What could be more frustrating than spending hours creating the perfect email campaign only to find that 50% of your recipients received it in their spam folder?

If this happens to you regularly, it's time to improve your deliverability.

The deliverability of your email campaigns depends on2 types of factors:

1. Technical (incorrect email addresses, authentication protocols…)
2. Behavioural (inactive email addresses, low open rate…)

On the technical side, some optimisations can have a very quick positive impact. For the rest, there are no miracles: your deliverability will depend directly on your audience's engagement, and therefore on the quality and relevance of your emails.

1 – Clean your contact lists

Have you never sorted your contacts since you started collecting them? Some of their email addresses may not even exist any more. It's time to clean up.

Your contact database may contain 2 types of email addresses that drag down your deliverability:

• Non-existent addresses
• Inactive addresses

Mailbox providers analyse your campaign data and penalise you when your emails are not opened. It is therefore crucial to remove all your “stale” contacts!

Remove non-existent addresses:

• Old customer email addresses
• Misspelled email addresses

Sort inactive addresses

Why do some email addresses become inactive? There can be several reasons:

• Your emails go to spam and are no longer seen by the customer
• The customer is no longer interested in your business
• Your customer receives too many emails and doesn't have time to open yours

To manage these inactive addresses, start bymoving them to a new list.

2 – Follow email marketing best practices

• Has your customer explicitly agreed to receive your emails?
• Were they told they would receive emails?
• Was the content of the emails announced in advance?
• Can they immediately see who the sender of the email is?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, your customers may not open your emails and may mark you as spam

3 – Use authentication standards

• The protocolSPF
• The protocolDKIM
• The protocolDMARC

4 – Use an email address on your own domain name

Clearly displaying your company name is essential for your customers to recognise you and open your emails. This applies to your sender name, but also to your email address!

It is better to create an email address on your own domain name:

• Your customers will find you more credible
• Mailbox providers will take your domain's reputation into account

5 – Watch out for “spam words”

To decide which folder (main inbox, promotions, spam…) an email goes into, mailbox providers scan its entire content.

“Spam words” are words to avoid because they can help send your message to spam.

As a general rule, here are some mistakes that can make your email look like “spam” to mailbox providers:

• Writing in capital letters
• Using too much punctuation in a row
• Writing in red
• Using too many spam words

Also be careful if you edit your email's HTML code manually: code errors can make it look “spammy”.

6 – Test your campaigns

Make sure your emails won't go to spam with deliverability tests.

Sparrow Mailing has a feature for testing your campaigns before sending them, to check that they will be delivered properly to the various webmail and email services.

To do so, click “Send a test” in step 2 of creating your campaign.

If your emails are often treated as spam by a mailbox provider, suggest that your customers add you to their contacts:

• IThey will be sure to receive your emails in their main inbox
• This will improve your deliverability with that email service

7 – Choose your target audience

If you send your campaigns to all your contacts without any personalisation, you will probably get poor open rates and spam complaints, which directly affects your deliverability.

Not all your customers are interested in the same things. If you keep offering them content that doesn't suit them, they may stop opening your emails or mark you as spam.

To keep them interested, segment your contacts by their preferences and behaviour so you can offer content better targeted to their expectations.

8 – Find the right rhythm

Setting regular days and times for your sends has 2 advantages that can affect your deliverability:

• Choosing an optimal time when your contacts are most responsive
• Creating a habit: your contacts will expect to receive your emails

Always remember: if it's good for your open rate and click rate, it's good for your deliverability!

To find the ideal send time, it is best to run tests first and then stick to the time slot where your open rates were highest.

9 – Make unsubscribing easy

Why talk about unsubscribing when you are trying to improve your deliverability?

Let's think about it for 2 minutes.

Faced with emails they no longer want, a user has three options:

• Unsubscribe
• Stop opening the emails
• Report the email as spam

Being regularly reported as spam will have a disastrous effect on your deliverability and can even get youblacklistedby mailbox providers. If the customer simply stops opening your emails, you will also lose deliverability.

So unsubscribed customers are better than inactive customers!

It is therefore essential to make unsubscribing quick and easy for your users. You are already legally required to include an unsubscribe link in your emails, so make sure it is visible enough!

10 – Take care with your subject lines

You only have a few characters to convince both your contacts and mailbox providers that your message is not spam: your email's subject line.

Two pitfalls to avoid:

• Subject lines that are too dull and don't make customers want to click
• Subject lines that are too “spammy” and false promises.

Always keep the promises made in your subject line: if you lie to your customers, you will lose their trust. They will stop opening your emails and file you as spam.

Finally, your email's subject line is scanned by mailbox providers. Here in particular, avoid “spam words”!