Email Marketing Solutions

Things you should and should NOT do that’ll have your emails landing in the inbox more often, increasing engagement and driving more revenue.

There is one thing when it comes to email marketing that supersedes everything else.

It’s more important than eye-catching subject lines.

More important than world-class copy.

More important than beautiful design.

And more important than the most compelling CTAs.

It’s your deliverability.

Because you can send the perfect email, but if it lands in the SPAM folder then it might as well be trash.

Fortunately, there are a handful of steps you can take today to improve your deliverability, have more emails land in the inbox, and increase the revenue generated by your email marketing efforts.

Let’s start with 6 things that you should NOT do…

Don’t…

1. Don’t Buy Lists

Sending to a list of purchased subscribers is the definition of SPAM.

These people didn’t sign up for your list, and they most likely don’t know about you or your product.

Emailing a list of purchased addresses is one of the quickest ways to get your sending domain included on SPAM black lists.

It might seem like the ticket… but just don’t do it.

2. Don’t Blast Your Entire Email List

You have 50,000 subscribers on your email list. You’ve worked hard over the past three years to drive traffic to your website and capture emails with a lead magnet or discount code.

It might seem like you should be emailing your entire list… because more emails means more money, right?

Here’s the issue.

Every year, about 25% of your email list will disengage in some way or another.

So of your 50,000 subscribers, at least 10,000 if not 20,000 of them are going to be disengaged. (depending on the content and quality of your emails)

And blast emailing these subscribers is just bad practice.

It’ll hurt your open rates and click rates, which sends a message to Gmail, Apple, Outlook, and Yahoo that your emails aren’t worth opening or engaging with. So more and more of your emails will be directed towards the promotions folder or even the SPAM folder.

In my next section I’ll tell you what to do with these unengaged subscribers…

3. Don’t Hide Your Unsubscribe Button

First off, it’s a violation of CAN-SPAM to send an email without an unsubscribe button.

So it follows that it’s bad practice to try and hide the unsubscribe button.

While it might seem like a good idea to make it more difficult for someone to leave your list by making the unsubscribe button tiny or making the same color as the background (yes I’ve seen companies do BOTH of these things)… all you’re doing is making it more likely that they are going to click the “mark as spam” button at the top of the email.

Let’s be realistic… would you rather have someone leave your list by unsubscribing or by marking you as spam?

Also… if you are sending really long emails or emails with lots of images (more on that next) then your email could be cut off by providers like GMail. This means you might be unintentionally hiding your unsubscribe button.

So make sure to test your emails and check that your unsubscribe button is findable and clickable.

4. Don’t Use ONLY Images in Your Emails

I know… a picture says a 1000 words.

And for ecommerce, you’re most likely going to want some image(s) in your email.

But… all too often I see ecommerce companies sending emails with only images.

One of the things that Gmail, Apple, Outlook, and Yahoo check to ensure that your email is valid and worth being placed in the inbox is the text to image ratio.

More text is a good thing.

5. Don’t Go For Weeks Without Emailing Your List

You don’t need to email every day (in fact your probably shouldn’t in most niches), but if you avoid sending to your list, your subscribers are going to go cold…

Meaning that when you send another email, they aren’t used to seeing you in their inbox… they might have forgotten about you… and they are much more likely to unsubscribe or even mark you as spam.

Don’t leave your subscribers out in the cold. They signed up to your list for a reason.

6. Don’t Use Overly Large Images, Embeds, Or Videos

One of the top reasons that people bounce from a website is load time.

It’s the same with emails.

If your email takes more than 1 second to load, people are going to delete it and move on.

If you’re getting really high open rates and really low click rates this could be a reason.

Emails should be quick to load and easy to read.

If you want to send them to a video or a survey or a beautifully designed product page… do so with a kick-ass CTA. Don’t try and include it all in your email.

Do…

Now that we’ve covered 6 things you should avoid doing in order to improve deliverability, I’ve got 9 things you SHOULD do if you want to improve deliverability.

1. Email Your Engaged Subscribers

Segmentation doesn’t have to be complicated or overwhelming.

Start by identifying your most engaged subscribers and send a majority (if not all) of your emails to this segment only.

I typically create a 30-day engaged segment and a 90-day engaged segment for my clients.

Any value emails or relationship building emails go to the 30-day segment.

And then any promotions, sales, or product drops go to the 90-day engaged segment.

Doing this increases every engaged metric, which tells Gmail, Apple, Outlook, and Yahoo that people want to open, read, and engage with your emails. Which means that more of them will land in the inbox.

2. Use a Double-Opt In

If you’re an ecommerce company, this might seem to go against the grain. But hear me out.

Your email channel is designed to build relationships with your audience, increase LTV, and develop more repeat buyers.

If someone is only signing up for your 10% off discount code without any intention of joining your list… then you don’t want them.

In addition, there are more and more people who are using dummy or fake email addresses just to collect discount codes from ecommerce stores.

Which means that your welcome email could bounce or you could fall victim to a SPAM trap.

So use a double opt-in. Make sure that you are adding real human beings to your email list.

3. Make Your Unsubscribe Button Easy To Find

I already talked about this a little… but I’m going to go even farther.

Make your unsubscribe button super easy to find. You WANT people to self-identify by unsubscribing.

4. Include Alt-Text For All Images

Alt-Text is a requirement for accessibility. It’s something that we should all be doing not only for our emails but for websites and any other form of electronic communication.

It’s just best practice.

But it also helps with deliverability.

The more descriptive the better.

5. Shoot For A 60-40 Text to Image Ratio

You don’t need to get too detailed here. Aiming to have slightly more text than images is a good start.

But here’s what you have to remember…

Images are large. 

So having an image followed by two lines of text doesn’t get you to a 50-50 ratio.

Using email checkers like mail-tester(.)com will help as they provide a text-to-image ratio.

As I said before… more text is a good thing.

6. Set Up Proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols

Even if you are using a shared sending server through Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, or whatever ESP you use… you can and should still set up SPF and DKIM protocols. (Many times with a shared sending server you cannot set up DMARC protocols)

There’s a lot of nuance to this one… but spend the money to have a deliverability expert (like myself) take a look at your records and see what needs to be implemented or updated.

Better yet, if you have good sending history (aka your domain isn’t brand new and you haven’t been engaging in bad sending practices) you can and should set up a dedicated sending domain.

Just again, work with an expert.

7. Ensure All Links Are Valid And Clickable

You know what screams SPAM!!

Other than buying an email list of course…

Sending an email with a bad or malicious link.

Broken links or links that lead to malicious sites (this could include tik tok if it actually gets banned) are a quick trip to the SPAM folder.

Double and triple check all links. 

8. Try and Re-Engage Subscribers

I mentioned earlier that out of 50,000, probably 10,000-20,000 are going to be unengaged.

So what should you do with them?

Send specific re-engagement campaigns.

This is another area where hiring an expert is probably the best decision, especially if you don’t have any sort of sunset or win-back automation/flow in your email platform.

If you’re going to go it on your own, take the following into account:

• Don’t email all 20,000 at once, segment out smaller portions of 1-3K and email them.
• Test different subject lines (this is going to be the most important part)
• Send short, text heavy (or text only) emails
• Use humor and be memorable

Ideally, you end up with 2 or 3 emails that do really well and you can build a sunset flow to do this work on autopilot for you.

9. Clean Your List Every Quarter

Now what do we do if those unengaged subscribers don’t open or click your re-engagement campaigns?

It’s time to say goodbye.

Every quarter (or at a minimum, twice a year) manually suppress your unengaged subscribers.

This saves you money and increases the overall quality of your list.

Which improves your sending reputation and your deliverability.

TL;DR

You don’t need to implement all 15 of these suggestions to see significant improvements in your deliverability.

But the more you can do, the better.

And if you scrolled all the way down here, I’ve got a quick recap for you…

Do:

1. Email Engaged Subscribers
2. Use a Double Opt-In
3. Make Your Unsubscribe Button Easy To Find
4. Include Alt Text for ALL Images
5. Keep a 60-40 Text to Image Ratio
6. Set up proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols
7. Ensure All Links Are Valid and Clickable
8. Try and Re-Engage Subscribers
9. Clean Your List Every Quarter

Don’t Do

1. Buy Lists
2. Blast Your Entire List
3. Hide Your Unsubscribe Button
4. Use Only Images
5. Go For Weeks Without Emailing Your List
6. Use Large Images, Embeds, Or Videos

What Should YOU Do Next?

1. Follow me on LinkedIn for daily email tips and what’s working now
2. Leave a like or a comment on this post to let me know what you thought. 
3. If you need an email list manager for your brand or business, send me an email at ben@henkenmarketing.com or fill out this form and I’ll be in touch.
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