Good email deliverability practices are crucial for B2B companies looking to reach potential customers and drive revenue through successful outreach campaigns. There are two main aspects to email deliverability: Technical Setup and Execution. IT departments often focus on ensuring the technical email sending infrastructure is set up correctly (a topic outside the scope of this blog-post), however, the behavior of reps themselves can often be a key issue when it comes to email deliverability.
The Evolution of Email Spam Filters: From Rules to Intelligence
In the past, email spam filters were mostly rule-based, meaning as long as email senders complied with a set of requirements, the email would be delivered and not blocked by spam filters. Today, spam filters are intelligent and are continuously learning the behavior of both email senders and email recipients.
Emails that are ignored and overlooked by recipients increase the chance that similar emails in the future will be delivered to the spam folder instead of the recipient’s inbox folder. Therefore, the way email outbound motions are executed is a key for deliverability. If your email content feels like spam, there is a high chance that your emails will be detected as spam.
Humanizing Outbound Emails
The reality for B2B companies is that we must prospect and outbound to reach potential customers, but the classic outbound process is often flawed because it does not guarantee the interest of the recipients.
To ensure that emails get delivered, organizations need to do this in the most human, organic, and natural way that will create as little resistance from recipients. This involves the sending practice itself, such as how many emails to send and how often to send them, the content, the look and feel of the emails, and relevancy of the emails to the audience.
Personalization and Relevance in Email Communication
Sending relevant emails to the relevant people at the relevant times and frequency is crucial. For example, a CMO of a company should not be approached in the same way as an engineer. And the closer your emails are to emails you would manually send via your own inbox to a person you are familiar with, the higher the chances these emails will arrive at their target.
To quickly understand how your email will be received, try to think of yourself as the email recipient. If the emails you are sending are not something you would appreciate receiving in your professional inbox, then there is likely room for improvement.
The Impact of Email Engagement on Spam Filtering Systems
The key thing to keep in mind is that emails that are being opened and replied to in real-world scenarios are the emails that spam filtering systems learn to accept and pass to their recipients. Promotional emails, by nature, are often tagged as promotional or even as spam, which then increases the chance of similar emails sent from the sender to be tagged as such in the future.
When discussing email deliverability at PMG, we consider both the deliverability aspect and the inbox placement – whether the email arrived in the main inbox or the promotional folder. The fact that an email is considered promotional does not necessarily mean the recipient will not open it (statistics show that most are indeed opened). However, the closer your email is to an email you would send to a colleague – the higher chances it will be delivered directly to right into a user inbox.
Leveraging Email Content to Improve Deliverability Metrics
There are many ways to work towards increasing your email deliverability. One example is sending emails with content that promotes actions that improve deliverability. Email opens and replies are important metrics that spam filters consider when analyzing incoming emails. As a result, emails that increase open and reply rates are often more effective than emails that lead to website clicks (which is often the go-to behavior of marketeers). Ultimately, conversations should be the goal when we think about email deliverability.
The Limitations of One-Size-Fits-All
Common email deliverability advice that is often given to companies includes guidelines on the maximum number of emails sent per time frame, the maximum number of recipients per organization, and the email structure itself.
While these suggestions may be somewhat accurate, it’s important to acknowledge that there is no one-size-fits-all. Company goals, previous email-sending practices and specific issues should all be taken into consideration when planning your email-sending strategy.
Recently, we have helped our clients to identify email deliverability issues that sometimes come from unexpected sources such as the behavior of a singular sales rep or data sourcing practices which has led to major effects on the email deliverability of the whole company.
Summary
There are multiple factors to consider when looking to increase email deliverability rates and it’s important to create a coherent strategy of practices that are employed across marketing and sales departments to ensure high email deliverability. By considering these factors and employing these practices, it’s possible to improve email deliverability and achieve greater success with all outreach campaigns.
Email Deliverability: Why It Matters for B2B Revenue Growth
April 27, 2023
Itzhak Wolkowicz
Good email deliverability practices are crucial for B2B companies looking to reach potential customers and drive revenue through successful outreach campaigns. There are two main aspects to email deliverability: Technical Setup and Execution. IT departments often focus on ensuring the technical email sending infrastructure is set up correctly (a topic outside the scope of this blog-post), however, the behavior of reps themselves can often be a key issue when it comes to email deliverability.
The Evolution of Email Spam Filters: From Rules to Intelligence
In the past, email spam filters were mostly rule-based, meaning as long as email senders complied with a set of requirements, the email would be delivered and not blocked by spam filters. Today, spam filters are intelligent and are continuously learning the behavior of both email senders and email recipients.
Emails that are ignored and overlooked by recipients increase the chance that similar emails in the future will be delivered to the spam folder instead of the recipient’s inbox folder. Therefore, the way email outbound motions are executed is a key for deliverability. If your email content feels like spam, there is a high chance that your emails will be detected as spam.
Humanizing Outbound Emails
The reality for B2B companies is that we must prospect and outbound to reach potential customers, but the classic outbound process is often flawed because it does not guarantee the interest of the recipients.
To ensure that emails get delivered, organizations need to do this in the most human, organic, and natural way that will create as little resistance from recipients. This involves the sending practice itself, such as how many emails to send and how often to send them, the content, the look and feel of the emails, and relevancy of the emails to the audience.
Personalization and Relevance in Email Communication
Sending relevant emails to the relevant people at the relevant times and frequency is crucial. For example, a CMO of a company should not be approached in the same way as an engineer. And the closer your emails are to emails you would manually send via your own inbox to a person you are familiar with, the higher the chances these emails will arrive at their target.
To quickly understand how your email will be received, try to think of yourself as the email recipient. If the emails you are sending are not something you would appreciate receiving in your professional inbox, then there is likely room for improvement.
The Impact of Email Engagement on Spam Filtering Systems
The key thing to keep in mind is that emails that are being opened and replied to in real-world scenarios are the emails that spam filtering systems learn to accept and pass to their recipients. Promotional emails, by nature, are often tagged as promotional or even as spam, which then increases the chance of similar emails sent from the sender to be tagged as such in the future.
When discussing email deliverability at PMG, we consider both the deliverability aspect and the inbox placement – whether the email arrived in the main inbox or the promotional folder. The fact that an email is considered promotional does not necessarily mean the recipient will not open it (statistics show that most are indeed opened). However, the closer your email is to an email you would send to a colleague – the higher chances it will be delivered directly to right into a user inbox.
Leveraging Email Content to Improve Deliverability Metrics
There are many ways to work towards increasing your email deliverability. One example is sending emails with content that promotes actions that improve deliverability. Email opens and replies are important metrics that spam filters consider when analyzing incoming emails. As a result, emails that increase open and reply rates are often more effective than emails that lead to website clicks (which is often the go-to behavior of marketeers). Ultimately, conversations should be the goal when we think about email deliverability.
The Limitations of One-Size-Fits-All
Common email deliverability advice that is often given to companies includes guidelines on the maximum number of emails sent per time frame, the maximum number of recipients per organization, and the email structure itself.
While these suggestions may be somewhat accurate, it’s important to acknowledge that there is no one-size-fits-all. Company goals, previous email-sending practices and specific issues should all be taken into consideration when planning your email-sending strategy.
Recently, we have helped our clients to identify email deliverability issues that sometimes come from unexpected sources such as the behavior of a singular sales rep or data sourcing practices which has led to major effects on the email deliverability of the whole company.
Summary
There are multiple factors to consider when looking to increase email deliverability rates and it’s important to create a coherent strategy of practices that are employed across marketing and sales departments to ensure high email deliverability. By considering these factors and employing these practices, it’s possible to improve email deliverability and achieve greater success with all outreach campaigns.