Source: Twenty20

Has email marketing ever been so popular? With more than half of the world’s population using email, it’s easy to see why so many businesses rely on it as a primary marketing channel. For it to work, however, your emails have to land in the inbox first. What could you do today to boost your deliverability and get more out of your campaigns and newsletters? Stay with me for five easy ways to ensure your emails make it to your subscribers’ inboxes.

The challenge of landing in the inbox

More than 4.1 billion people use email in 2021, a Radicati Group study shows. By 2025, that number will increase to 4.5 billion. 

What’s more, when it comes to receiving promos, 60% of people say email is their favorite channel, while only 20% of them chose social media. Conversion rates, too, prove the power of email marketing: 6.05% compared to 1.9% for social media.

No surprise here, considering the overall email engagement rates.

Source: OptinMonster

There’s tremendous potential in marketing and selling via email. But first, you have to be where people can see you – and that means in their inbox. Using bad data, sending irrelevant content and other poor practices cause many billions of emails to go to spam every day. 

How can you avoid that? Here are some of the golden rules successful email marketers follow for high inbox placement.

Get rid of stale email addresses

Email databases decay quickly. An email list that’s fresh today may be spoiled with bad contacts six months later. The 2020 lockdowns, with their catastrophic consequences on labor, have caused data to go bad even faster. Millions of email addresses became obsolete overnight due to people losing their jobs. 

If you want your emails to arrive in the inbox, this is an aspect you can’t ignore. So, at least once a quarter, run your email contacts through an email verifier – a service that weeds out stale, obsolete addresses. 

The more sophisticated email verification services remove other types of risky contacts, too, such as people who could label you as spam. Below you’ll see an example of email validation results, so you can get an idea of how many bad emails can lurk in a list.

Source: ZeroBounce

To avoid spam complaints, ask for permission

Emailing someone out of the blue, when they’ve never heard of you, is a sure way to get marked as spam. Why is that a big deal? Because your sender reputation is on the line. 

Mailbox providers strive to give users a great experience with email. If someone tells them a certain message is spam, they take it seriously. Depending on how many spam complaints you get, your future emails may start going to spam. How many spam complaints are too many? Anything more than 0.1%, which is one complaint for every 1,000 emails you send. 

To avoid getting labeled as spam, never add people to your database out of your own initiative. Asking for permission is non-negotiable. What’s more, when people subscribe because they want to, they’re more likely to engage with your emails. 

Fine-tune your content to boost clicks

Many things can cause your emails to go to the junk folder. One of them is your content not being relevant enough for your audience. If you suspect this could be the case for you, it’s time to take a closer look at what you send.

A good way to start is by looking at your metrics for the past few months. Open rates don’t tell the whole story, so dig deeper: what do your click rates look like? Is your content engaging enough that people click through and go to your landing pages?

If these metrics don’t make you proud, consider adjusting your approach. Select the emails that got the highest number of clicks and see what they have in common. What do your subscribers most care about? Give them more of that – there are ways to create emails around a certain topic without repeating yourself. 

Bonus tips to help your emails land in the inbox

We’ve gone through some of the most important steps you can take to increase your email deliverability. What else could you do to avoid the spam folder and reach your subscribers in the inbox? 

Take these final tips and keep them in mind when you send your next email:

  • Confirm people’s interest. Double opt-in is the way to go about growing your email list. Ask people to click that confirmation link and let you know they want, indeed, to receive your emails. 
  • Remove passive subscribers periodically. Whether they don’t care about your content or they abandoned their account, their lack of engagement hurts your inbox placement. 
  • Encourage discussions. Getting replies from your subscribers boosts your sender reputation. So, ask questions and invite people to write back. Of course, make sure you reply to everyone.

It’s not that hard to give your emails a chance to be seen. Send marketing emails with care, keep track of your improvements and ask yourself: could I do even better? Most likely, we all could. 

About the Author: Corina Leslie is the PR Manager for email validation company ZeroBounce, an Inc. 5000 honoree. Her work has appeared in Money magazine, Zapier, Social Media Today, Zoho and other popular platforms. She loves helping people and businesses get the recognition they deserve.