Panic.
The room starts swimming...the air is rushing out, it's hard to breathe… you gasp, dropping to your knees and the last thing you see before it all goes dark is...
Deliverability Test Results: 62% delivered… (cue dramatic music)... Or not.
Email deliverability doesn't have to be an end of the world scenario, even if yours is currently in the trash can. So, how can you get your deliverability up (along with your traffic, income and peace of mind)? Sometimes the answer to better email deliverability is as easy as moving to a different email service provider.
There's a ton of great services out there that boast killer deliverability - among them are Constant Contact, iContact, AWeber, Mail Chimp, Office Autopilot, NinjaResponder - the list goes on and on for days. But sometimes the problem isn't the service, it's the emails. Here are a few deliverability killers to watch out for:
1) Don't be suspicious. SPAMMERS like to send big attachments, use weird images, complicated HTML, scripts, and all kinds of other suspicious stuff in their emails. So... if you do too you should stop immediately. Try to make your emails more like a typical personal email you might get from a friend. After all, your friends get good deliverability right?
2) Don't be random. Another thing that raises SPAM trigger flags is sending randomly. Try to nail down a broadcast mailing schedule that you can stick to. I suggest from the deliverability tests I've done and the experiments I've run that you mail at least three times a week. The list I manage is rather large (around 200K) so I actually mail more like twice per day. (Yes I said per day).
3) Don't be spammy. Using words like “FREE” “Viagra” “Guarantee” and hundreds of others will light up the spam filters like a bonfire and destroy your deliverability. Run all of your broadcasts, emails, and newsletters through a spam checker before you send. Check your emails as often as possible, because the spam filters get updated quite often. Once I almost sent out an email with a spam trigger word in it that I would have never guessed... Apparently “apparently” was a SPAM word that week. My deliverability might have tanked completely if I'd included it.
The real message here is “don't look like SPAM”. The SPAM crooks out there are working tirelessly to get their emails delivered, and in the process they are flat out ruining legitimate email marketer's deliverability. It can be hard sometimes to juggle everything necessary for a successful email marketing strategy, even beyond issues with email deliverability. Simple things like a good subject line can increase your response rates like gas on a fire. And in the past five years, some underground tactics have been brewing that will put hair on your chest… And cash in the bank... Watch this video and you'll see what I mean:
http://www.ListBuilding.com/deliverability
