Campaign Delivery Challenges In Email Marketing

Campaign Delivery Challenges In Email Marketing

 

We have just covered the factors that affect getting your emails delivered, next we will take a look at some of the challenges that can affect the inbox placement of your email. This means the mail server has accepted your email but needs to decide where to place the email (inbox, spam, promotions etc.)

The main challenges when delivering marketing emails to your audience include:

1.Bounces

2.Complaints

3.Spam Traps

4.Sending Volumes

5.Engagement

 

Soft Bounce

A soft bounce is a temporary delivery failure. It means that the email address was valid and the email message reached the recipient’s mail server, however, it bounced back because:

  • The recipients’ mailbox was full
  • The receiving server was down
  • The message you sent was too large

 

 

A hard bounce is a permanent delivery failure that occurs when the message has been permanently rejected. This may happen because:

  • The email address is invalid or no longer in use
  • The email could also be invalid due to a typo in the email address

Retries will not be successful with a hard bounce.

 

A spam complaint is when the email recipient clicks the “Spam” or “Junk” button on your email in their email client. Most ISPs have the spam button and it only appears when the email is in the inbox.

A user might report the email as spam because they are:

  • Confused about who you are
  • Unsure why you are emailing them
  • Unable to find the unsubscribe link.

 

Spam Traps are real email addresses that don’t bounce and are monitored by ISPs and blacklists. Often ISPs will take over abandoned email addresses and turn those into spam trap.

There are 3 different types:

1.Typo: email address with ISP domain misspelled (e.g. Comnast.net, Homtail.com)

2. Recycled: Email address that existed, was then abandoned, and later reactivated by the ISP

3.Pristine: Email address that never opted into any email communication

Spam trap addresses can’t opt-in to receive an email. The only way one could end up on your list is if you’re not maintaining healthy lists or you’re not abiding by the rules of permission-based email marketing.

 

Another challenge you have to take into consideration is sending volumes. ISPs want to see an established sending history and sending pattern to help determine inbox placement. Spikes in email volumes will often trigger spam filters due to inconsistency with an existing pattern.

For example, if you send a regular weekly newsletter to 10k email addresses, then all of a sudden you begin emailing more than 70k addresses per week, this could trigger an ISP spam filter as it doesn’t align with your sending history. You must keep a regular sending pattern that doesn’t have large fluctuations in volume.

campaign delivery challenges

Engagement

The last challenge for getting your email into the recipients inbox is engagement. Certain ISPs look at recipient engagement to determine inbox versus junk folder delivery. These types of engagement levels include opens, clicks, saves, replies, forwards, moves, etc. The more engaged a recipient is, the greater the chance of the email landing in the inbox.

 

 

An email with a 35% unique open rate and a 10% unique click-through rate is a strong performing email. This lets ISPs know that users are engaged with the email meaning it is more likely to be legitimate and less likely to be spam.

 

We will take a look at what you can do before you send your email, and after the email has been sent, to improve your email deliverability. First, let’s take a look at what to check before you send your email.

 

 

There are multiple areas to test and optimize for deliverability, including subject line, from name and time of day. If more recipients are going to open your email at certain times of the day, send at that time to increase opens and clicks.

 

 

Litmus software includes a from name and subject line checker which can help optimize your email before sending the email. It lets you know if the subject line is too short or long, includes spam characters or is too vague. The from name checker checks both the domain the email was sent from and what the reply-to address is. It’s strongly recommended that you use a real email address instead of a “no reply” address.

 

Another check to perform before sending your email is to review previous campaign performance. This will help highlight any issues with the campaign that you can fix before sending the next one.

Always review previous campaign’s reporting in your ESP to identify any possible deliverability problems. Reports should be reviewed 24 hours after the send occurs to measure opens, clicks, bounces, etc. If your ESP provides bounce details on each bounce, review those to identify any trends.

 

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