a free email to send marketing emails (like Gmail). You will get higher deliverability from emails with your business domain (ie: yourname@yourdomain.com).  I recommend GSuite for email hosting.
7. Enable confirmed opt-ins for your list.  Depending on your ESP, this may also be referred to as double opt-in.

If you’re certain there’s an issue, try this free tool: https://deliverabilitydashboard.com from Adrian Savage.  He’s an expert in email deliverability and a trusted resource in the Infusionsoft and Memberium communities.

Not sure where to start or how to deploy and manage a list hygiene strategy for your online business?  I can help!