Best practices for email deliverability

Getting your marketing emails into your recipients' inboxes is crucial for successful campaigns. This guide provides key best practices to optimize your email deliverability within Guest Marketing, reducing unsubscribes and bounces.

1. Build and Maintain a Healthy Contact Database

• Gain Consent: Only import contacts explicitly agreeing to receive your emails. This ensures higher engagement and fewer complaints, boosting deliverability.
• Use Double Opt-In: Implement double opt-in for sign-up forms. This verification step prevents fake email addresses, bots, and spam traps from entering your database and improves recipient interest.
• Clean Your List Regularly: Actively engaged subscribers improve deliverability. Regularly identify and blocklist inactive contacts (e.g., those who haven't opened your last three campaigns). Blocklisting prevents accidental re-importation. Consider a re-engagement campaign before blocklisting.

2. Optimize Your Technical Configuration

• Use a Professional Sender Email: Avoid free email addresses (like @gmail.com). Use a professional email address with your domain (e.g., your website) for increased credibility and inbox delivery rates.
• Authenticate Your Domain: Authenticate your domain to add a digital signature to your emails. This verifies that emails originate from you, reducing spam/phishing risks and improving inbox placement.

3. Craft Effective Email Campaigns

• Write Engaging Subject Lines: The subject line is the first impression. Make it captivating to encourage opens and reads.
• Create Valuable Content: Provide relevant, engaging content that benefits recipients. This increases open rates, builds trust, and minimizes spam reports.

🟢Must-haves: Relevant content, value for contacts.
🟡Good to have: Consistent branding (logo, colors, tone), personalization, mobile-friendly design, clear call-to-action, visuals, social media links, dark mode-friendly design.
🔴Avoid: Spam trigger words, overwhelming information, and URL shorteners.

• Use Segmentation: Target active contacts with recent interest to ensure relevance and improve engagement.
• Test Your Campaigns: Before sending, test for display issues, personalization errors, and image problems.
• Optimize Send Timing and Frequency: Send campaigns when contacts are most likely to engage. Consider using Guest Marketing's Send Time Optimization feature (if available) to maximize engagement and deliverability.

Monitoring and Improving Open Rates

If you notice a decrease in your campaign opening rates, it's essential to investigate and take proactive steps. While a stable open rate around 25-26% is considered excellent, several factors can influence this metric.

Key Considerations:

• Time to Evaluate: Remember that it can take up to 30 days to see the full impact of an open rate on a campaign.
• Domain Registration: Ensure your domain is registered, as this significantly improves email deliverability.
• Subject Lines and Preview Text: Experiment with different subject lines and offers in the preview text to capture recipients' attention and boost open rates.