Keeping your mass email campaigns at the highest possible level, building trust and ensuring deliverability at the same time may not be easy if you forget some key tips. From account configuration to recipients base selection, you may come across some issues that need to be addressed for your campaign to be successful.
Contents
- Configuring a sending account
- Building sender reputation
- Why mass email campaigns may not be satisfactory at first
- Impact of contact base quality on deliverability
1. Configuring a sending account
To successfully configure your sending account you have to follow a few guidelines to ensure yourself the highest deliverability level possible. As email service providers endeavor to ensure you are who you say you are setting up SPF and DKIM is highly required.
- Sender policy framework – SPF is a basic security feature for email marketing. The recipient’s mail server checks to see if the IP address of the sender’s mail server is authorized to send messages with a given domain. Sender Policy Framework increases your credibility in the eyes of the receiving email server, but if you don’t have it – your email might get rejected.
Check how to configure the SPF key >>
How SPF works:
Simply put, SPF at its most basic level is responsible for establishing a method for mail servers to verify that an incoming email from a domain was sent from a host authorized by the administrators of that domain.
- DomainKeys Identified Mail – DKIM was created for the same reason as SPF: to prevent fraudsters from impersonating you as the sender of an email. It’s a way to additionally sign your emails so that the recipient’s server can verify whether the sender was really you or not. By setting up DKIM you are providing the additional message to your recipient – “Yes, It’s really me who’s sending this message”
How DKIM works
DKIM works by adding a digital signature to email headers. This signature can then be verified against a public cryptographic key that is found in the organization’s DNS record.
SPF is guaranteeing that you are the owner of the domain and gives the possibility to contact people using the domain name to selected IP addresses owned by ESP. Combining it with DKIM gives you not only ownership authentication but also email validation.
Check how to configure the DKIM key >>
2. Building sender reputation
Building a reputation is not an easy task. Your reputation will be created upon the data you use and the feedback from your recipients – this can take anywhere from 1 to 4 weeks. To generate the best possible sender reputation in the early stages of your mailings, you should:
- Provide up-to-date, valid data – as you are just trying to look credible in the eyes of your recipients, you must ensure the data you’re delivering is always valid, active, and current.
- Generate CTR – pick or create content specifically to generate high open and click-through rates. At the early stages of your reputation building, do not send your emails to old or less active contacts.
- Enable your recipients to unsubscribe – you don’t want to appear too aggressive and you should allow your recipients to opt-out of receiving your messages at any time – otherwise, they will likely just hit the spam button.
- Send survey invitations only to those who have agreed on that – another thing ruining your reputation might be sending emails to anyone without their specific consent or lack of interest in your activities. This will for sure lead to redirecting your message into spam.
- Make the true recipient magnet – with an overwhelming number of incoming emails, you should create one that is eye-catching. This will lead to an interest in your email, thus improving your reputation as a sender.
- Make good content – this one might be slightly overrated, but the way you present words or images can have a huge influence on the behavior of your audience. This can help you not only with reputation, but the overall outcome of your campaign.
3. Why mass email campaigns may not be satisfactory at first
When you are just starting with your new email campaign, sending mass messages you can expect all the ISPs to look at you with suspicion. They are on the lookout for spammers and are always wary when a new domain is used. Therefore, newly made email campaigns may come across some blocking or filtering by individual ISPs. This, although, can pass as quickly as long as the emails will be sending continuously.
The same goes to switching providers – the results of your bulk email campaigns may be slightly different at first. They may be weaker, but after sending 3 to 5 mass emails according to good practices and anti-spam policies, these results should be much better.
4. Impact of contact base quality on deliverability
When it comes to the relationship between contacts quality and campaign deliverability, yet again you can find confirmation in words: “quality over quantity”. It’s definitely better to add 20 engaged subscribers, than 100 people not interested in your content. Here’s why you should bet on few engaged recipients, rather than just a ton of uninterested ones:
- Engaged subscribed buy more – customers that are truly devoted to your brand will be more willing to appreciate your email campaigns and based on reciprocity even buy a product from your store
- Engaged subscribers are more prone to recommend you to others – recommendation is a powerful tool, and when you match your content to your audience you can count on them referring your brand to others
- Recipients who want to receive your content will not consider you spam – this one is pretty self-explanatory