The best way to improve your email deliverability is to take a closer look at your email list. If you’re routinely sending to bad email addresses, then you probably won’t ever see an improvement in your deliverability. So the first place to start is to clean your email list. From there, if your list is clean and doesn't include any invalid addresses, you will then want to segment even further.

For instance, if you have members on your email list who have not opened an email in the past year, then it probably won’t do any good to keep sending to them. Thus, one good way to segment your mailing list is to send to people who have recently opened (i.e. within the last 3 months) and actively engaged with (i.e. clicked on a call to action link) your email marketing messages. You can also segment based on a particular action, such as downloaded a specific white paper, or purchased a specific product. Or, if you’re having deliverability issues with a few different internet service providers, it may be helpful to segment your email list by ISP.

Take a look at your email creative because it's also a contributing factor to your email deliverability and how ISPs treat your mailings. One element you may need to adjust is the HTML to image ratio.

It may also help to place some creative messaging at the very top of your email marketing message. I would suggest something along the lines of “please add This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ” to your address book” or “If this message was delivered to your spam or bulk folder by mistake, please click the This is not spam button.” I have seen that this can help if you are experiencing any bulking issues.

Email Deliverability is an important matter in email marketing today. Every marketer wants their email campaigns to reach the inbox and be read. If you have any specific questions about deliverability or email marketing best practices in general, feel free to leave a message in the "Comments" area below so I can get back to you.

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About the Author

Vip Patel is an account manager at Lyris. He is responsible for helping clients with their email campaigns, offering today's best practices, guidelines and measures to help them succeed in email marketing.

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