Email deliverability tips
On 2/1/24, Google and Yahoo are implementing new regulations in regards to email sending. In 2024 Yahoo and Google started partnering to establish standardized best practices for sending email.
This article can help prepare your organization for these changes to ensure any emails you are sending through Engage do not get caught in someone’s SPAM filter.
The most basic definition of spam is “unsolicited email that is sent in bulk to a list of people in a short period of time”. Every country has a different definition of what spam in their country means. Email itself is not inherently bad, and not all emails sent in bulk are marked as spam, however, it's important to understand the laws and governance around email, especially for Sales professionals.
Email Best Practices
Authenticate all email with SPF, DKIM & DMARC. Your IT team can help verify. You can use this free tool to verify if your domain has these set up correctly: https://dmarcian.com/dmarc-inspector/
Sender Policy Framework (SPF): an email authentication standard that helps protect senders and recipients from spam, spoofing, and phishing. By adding an SPF record to your Domain Name System (DNS), you can provide a public list of senders that are approved to send email from your domain.
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM): Set up DKIM to help protect your domain against spoofing, and help prevent your outgoing messages from being marked as spam. Spoofing is a type of email attack that forges the From address of an email message. A spoofed message appears to be from the impersonated organization or domain. DKIM detects when a message has been modified, and when unauthorized changes are made to the message From: address.
Without DKIM, messages sent from your organization or domain are more likely to be marked as spam by receiving mail servers.
Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC): an email security protocol that helps prevent spoofing, phishing, and spam. DMARC verifies email senders using the Domain Name System (DNS), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Sender Policy Framework (SPF) protocols. It also adds a link to the author's domain name, and provides published policies for how recipients should handle authentication failures.
Tips to help your domain reputation
Abuse
Keep abuse complaints under 0.3%. Several mailbox providers provide deliverability metrics and complaint information to senders. Outreach encourages all customers to monitor and review their reputation with providers frequently. You can use Google Postmaster Tools, Yahoo Sender Hub, Microsoft SNDS to monitor these metrics.
Unsubscribe
Include 1-click unsubscribe headers and links in any email that has a likelihood to be reported as spam. Preference centers can also be used in addition to the 1-click to allow prospects and customers the ability to tailor what communications and at what cadence they receive them. This could be an opportunity to allow customers to pause instead of opt-out. Preference centers do not take the place of 1-click unsubscribe.
Bounces
Strive for a bounce rate of less than 3%. MX Toolbox has a free search available to check domain and IP address blacklisting.
Engagement
Monitor email engagement metrics (clicks, replies, bounces, and opt outs) and have a framework to pivot strategy based on the trends. When trends signal that there is a problem, it’s an indicator to quickly make adjustments before reputation takes a nosedive.
Open data is inaccurate and should never be used as a metric of the success of deliverability. The only open data to scrutinize is when a campaign has a zero or extremely low open rate, as that could be an indication of a larger deliverability problem like blacklisting or rejected messages. Negative Signals (zero/low open rate, no bookings, no responses) is just as important as measurable engagement.