It’s simple: if your emails don’t land in the inbox, they can’t generate engagement, leads, or revenue. Despite excellent content and personalized offers, emails are useless if filtered into spam or blocked entirely.
The reality is, reaching the inbox has become more difficult due to new rules enforced by major email providers like Google and Yahoo. These rules, while challenging, make sure that legitimate marketers are following industry best practices, creating a cleaner email ecosystem.
How stricter rules are toughening email marketing
Every day, 347 billion emails flood inboxes globally, and 173 billion of these are classified as spam. Staggering volumes put immense pressure on email providers like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft to safeguard their users’ inboxes.
With nearly half of all global email traffic classified as spam, service providers are working tirelessly to filter out unwanted messages, making it harder for legitimate marketing emails to make it through.
For bulk email senders, those delivering messages to 5,000+ recipients per day, new authentication protocols are no longer optional but mandatory. The three key protocols every sender must implement include:
- SPF (Sender Policy Framework): This tool authenticates the sending server, preventing domain spoofing.
- DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Adds a digital signature to emails to verify the sender’s identity and message integrity.
- DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance): Provides guidelines on how to handle failed authentication and offers reports for auditing purposes.
Beyond authentication, there are strict spam rate thresholds. Google mandates spam rates stay below 0.1%, while Yahoo requires senders to remain under 0.3%. Violating these limits can severely hinder email delivery. Marketers also must make it simple for users to unsubscribe.
Emails should include clear, easy-to-use unsubscribe links, and unsubscribe requests must be processed within two days to maintain compliance.
Email delivery failures are costing you millions and ruining your reputation
Email delivery failures carry a massive financial burden. U.S. businesses lose $164 million daily, $1.1 billion weekly, $4.9 billion monthly, and $59.5 billion annually due to undelivered emails.
Losses stem from missed sales opportunities and from the cost of maintaining large email lists that fail to convert. Additionally, businesses are hit with a cost of $15,000 for every million emails that aren’t delivered, making deliverability a key area for reducing operational waste and improving profitability.
When your sender reputation crumbles, so does your email strategy
Rebuilding a damaged sender reputation is a slow and difficult process, much like improving a poor credit score. A bad sender reputation directly impacts the ability to reach inboxes, making it harder to recover once email service providers flag a domain as untrustworthy.
The longer the reputation stays low, the more difficult it becomes to re-establish credibility, and marketers can find themselves stuck in a cycle of low engagement and increasing spam complaints.
Email marketing has improved in just three years
The good news is that email deliverability rates have been improving. Between 2020 and 2023, deliverability rates increased from 94.26% to 96.43%, while bounce rates fell to 1.98% in 2023. The eCommerce industry has seen some of the largest gains, with a 10.28% increase in deliverability over four years and a 0.7% drop in bounce rates.
Spam rates also fell sharply, with a 44.4% decline between 2020 and 2023. The unsubscribe rate dropped 26.32% over the same period, indicating that marketers are sending more relevant, targeted content to their audiences.
Your audience is frustrated
Consumers expect important emails to reach their inboxes, and they react strongly when that doesn’t happen. According to recent reports, 52.7% of consumers say they feel frustrated, lose trust, or unsubscribe from a brand when its emails land in spam.
70% of consumers actively check their spam folders for missing emails, and 33% express annoyance when legitimate brand emails end up there. A disconnect can quickly erode trust in the brand and damage long-term relationships with customers, making it essential for marketers to improve email placement and avoid deliverability issues.
Best practices to guarantee deliverability
To guarantee high deliverability rates and maintain a strong email marketing strategy, it’s essential to adopt best practices that meet the expectations of email providers like Google and Yahoo. There are many steps that can help you stay compliant and maximize your success:
- Monitor inbox placement: Track whether emails are reaching inboxes or being blocked, allowing for quick adjustments to email strategy.
- Clean email lists regularly: Remove spam traps, inactive users, and outdated addresses to improve engagement rates and reduce bounce rates.
- Use double opt-in verification: Make sure that new subscribers actively confirm their interest in receiving emails, reducing the number of inactive or unengaged recipients.
- Implement third-party verification solutions: Validate that all email addresses on your list are accurate and belong to engaged recipients.
- Send emails at consistent intervals: Avoid the appearance of erratic or spammy behavior by sticking to a regular email sending schedule.
- Provide a preference center for subscribers: Let users choose how often they want to receive emails, helping to prevent opt-outs and spam complaints.
- Monitor sender reputation: Use tools like SenderScore.org to track engagement metrics, spam complaints, and bounce rates, ensuring your sender reputation remains strong.
- Implement BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification): Add your brand’s logo to authenticated emails, increasing trust and reducing the likelihood of emails being marked as spam.
Slow and steady wins the race
Warming up a dedicated IP address is necessary when sending large volumes of emails. This process involves gradually increasing the volume of emails sent over a four to six-week period.
Sending too many emails from a fresh IP too quickly can raise red flags for email service providers, as this behavior is common among spammers. Establishing a solid sending history is essential to avoid having emails blocked or flagged as spam.
Are sales tools hurting your deliverability?
Sales tools like Salesloft, Clari, and Outreach can unintentionally hurt deliverability when not used properly. While these tools are designed to automate outreach and improve efficiency, they can also lead to mass emails being flagged as spam if they lack personalization or fail to adhere to email marketing best practices.
Without proper oversight, sales teams may inadvertently damage a company’s email reputation When sending too many generic emails too quickly, which can result in higher spam rates and lower deliverability.
Bad habits hurt your email strategy
Over-reliance on templates is a common pitfall for sales teams. When the same template is used repeatedly without sufficient customization, recipients are more likely to mark emails as spam.
Additionally, improper configuration of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication protocols can further damage deliverability. Protocols are designed to validate the authenticity of the email sender, and if not properly set up, emails are at a higher risk of being blocked.
Key takeaways, how to stop sales teams from damaging your deliverability
In order to safeguard a brand’s email reputation, it’s wise to set up a separate IP address for sales teams. This isolates the impact of their email activity from the rest of the organization. Sales teams should also follow the same best practices as marketing teams, particularly around personalization and relevance.
Even cold emails should be carefully targeted to make sure they resonate with the recipient. Poor sales email practices can result in low engagement and increased spam complaints, ultimately undermining the company’s overall deliverability.
