Delivery and Deliverability: The Best Practices

    by Anastasia Sukhareva
    01.06.2021

    Email marketing delivery

    Email marketing is the new hit thing about e-commerce. Connecting with your audience, informing and communicating with them personally through emails is definitely a golden way to boost your business.

    This article will help you realize the importance of email checker, test deliverability of email, email validator and email verification tool in your business.

    Email Delivery Vs. Email Deliverability

    People often confuse the two terms, the difference between sent and delivered, email delivery and email deliverability. Let’s get things clear and find out the difference between the two terms.

    Email delivery simply means whether your mail is accepted by your audience or not. It does not have anything to do with folders (spam, inbox etc.). It only means if your email is physically possible to reach to your receiver.

    Deliverability, on the other hand, talks about what place, what folder the email lands into. It comes after delivery. Once the message has been delivered where it is present; in the spam folder, inbox or elsewhere?

    A question to ask

    A question you can ask while talking about these terms that helps distinguish them is:

    • Delivery: Did the email reach the receiver?
    • Deliverability: Did it reach the inbox folder?

    Example to get a clear concept to test the deliverability of email address

    This can further be explained with the help of an example.

    You have taken admission to a new college. You reach the location of the college (this is the sending of the email). There are some guards or authorities standing in front of the gate that asks you for verification and an ID card before entering the college. Will they let you in? (This is speaking of delivery). If they let you in, then the email was sent and reached the receiver address; the delivery process is completed.

    We do not also know what room you need to go for attending your class. (We do not yet know what folder the email is present in). Suppose you enter a wrong class. The class at the end of the building. (That’s when an email lands in the spam folder. We spoke about deliverability while discussing the location of the mail).

    If you use a guide to get to your class, you will reach there accurately (email landed in the inbox). This is the importance of an Email validator is in your marketing. It makes your deliverability effective.

    Talking about the possibility of the email being sent and accepted by the receiver is called delivery whereas talking about the location of the landing of the mail is called deliverability.

    Both these techniques hold immense significance for email marketing.  Measurement of the effectiveness of email marketing is determined by these two terms.

    Read more about Email Marketing Metrics - Email Bounce Rate: All You Want to Know But Afraid to Ask

    Factors that impact deliverability

    Apart from the key components of email deliverability, there are factors that may affect the deliverability of your letters, email deliverability of pdf attachments, etc., and you as an email marketer may fully take them under your control to improve your open rates. Here they are:

    Email subject line 

    It all starts here. This is one of the most important factors. Including emoji in subject lines, substitutions (name, city), the length of the subject, and the use of special Unicode characters may all be up to you. Most often, the email marketer chooses the subject for the letter and influences this factor. Or tests it prior to launching a campaign.

    Preheaders

    As a continuation of the subject line, which is displayed in some emails, it is also picked by marketers. In fact, as catchy as possible, it is more likely to get your client on a hook. Preceded by a powerful subject line, of course.

    Day of the week & sending time 

    Of course, you may pick the hottest periods for mailings to increase your odds for success. For different audiences, using tests, you may choose the optimal time when the probability of opening the letter is greater.

    For example, it is logical to send letters for B2B during business hours, and mailings with posters of events - on Friday evenings. 

    Letter segmentation

    The open rate will surely be higher if you select subscribers who:

    • Have opened the last mailing list.
    • Have recently bought similar products from your company.
    • Have ordered delivery to a specific city where sales/promotions are due.

    This is logical: the most interested & active users should be selected. A detailed segmentation makes sense if you have different proposals for different segments, and good resources to prepare different emails for them.

    Frequency of mailings 

    Usually, the pattern is like this: the more often we send emails, the lower the open rate we get. Frequency has nothing to do with quality, indeed. You should vary your send out regularity to compare the deliverability of email marketing.

    Mailing expectations based on previous experience

    The email marketer grows or warns up certain expectations among subscribers with the help of newsletters. That is, the subscribers may open letters not because they are interested in the topic, but simply because they know that the mailing lists of this company have a lot of tips, useful links, and discounts, etc.

    It is rather difficult to measure the impact, but it must also be taken into account while making up email lists and sending letters.

    Letter annotations

    It's one of the email deliverability best practices. They help to visually highlight the mailing in the mailbox and attract the attention of subscribers alongside catchy subject lines or preheaders. 

    The  age of the contact base & reactivations

    The older the contact base is, the lower its OR will be. It’s common. You should clean up and reactivate your users periodically. If you write to those who were interested in the product 3 years ago, then it’s more likely it will no longer be relevant now.

    Old subscribers in the database, who haven't opened mailings for months, decrease your OR and may negatively affect deliverability. You should try to reactivate such subscribers.

    Size of your database

    On large bases with many subscribers, the average OR will be lower. It’s normal. This means that while the database was being collected, some subscribers' information from the letters has already become irrelevant, etc. So, you may vary your database capacity as well. Segment subscribers, personalize letters, etc.

    Letter type

    For example, the mails that are based on user actions (triggered mails) have a higher open rate. It’s predictable. Do the number of email links affect email deliverability? For example, messages with password recovery reach 90% open rate.

    However, it is recommended to evaluate such letters and their indicators separately from mass mailings. They simply overstuff your statistics.  It’s good to have it clear.

    Email marketing offers

    Of course, what you offer counts. This is what we offer in the newsletters. Naturally, 90% of discounts will lead to higher email open rates, but it is often difficult for an email marketer to influence other offers in a newsletter and figure out how to improve the deliverability of emails.

    Database source 

    This is where and how the database is collected and what is offered in turn for the users' subscription.

    It’s highly recommended to tag users from different forms and types of subscriptions in order to understand which database collection tools bring more active and interested subscribers. Separate your landing form traffic from other channels, etc.  Again you will have clear statistics without any crosses or blending.

    Importance of delivery and deliverability in e-commerce

    We spend days, in fact, weeks, trying to focus on the email being sent. Taking care of the color combinations, font sizes, taglines, proofreading and many other tiny details go into the compilation of an email message. How would you feel if it is not reaching to its receivers? How would you feel if it’s reaching to recipients whose accounts have not been opened since the 19th century? How will you feel if the marketing message you have sent reaches the audience but ends up stinking in the spam folder? Where it is never viewed or accessed. All your efforts, time and money are of no use if they do not reach the receiver in the best way possible. It can affect your business more than you can think.

    The importance of landing of emails properly to the subscriber might be understated by many people. It is often misunderstood and neglected. Do not be among those people. In the future, the company can bear huge losses and till then, so much time has passed that the damage becomes irrecoverable.

    ISPs and your reputation

    ISPs (Internet Service Providers) are very protective of their customers and don’t want them to receive unwanted emails that the customer never opted in to. The reputation of your company determines your trustworthiness in the eyes of the ISPs and other organizations. Your deliverability depends on this reputation. Good repute is developed by having positive subscriber behavior, sending relevant, personal emails to your subscribers.

    Irrelevant messages and spam messages that annoy the receivers lead to a bad reputation for you and your emails. This is why they usually end up in the spam folder. Using excessive exclamation points, weird formatting, and URL shorteners can all impact your email deliverability. Think about it from your subscribers’ perspective to create the best content for your email.

    ISPs and faulty email addresses

    Sending emails to genuine email IDs is very important. Sometimes your subscriber list consists of fake email IDs that do not exist or have been abandoned for a long time. This may make your list of subscriber appear grand, which shows 1000 members, but the reality can be dark on the account that the actual number of followers could be less than 500. Similarly, having an email appear in the inbox folder of your subscriber is equally important. Inbox is basically the desktop of an email, it is like the home screen of your mobile. The desktop is the first thing you see when you run your computer.

    If an email lands in the inbox, it is guaranteed to have more effect on the subscriber than one landing in the spam folder. In this way, your subscriber is more likely to respond, read and remember you. This is the essence of email marketing. Number of images in email affect deliverability. Using an email validator or email checker will help you check the authenticity of your subscriber list.

    Does the age of domain impact email deliverability? ISPs keep a track of reputation of companies and based on the repute, direct the mail into the spam folder or inbox. They develop negative repute of companies having a large number of inactive or fake emails IDs.

    Bulk email verifier - Atomic Mail Verifier

    There is a gigantic difference between sending a regular email and sending bulk email. The role of ISPs comes into play. Your business’ progress depends on it. What if you need analytics from your emails? Such as how many you sent, how many were delivered, how many bounced, how many had complaints, or even how many emails were opened? All these tasks are now possible by the remarkable services provided by Atomic Mail Verifier.

    It consists of various user-friendly and effective tools that will transform your business into a huge success within days. Some of its remarkable tools are as follows.

    1. Email checker
      Atomic Mail Verifier has a remarkable feature for checking emails. The email checker tool will check and verify the authenticity of email addresses. It performs the task in three steps that include conducting a syntax check, domain check, and email address check. Email checker tool is essential to develop a good repute of your company in the eyes of ISPs.
    2. Email validator
      Another tool of Atomic Mail Verifier is the email validator that checks the validity of the emails. Email list validation an address-by-address analysis of emails, from the uploaded list, to identify their deliverability. It helps you get rid of the fake emails IDs and improves your reputation in front of the internet providers.
    3. Email verification tool
      Email list verification is a process of determining whether the list of email addresses is valid and deliverable.  The above two processes combine to provide you with an effective email verification report. You can measure your reach and your status in term of these reports.

    To succeed in your online business and have an effective communication with your audience Atomic Mail Verifier is a must have software for every aspiring individual out there.

    Written by:
    Anastasia Sukhareva
    Back to blog
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