How Awesome (or Awful) is Your Email Deliverability? & Why Does It Matter?

Email Deliverability is a mix of many factors.

It's the email smoothie you get when you blend together your email content (including relevance, structure, performance, etc.) your email subscriber engagement, and your sender reputation.

The better the quality the ingredients you use, the smoother and tastier your email smoothie will be.

Let me explain further by unpacking the ingredients that affect email deliverability.

To illustrate email deliverabily and the factors affecting it, think of email deliverability as something like a high schooler going on a prom date.

Say, you're the high schooler.

Your subscribers are your date.

Your Email Service Providers like Klaviyo are your parents.

Inbox Providers like Gmail and Yahoo are the teachers in your school organizing the prom.

Just like a teen getting their parents' nod on going out on a prom date (so you can borrow their car), you need to get the go-ahead of your Email Service Provider (e.g. Klaviyo) where your email will go through initial Spam filters. This is the part where the "don't-drink-and-drive" reminder of Mom and Dad happens. For safety.

If Klaviyo sees that your email is not meant to harm, it will then endorse you to the next step . . . 

Just like school authorities would strictly supervise high school proms, this next step involves a more rigorous screening with Inbox providers like Gmail and Outlook. In this phase, they'll check every nook and cranny of your email for something that could harm recipients. They'll check your email copy, email size, HTML code, links and even branding.

Not only that. They'll also monitor the stuff you use for your identity authentication, such as your IP address, sending domain, DMARC, etc. They'll track whether or not your subscribers open, delete without being read, or mark your email as spam. They keep tabs on the level of engagement of your readers.

Additional filters like Cloudmark or block lists lke Spamhaus may also scan your email. When your email passes these screenings, they will then dispatch it to your subscriber's inbox.

If your subscriber is using Gmail, your email will further be screened to determine whether it will be routed to the Primary or Promotions tab. Marketing emails usually (and duly) end up in the Promotions tab for obvious reasons.

Now, the eagle . . . err . . . I mean your email has landed (in their inbox). The question now would be . . . 

Would your recipient open your email? If they do, how would they respond to it?

Let's continue the conversation with the next factor.

Your recipients’ reaction to receiving your emails play a major part in your Email Deliverability Ratings. This is how engagement is measured. This is also partly how your Sender Reputation is formed.

(At this point, I'll stop the high school analogy as I don't seem to like where it is headed.)

If your recipients don’t seem to be happy with your emails (ignoring, marking as spam, unsubscribing), the Inbox Providers’ spam filters can detect that, and send your emails straight to the spam folder.

With your emails wasting away in Spam Exile . . .

Your recipients can't open them.

Your recipients can't read them.

Your recipients can't click your call-to-action links.

And more importantly, your recipients can't buy your products via your emails.

With zero recipient interaction, you’ll get poorer Deliverabillity Ratings.

The poorer your Deliverability Rates are, all the more Gmail and friends will eye you as an Inbox Villain and think you should be barred entry into your recipient’s inboxes.

There goes your Sender Reputation!

So, what if they keep watch of your emails? Why do you have to please them with your email deliverability? What makes email deliverability important?

That's what we talk about in the next section. . . 

Now, after looking at the deliverability metrics and your next question might be how to break lose from the 'Room for Improvement' or 'Critical' (heaven forbid) levels? Here are some suggestions:

1 - Write emails that engage and resonate with your subscribers to elicit positive response. 

To be able to write emails relevant to your audience, know your customers well by doing market research. You can look online and offline. 

But you don't have to look far if you already have a significant number of subscribers. All you need to do is fire up your Klaviyo account and check the valuable data you have collected there about your customers. That is, if you've put Klaviyo to optimum use.

If you need help with maximizing Klaviyo to help you know more about your subscribers/customers, as well as creating (not just writing) emails that resonate with your subscribers, schedule a Klaviyo Audit here.

2 - Pass the Email Service and Inbox Providers Requirements

As I've already mentioned earlier, Inbox and Email Service Providers want to provide the best experience to their customers. That's why, they want to protect them from annoying and harmful emails. Hence their use of the Spam filter. 

Think of a sieve sifting through words in your email. When it encounters lumps, it blocks these large particles from going through and reaching your subscriber's inbox. Thus your email doesn't get delivered or gets deliverability issues. So what are these Spam-triggering "lumps" that get blocked?

These are words that Spam filters are allergic to. Let's group them using Klaviyo's acronym: SHAFT

Also stay clear of other Spammy words like "make money", "discount," "100% free", and other over-sensationalized claims and promises.

Besides the words you use in your emails, there are certain numbers in your Klaviyo account that affect your deliverability, depending on how you make use of them when sending emails. I'm talking about your engagement numbers.

That’s what we talk about in the free course I'm creating:

How to Deliver Your Email Marketing from Deliverability Damnation.

You can sign up here to reserve your slot. <LINK>