Master Email Marketing: Boost Reputation & Maximize Reach

Email communication is more relevant than ever. The surge in email usage during the 2020 pandemic has only solidified its role as a primary means of communication for businesses and individuals alike. Revenues generated by businesses through email marketing has grown at a remarkable CAGR of 13% over the past few years and this is expected to sustain over the coming period as well. Over half of the world’s population use email and will send an estimated 360 Billion+ emails in 2024. However, 49% of these emails will end up in spam folders. Thus, for marketers, a significant challenge in using email is ensuring that the message reaches the inbox and does not end up in the spam folder. Achieving high deliverability begins with building and maintaining a positive reputation.

Understanding Email Reputation

Email Reputation is a score assigned to you by email service providers that’s based on several factors, including your past email activity, any history of being blacklisted, the current email-sending setup and practices being followed. Reputation can be improved through several levers, mainly:-

• Using the right infrastructure
• Knowing your audience
• Content of your emails

Setting Up Email Infrastructure

Email infrastructure facilitates the successful transmission of emails from the sender to the receiver and several aspects are involved in ensuring optimum setup.

• Authentication: Set up SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Email) and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) to establish trust.
• Clean Setup: Maintain a dedicated, clean IP and domain to avoid blacklists and spam traps.
• Health Checks: Regularly monitor your email health using tools like Google Postmaster and Microsoft SNDS.
• Maintenance: Keep your positive signals (Eg. click-to-open rate) high and negative signals (Eg. Bounce rate) low. Ensure to remove the hard bounces, unsubscribes from mailing lists.

Understanding Your Users

Users are individuals who have opted to receive email communications from your brand.

• Audience Segmentation: Tailor emails based on user preferences. Avoid batch-and-blast.
• Active Engagement: Focus on users who interact with your emails. Periodically sunset inactive or disengaged users and sunrise new subscribers. Use methods like ‘Double opt-in email verification’ to achieve higher engagement metrics.
• Consistent Sending: Maintain a consistent sending schedule to reinforce your brand.

Crafting Engaging Content

Content can be marketing, transactional, or informational messages sent to your users.

• Impactful Subject Line: Craft concise subject lines that grab attention. Use preheaders optimally.
• Relevant Copy: Ensure your email content is relevant to the recipient, let it be short & crisp to preserve its value and keep an eye on the overall size.
• Optimal Text-to-Image Ratio: Balance text and images to avoid spam filters. Maintain a text-to-image ratio of 60% text to 40% image for marketing purposes.

Techniques to Increase Email Deliverability with CleverTap

• Segment & Personalise: Users are more likely to respond to messages tailored to them. Hence, it is imperative to create User cohorts based on preferences & other attributes and ensure to tailor content accordingly.
• Authenticate: Utilize new authentication protocols like BIMI that enables senders to display the brand logo and a verified tick mark.
• Experiment: With features like A/B testing and Best-Time, you can ensure that emails are delivered at the right time and strike a chord instantly.
• Innovate: Adopt new-age features like AMP, Google Annotations and Google Markup to delight users.

By implementing these techniques, you can enhance user engagement and ensure your emails reach the inbox, thereby increasing the effectiveness of your email marketing strategy. Staying on top of newer updates and developments is key, example – the recent Security updates by Google and Yahoo.

Remember, the key to successful email marketing is to provide value to your users with every email. Tailor your content to be relevant and engaging, and always aim for a positive user experience. This approach will not only improve deliverability but also strengthen the relationship between your brand and your subscribers.