You’re spending a lot of time each week crafting emails to your subscribers, but are those emails landing in your audiences’ inbox? If your emails end up in your potential customers’ spam folders or the promotions tab, you don’t have much of building a relationship with them.
How to avoid newsletters being marked as spam, junk or promotions?
In this article, we’ll share some tips that will help ensure that your emails make it to your subscribers’ inboxes.
1. Use a reputable email newsletter service
Email list providers like MailerLite* and ConvertKit have good reason to want your emails to be received. That’s why they work hard to be white listed with the big Internet Service Providers and email providers like Gmail. Most email newsletter companies will list their delivery stats, and some websites compare them.
In addition, the good ones will also make sure your emails are compliant with legal requirements like GDPR (eg. requiring you to include an address in your emails).
2. Customise your sender name and email address
Customising your sender name and email address is an important part of improving your email deliverability.
What to put in the ‘from’ field?
The last thing you want is your subscriber to see your email and think “who’s that?”.
Depending on how you brand your business, your full name or your company name may be instantly recognisable when your emails arrive in your subscribers’ inboxes. If so, great!
Another successful option is using your first name and business name – eg. Elle – Finding Business Flow. Personally I prefer this option, as does Eb @ Productive Blogging.
As for your email address, for good deliverability you should be emailing from email address associated with a domain name (eg. yourwebsite.com), not a free email address like gmail.
3. Set expectations and keep them
Your chances of staying in the main inbox are high when your subscribers regularly open your email. One of the best ways to ensure that – other than providing great content that your subscribers are looking for – is to set expectations from the beginning. In other words, let your subscribers know early on when and how often they can expect an email from you.
How to set subscribers’ expectations
- Mention how often you email on your sign-up and landing pages (eg. weekly/monthly).
- State the frequency of your emails in your welcome email to new subscribers.
- Use “foreshadowing” in your messages. For example, toward the end of your current broadcast email, mention that they can look for another email from you next Tuesday.
Once you’ve set those expectations, do your best to meet them. Yes, things come up every once in a while but generally keep your promise and email your readers when they expect it.
Doing this regularly will improve your open rates and in turn your overall deliverability.
You can be approximate when you set expectations. For example, mine says weekly/fortnightly as it currently varies between 2-5 emails per month. The key is that your audience know roughly when you’ll be emailing.
4. Clean your list regularly
Another good habit is to clean your list on a regular basis. If you email consistently, chances are those subscribers who haven’t been opening your emails for the past six months are no longer interested in what you have to offer.
Most email newsletter providers have an easy way to filter these inactive subscribers.
Delete anyone that hasn’t opened an email from you in the past six months. If that freaks you out, or you have a seasonal business, start by deleting anyone that hasn’t looked at your emails in the past year.
Target cold subscribers before you delete
You can also try specifically reaching out to those subscribers before you delete them. Especially if you haven’t been sending emails regularly.
Using a filter, send those subscribers one or two emails specifically asking if they’re still interested in hearing from you.
Cleaning up your list ensures your emails are going to people who want to receive them. At the same time, it saves you paying for subscribers who aren’t engaging.
5. Monitor your email deliverability and open rates
Once you’ve set up your list and tweaked your settings, it’s important to keep an eye on your email deliverability. There are a few methods you can use to measure the success of your email campaign.
First, try using a spam score tool to help determine what percentage of your emails that have been marked as spam. This can help you identify any areas where you may need to make adjustments to your campaign strategy.
Another way to measure the success of your email campaign is by monitoring open rates and click-through rates (CTRs). This will give you an idea of how many people have actually opened and read each of your emails. Make sure you’ve optimised your subject lines to entice your entice to open your emails. As for clicks, you generally should be including links in your emails, be that to a product page, a blog post or youtube video or your work with me page.
Keep in mind that open rates and click-through rates can vary depending on the topic and audience that you are targeting.
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Following these tips and monitoring email deliverability will help ensure your emails are reaching your subscribers’ inboxes. Hopefully they’re opening your emails too. After all, you want your subscribers to convert into clients and customers when they’re ready.
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