I recently sent a work-related email to a colleague with some time sensitive information in it. Not being in email marketing mode, I included the words “time sensitive” in the subject line and hit send. Several days later when I hadn’t heard back, I called him to see if he had received my message. He hadn’t. After a little digging, he found it—yep—in the spam folder.

Deliverability is a serious issue for brands, not just because legitimate messages get siphoned out of the inbox and into the spam folder, but also because your sender reputation is at stake.

What Happens When Someone Marks Your Email as Spam?
When a subscriber marks your email as spam, his ISP will block future messages from you. Your email service provider will also keep track of this information, making it possible for ISPs to make judgments about future emails you send to other recipients. Every time someone hits the spam button, it chips away at your sender reputation, making it harder for you to reach your subscribers.

Why Legitimate Emails End Up In the Spam Folder
Spam filters are all well and good for keeping out the baddies, but what about your legitimate messages? What mistakes are you making and how can you fix them?

• You’re including questionable material in the subject line. Spammers use tactics like all caps, multiple exclamation marks, and key phrases (like my “time sensitive” email above) to get people to click.Fix: Create subject lines that communicate message content without using gimmicks.

• You’re not communicating the right expectations to subscribers. If you send messages more often than expected or send valueless content, your subscribers will get irritated and send you careening into the spam folder.Fix: Communicate clearly what types of messages you’ll be sending and how often. Each message should include valuable content such as special offers, useful information, or sales announcements.

• You’re using shady list-building practices. Purchased lists often include spam trap messages and closed accounts. Too many of these bounces will destroy your sender reputation. Not only that, it’s bad business practice.Fix: Use double opt-ins to build your list, ensuring that each subscriber legitimately meant to sign up and knows what to expect.

A strong sender reputation is essential for keeping your legitimate messages out of the spam folder. Focus on providing valuable content, presenting it in a reputable format, and keeping an eye on your email metrics in order to deal with potential problems before they spiral out of control.

Increasing deliverability is a noble goal for every email marketer. And while you may be able to boost your rates with subject line and offer techniques, there is an underlying issue that often gets overlooked: list building.

The Wrong Approach to List Building

Despite the mountains of evidence showing the benefits of building your own email list, less than 45% of all email marketers use permission-based lists. That means that more than half of businesses who send emails on a regular basis buy, rent, or use co-registration to build email lists. That’s a problem for three reasons:

• People who don’t explicitly sign up for your newsletter will be more likely to send you to the spam folder.
• People who sign up for your list accidentally or only as a result of another promotion will be unlikely to remain active.
• Purchased or rented lists have high unsubscribe rates because they consist of people who haven’t showed any interest in your products or services.

How to Build a List That Jump Starts Deliverability

Deliverability depends heavily on your subscribers wanting the messages you send them. If they didn’t sign up to receive your messages or they don’t remember signing up, they’ll hit the spam button. Respecting your subscribers’ right to choose which messages they receive and which ones they don’t can make a huge difference in how many of your emails reach their intended destination. In order to achieve better deliverability rates, implement these proven list-building strategies.

• Use double opt-ins whenever possible. By sending an initial email with a link that must be clicked to complete the opt-in process, you increase the likelihood that your subscribers will remember signing up.
• Make it easier to unsubscribe. Sound counterintuitive? Look at it this way. If a subscriber can’t easily see the unsubscribe link, he’ll hit the spam button instead, which will chip away at your deliverability rates. By making the unsubscribe link more visible, you ensure that the email addresses on your list belong to people who still want what you have to offer.
• Monitor and remove both hard and soft bounces. A hard bounce should be removed immediately from your list, while a soft bounce can be retried several times before removal. Either way, don’t let bounces sabotage your deliverability.

At eConnect Email, we help you maintain stellar deliverability by helping you monitor the vital stats of every email campaign you send. Keeping your lists clean ensures that the highest number of emails possible will reach their intended destination, meaning greater return on the investment you’ve made.

Given the amount of spam constantly battering inboxes, ISPs are understandably cracking down. And while most people are thrilled to have less spam, the 20% of legitimate emails that never make it may be cause for concern. If you are an email marketer you have a vested interest in practicing habits that will increase your sending reputation and place you in the 80% success category.

Five things determine sending reputation: volume, complaint rates, bounce rate, spam trap hits, and correct authentication. When it comes to monitoring these all-important categories you have two choices. You can either do it yourself or have professionals (like us!) do it for you.

So what if your score is already sub-par? Here are several steps you can take in repairing your reputation.

Take Action on your User Count
Want to prevent complaints and resolve your unknown user count? Stick to emailing active users who want to get your emails, and always use double opt in for your registrations. Using old contact lists is a sure-fire way to injure your user count. The unknown recipients may either delete the email or send it to spam. Bounce rates always drop when you contact people you know are interested, and spam traps will be much less likely.

Prevent Complaints
The first step in preventing complaints is understanding why you’re getting them. New users often complain when they do not receive the information that they thought they’d get. If the source of your complaints is users who have received your emails for a long time, you may simply need to delete them from your list. If they don’t want your emails and continue to get them, they will complain.

Set up Feedback Loops
If you have all of your feedback loops set up for your sending IPs it is unlikely that you will resend to complaining users. If complaints are still high after setting up the loops, the problem may be the frequency of your emails. Even interested users hate getting too many emails. Back off on your frequency and see if complaints fall. If they do, you can then slowly increase your mailings until you find exactly the right frequency. What you want to achieve is your top ROI without lots of complaints.

Authentication
SPF and domain keys can be a great tool, depending on your list sizes. If you are using an ESP in your email marketing, they can help with authenticating the sender to organize and send emails on your behalf. If interested, ask your ESP for more information about the usefulness of SPF and domain keys.

While underappreciated, deliverability is crucial to the world of email marketing. If you need help in improving your deliverability, eConnect Email would be happy to assist you.