Getting emails delivered to the recipient's inbox is one of the biggest challenges most email marketers struggle with. It's disheartening to see your emails land in spam despite all the effort and time you've invested in creating a compelling email. But is there nothing you can do to help it?
Well, you can! Email deliverability is affected by multiple factors and you can increase the same by improving upon the factors.
This guide will equip you with 12 proven strategies to increase your email deliverability and increase the chances of your messages landing in your audience's inbox. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or just starting out, these tips will set you on the path to better results.
How to increase your email deliverability
Here is a list of the 12 most effective ways to help you increase your email deliverability.
1. Authenticate your emails with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
A strong email infrastructure begins with proper authentication of your sender domain and messages. Email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC help verify that your emails are sent from authorized sources, ensuring they’re legitimate and trustworthy.
By implementing these protocols, you reduce the risk of emails being flagged as spam or getting marked as suspicious. This not only improves your chances of landing in your subscribers’ inboxes but also safeguards your domain against phishing or spoofing attempts.
How does it increase email deliverability:
Authentication builds trust between your domain and recipient servers. Verified emails are less likely to be marked as spam, resulting in better deliverability rates. Additionally, consistent use of authentication protocols enhances your domain's credibility, making recipient servers more likely to accept your messages in the future.
There are different methods through which you can authenticate your email:
Sender Policy Framework (SPF): SPF allows domain owners to specify authorized mail servers for sending emails on their behalf by publishing an SPF record in the DNS.
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM): DKIM uses cryptographic signatures to verify the integrity and authenticity of an email. The signature is created using a private key and verified with a public key published in the sender's domain DNS.
Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC): DMARC builds on SPF and DKIM, allowing domain owners to specify how unauthenticated messages should be handled and providing reporting capabilities for abuse detection.
2. Warmup your IP and domain
When using a new IP address or domain for sending email campaigns, it’s critical to warm them up. Warming up an IP or domain means gradually increasing the volume of emails sent from that IP or domain over time to build a positive reputation with Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
Start by sending emails to your most active and engaged users, as their high interaction rates (e.g., opens and clicks) help demonstrate the legitimacy and relevance of your emails. Over the course of several days or weeks, incrementally increase the number of emails you send.
By following a structured warm-up plan, you can minimize the risk of deliverability issues and ensure that your IP starts with a strong reputation.
Note: While IP warm-up focuses on the sending IP address, domain warm-up is a separate but related process used to build the reputation of a new or inactive domain.
How does it increase email deliverability:
Gradually building the reputation of a new IP address helps establish trust with ISPs, preventing them from flagging bulk emails as suspicious. Sending emails initially to highly engaged users signals positive activity to ISPs, which enhances the IP's reputation and improves deliverability.
"An IP reputation is hard to build, easy to lose, and hard to regain. Therefore, ensuring you are sending the best emails before they are sent will limit the damage caused, and monitoring, post-send, will allow fine-tuning — and it will allow you to know when further action needs to be taken to protect or improve your IP status." says Rob Pellow, digital experience director at Armadillo.
3. Regularly monitor sender reputation
A good sender reputation (or sender score) is critical for email deliverability. It reflects how trustworthy your emails appear to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and directly impacts whether your emails reach inboxes or are flagged as spam.
Key factors affecting your sender reputation include:
Spam complaints: The number of users marking your emails as spam, as well as instances where your emails are flagged by ISPs.
Bounce rate: The percentage of emails that fail to deliver due to invalid addresses or other issues.
Domain reputation: The trustworthiness of your sending domain based on past activity.
How does it increase email deliverability:
Regular monitoring of your sender reputation allows you to detect potential issues before they affect your email deliverability. You can then take the steps required to fix those issues.
4. Proactively monitor blacklists
If your IP or domain gets blacklisted, it can severely impact your email deliverability. To prevent this, implement a robust monitoring system to keep a check if your IP or domain gets blacklisted. Automated tools and alerts can notify you immediately if your IP or domain is flagged, allowing you to take swift corrective action.
For instance, Mailmodo provides automated reports to identify sender reputation issues. It also guides users through the process of resolving blacklist incidents by contacting blacklisting services and addressing the underlying problems, such as spam complaints or invalid email lists.
How does it increase email deliverability:
Monitoring blacklists allows you to check if your domain or IP has been blacklisted. This enables you to take proactive steps, such as reaching out to the necessary authorities to get your IP or domain whitelisted, thereby maintaining trust with mailbox providers and improving email deliverability.
5. Use double opt-in
In case of a double opt-in, the users who sign up receive a confirmation email with a verification link. Their subscription is finalized only after they click the confirmation link. This step guarantees that the email address is valid and that the subscriber intends to receive your emails, increasing engagement rates and reducing the likelihood of complaints or spam reports.
By maintaining a clean and engaged email list through double opt-in, ISPs perceive your domain as trustworthy, which improves your sender reputation and ensures higher inbox placement.
How does it increase email deliverability:
Double opt-in ensures that only genuinely interested users subscribe to your email list by requiring them to verify their email addresses after signing up. This process not only validates the authenticity of the email addresses but also filters out incorrect or fake signups, reducing bounce rates and improving overall deliverability.
6. Make it easy to unsubscribe
According to email sender guidelines put forward by Yahoo and Google, it is essential to include a clearly visible unsubscribe link in every email. The link should be easy to find and use, providing recipients with a simple, one-click opt-out process, in line with best practices and industry requirements, including Google's mandate for an unsubscribe button.
As suggested by them, the link should be easy to find and use, ensuring a simple, one-click opt-out process for your recipients.
How does it increase email deliverability:
When subscribers can easily unsubscribe, they are less likely to flag your emails as spam. This not only helps to preserve your sender reputation but also signals to ISPs that your email practices are compliant and user-friendly. As a result, you improve your chances of staying in recipients' inboxes rather than being marked as spam.
7. Optimize your content to pass spam filters
Spam filters assess your email's content, structure, and metadata to determine whether your message is spam or not. They look for common signs such as overly promotional language, excessive use of special characters, and unusual formatting, which are often associated with unsolicited emails or scams. For example, phrases like "Claim your discount NOW!" or "100% FREE" tend to raise red flags for spam filters.
Practices to avoid:
- Spam trigger words:
"Claim your discount NOW!"
"Act immediately"
"Jackpot"
"100% FREE"
"For only XXX amount"
- Formatting issues:
Avoid excessive use of special characters like !, $, or >, especially in subject lines.
Refrain from writing in ALL CAPS, as it can appear aggressive and unprofessional.
Avoid using exaggerated symbols or numbers such as "777", "$$$", or "0% risk".
Best practices:
Use clear, concise, and professional language.
Avoid deceptive tactics or overly promotional terms.
Ensure your emails are well-structured, with proper HTML formatting.
How does it increase email deliverability:
Spam filters use advanced algorithms and heuristics to evaluate email content, looking for patterns and keywords typically linked to spam or fraudulent messages. By steering clear of these "spammy" words and practices, your emails are more likely to pass through these filters and reach the recipient’s inbox, improving your deliverability.
8. Never use purchased email lists
Buying email lists might seem the easiest way to get leads. But, purchased email lists often consist of unverified, outdated, or uninterested recipients. Sending emails to such lists results in high bounce rates, low engagement, and increased spam complaints. This damages your sender reputation and reduces deliverability. Additionally, using purchased lists violates data protection laws, exposing you to potential legal penalties. Without consent from recipients, all your emails are technically spam.
Legal and reputational implications:
Using purchased email lists can lead to non-compliance with strict regulations, such as:
General data protection regulation (GDPR): Requires explicit consent from recipients for email communications. Violating this can result in substantial fines and legal action.
CAN-SPAM act (USA): Prohibits sending commercial emails to recipients without prior permission and imposes penalties for non-compliance.
Canadian anti-spam legislation (CASL): Requires consent for sending commercial emails and mandates proper email list management.
How does it increase email deliverability:
When you’re not purchasing an email list and building it from scratch instead, your list consists of people who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer. This translates to your emails getting more engagement which signals to the ISPs that your emails are relevant and they make sure that your emails reach the recipients.
So, be good email marketers and create your email list using the right practices. Check out our email list guide to grow your list today!
Focus on building an organic email list using ethical practices, such as:
Offering valuable resources (e.g., guides, ebooks) in exchange for email sign-ups.
Using website forms to capture genuine interest.
Encouraging referrals from existing subscribers.
9. Clean your lists regularly
One of the best ways to ensure a clean and active email list is by introducing a welcome email series. This series engages new subscribers from the start and serves as an effective email validation tool. When subscribers interact with the welcome emails, it confirms their email addresses are valid and active.
However, if an email bounces, it’s essential to promptly filter it out or add it to your suppression list to avoid repeated delivery attempts to invalid addresses.
Over time, some subscribers may stop engaging with your emails, or their email addresses might change due to job transitions or other external factors. Therefore, periodically cleaning your email list and removing such inactive or invalid email addresses is critical for maintaining a healthy deliverability rate.
Here are a few best practices to maintain email list hygiene:
Remove invalid and bounced emails: Regularly identify and delete hard-bounced email addresses from your list.
Maintain a suppression list: Include users who have unsubscribed, become inactive, or stopped engaging with your emails.
Implement a sunset policy: Define criteria to phase out inactive users and ensure your list remains engaged and relevant.
How does it increase email deliverability:
Regularly cleaning your email lists ensures that you’re sending emails to engaged, active subscribers, reducing bounce rates and the likelihood of spam complaints. By targeting subscribers who are genuinely interested in your content, you increase engagement rates, such as opens and clicks.
Higher engagement signals to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that your emails are relevant and trustworthy, improving the chances of your emails landing in the recipients' inboxes instead of being marked as spam.
10. Segment your email list
You must engage your subscribers with relevant and valuable content to improve deliverability. No one wants to receive a generic, impersonal email that feels irrelevant. That’s why it’s important to segment your email subscribers based on various criteria. Some common criterias are:
Demography: Gender, age, ethnicity, occupation
Geography: Country, city, pincode
Behavioural data: Past interactions, engagement level
Stage in buyer's journey: Awareness, consideration, or decision-making
Lifecycle stage: New or existing customers, frequent buyers, loyal customers
How does it increase email deliverability:
A segmented email is more targeted and resonates with the recipient. When you make an effort and go the extra mile, it gets reflected in your email's performance. Besides, when you combine segmentation with personalization, you'll see a tremendous increase in email engagement boosting your deliverability rate and hence, brand name.
11. Maintain a consistent sending frequency and schedule
You need to make a consistent schedule for sending your email with the right frequency and timing so that people don't ignore your email.
Choosing the right time and day is essential based on industry, email campaign type, and your receipt's interaction behaviours.
Brevo research suggests the following day and timing across different industries for sending emails.
| Industry | Best day to send emails for higher clicks | Best time to send emails |
|---|---|---|
| Ecommerce | Wednesday | 10:00 AM |
| Software/SaaS | Wednesday | 2:00 – 3:00 PM |
| Marketing Services | Wednesday | 4:00 PM |
| Offline Retail/Hospitality | Thursday | 8:00 – 10:00 AM |
| Professional Services (B2B) | Tuesday | 8:00 – 10:00 AM |
| NGOs (Nonprofits) | Tuesday or Wednesday | 3:00 – 4:00 PM |
How does it increase email deliverability:
In addition to timing, maintaining a consistent email frequency helps improve deliverability by preventing sudden spikes in volume. Gradually increasing your email volume signals to ISPs that your emails are trustworthy and consistent. Learn how Project Pro boosted their open rates by 3X through better email deliverability practices.
12. Monitor performance metrics regularly and fix issues
Regularly monitor key email metrics like open rates, click-through rates (CTR), bounce rates, unsubscribe rates, spam complaints, and conversion rates.
How does it increase email deliverability:
By measuring key metrics, you can identify which campaigns are performing well and double down on those strategies while discontinuing or optimizing the ones that aren't working. Regularly analyzing campaign performance allows you to refine your content, timing, and targeting for better engagement. Higher engagement—such as increased open and click-through rates—signals to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that your emails are valuable and relevant, leading to improved deliverability.
Final takeaway
These are some ways to increase your email deliverability and build a superior email marketing funnel.
If you want to learn more about email deliverability, feel free to reach out to the Mailmodo team. At Mailmodo, we ensure that our users get the best deliverability and send highly converting email campaigns. The use of interactive emails makes the emails more engaging, which creates more users responding via clicks and form submissions, increasing the email deliverability.
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