What is email deliverability? It’s how the emails you send to your lists reach their inboxes or not. You might be thinking, “But its just email. It should just send no matter what. Right?”

In a way yes — if you sent emails back in the 1990s or early 2000s. Nowadays, email has evolved and email service providers (ESP) implement anti-spam protocols to prevent unsolicited emails, or junk mail, from entering your main inbox. These emails usually contain malware or some sort of business scam to steal money from unknowing people.

So, if you want to avoid the junk mailbox, here are 5 important steps to safely deliver your emails.

Step 1: Understand the difference between a hard bounce and a soft bounce

Simply put, a hard bounce is when your email messages are permanently bounced back to you. A hard bounce occurs when:

• The email you’re sending to doesn’t exist anymore (typically happens when you have an email list from a company that has a high turnover rate).
• The email you’re sending to is invalid and needs to be removed from your list.

A soft bounce happens when your emails are temporarily bounced out of the recipient’s mailbox. Some factors that cause a soft bounce include:

• The recipient’s mailbox is full (i.e. the recipient’s email quota is reached).
• The email server of either the recipient or your own is down.
• The recipient’s mailbox is receiving too many emails at one time slowing down the delivery process.

Step 2: Have your email lists verified and cleaned

Getting your email lists verified and cleaned once in a while (typically every quarter) is a good way to prevent email bounces to begin with. Some of the benefits of cleaning your mailing lists include:

• Increased inbox delivery and avoid spam boxes
• Comply with bounce rate policies set by all major Email Service Providers to prevent your email domain from getting banned
• Improve your sender reputation
• Maintain IP address health for continued email campaign success
• Ultimately reach your customers

Think of verifying and cleaning your mailing lists like an air filtration system. Every quarter the building operator needs to check the air filters for dust accumulation that are preventing clean air from passing through.

Step 3: Get your email address whitelisted

Whitelisting your email address means asking your email recipients to add your email address to the safe sender’s list, or, whitelist. You can do this by creating a double opt-in process for users that sign up to be on your email list.

This whitelist consists of a set of emails, domains or IP addresses previously approved and with delivery permission, without the need to undergo anti-spam filters. By being this list, your company is seen as a trusted sender and free of spamming.

Step 4: Know what DKIM, SPF and DMARC stand for

DKIM

DKIM stands for Domain Keys Identified Mail and is a highly complex email encrypted authentication process that is used by internet service providers to double-check the integrity of a sender’s domain. It prevents spammers, spoofers and phishers from ever sending mail to your inbox.

How does it work? It’s a pretty complicated process but essentially, your email provider allows you to sign a unique cryptographic signature (DKIM) to be added to the header of the mail you plan on sending.

A private key (a unique identifier) is generated from this process specifically identifying your email and a public key is also generated and added to your DNS (domain name system aka your web hosting’s address book). This public key helps the receiving mail providers match the message to your private key in your DNS thus verifying your company’s domain and the message you sent.

SPF

SPF? No, not the sunscreen protection factor that your family doctor always reminds you to put on every time you head outside from the sun.

But in a way, SPF can be thought of that way. SPF adds an additional layer of spam protection from phishing and spoofing and provides an additional trust signal to internet service providers.

SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework and allows the owner of a domain (i.e. @business.com) to specify which mail servers they use to send mail from that domain. It adds an additional layer of spam protection

Organizations publish SPF records in their DNS which list IP addresses (Return-path) that are authorized to send email on behalf of their domains. If the receiving server returns a valid IP address from your DNS, then the email passes the SPF test and is able to be read by your subscriber.

DMARC

DMARC stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance and is the latest email protection protocol. Think of it like the last line of defense before an email can safely land inside your inbox. It’s an alignment protocol that ensures that legitimate email is properly authenticating against your organization’s DKIM and SPF protocols and that spam-related activity coming from your own domains are blocked.

Its authentication feature works by matching the “header from” domain name with the “envelope from” domain name used during an SPF check and with the “d= domain name” in a DKIM signature. It then tells the receiver what to do if neither of those authentication methods passes — like sending the email to the junk folder or reject the message completely.

Step 5: Follow email content best practices

Below are some major factors I collected from different sources you must think about when creating your email content:

• Balanced Text & Imagery: No large images & have enough content so that your subscribers understand your message.
• Proper HTML Markup: make sure your email HTML is syntactically error-free
• Plain Text Version: Sending a plain text email makes more sense to send than an image-heavy one. Some email clients may not have the show images automatically option turned on.
• Be Mobile Friendly: Make sure that your emails have media queries to fit onto mobile screens nicely. This is just a quality of life practice for great user experience.
• Avoid SPAM triggers: ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, the word “free” and any words associated to gambling or money can trigger spam filters. Don’t be one of those people!
• Make sure your sender email address is clearly known what it is for: If you’re sending promos or newsletters, do yourself a favour and use promotion@email.com or newsletter@email.com to avoid being sent to the junkyard.
• Include one or two call-to-actions max. Don’t go all out screaming at your subscribers to BUY NOW or DOWNLOAD MY EBOOK TODAY 99 times in your content. You will come off as annoying and the likelihood of users unsubscribing from you is 99%, no proof necessary.
• Personalize your emails: People are humans and therefore should be treated as such. Greet your subscribers with your name and address them with their name (given that they provided that information to you). Your emails will feel like a conversation rather than a sales pitch to buy the perfect product from you.

So that’s it! If you’re a beginner to email marketing, these steps should be enough to help you start sending out campaigns. Remember to be honest in your email content and speak to your customers as if you are face-to-face with them. This will help ease them into reading your content more effectively because you won’t seem like a robot speaking on behalf of a human.