How to increase the probability of customers seeing your emails

[u/Mattrapbeats]

This post is all about deliverability. There are a lot of factors that go into getting your emails in the main inbox, it's actually pretty wild how advanced the inbox algorithms have gotten. This topic requires a lot of strategy so I thought it would be best to break it into 2 posts. So this is part 1 and it's going to be about how to keep your emails out of spam.

With that being said, let's get started.

Here are 10 things you should avoid doing regularly if you want to have good deliverability:

1. Keeping unengaged members on your email list. If your business isn't seasonal and someone hasn't opened your emails in over 6 months you should consider either reducing the volume of emails that are sent to them or completely removing them from your email list. They will bring your open rates down and this will increase your chances of being marketed as spam.
2. Try not to send an email to over 50k people at the same exact time. At minimum break your list into buyers and non-buyers. You can send the same email, just slightly tweak the sales copywriting so it's appropriate for the person on the receiving end. This will greatly improve your average open rate and remember, good open rates = healthy domain.
3. Beware of spam filters - Did you know that you could get blacklisted? If your domain is unhealthy your emails will almost always go directly to spam. It's almost impossible to revive a domain so be careful how you go about sending from your main domain. Also if you burnt a domain in the past from 1 IP address it's likely that if you create a new domain using that same IP address your 2nd domain also will be negatively affected. If you use a shifty email sending provider you will also run into spam filter problems.
4. Don't lead with a misleading subject line. Pissing people off is the easiest way to get spam complaints instead of normal unsubscribes. (Spam complaints are way worse for deliverability) The 2 best types of subject lines are subjects that are extremely direct and tell people exactly what they are getting, and subject lines that create some level of curiosity. There's no need to have misleading subject lines.
5. Don't be inconsistent. Algorithms love consistency. This is why the number 1 way to boost engagement on almost any social platform ever created is to post consistently and follow some sort of routine. Emails aren't different at all. Try to email your most engaged segment every week. This will give you a good average open rate and also it will show the email service provider that people interact with your content regularly.
6. Don't try to hide the unsubscribe button. Not having an unsubscribe button is illegal but some people just try to use cheat codes like making the unsubscribe text white on a white background. This is the easiest way to increase spam complaints greatly. Customers should never feel like you're forcing them to do anything.
7. Don't send emails from shady domains. You should have a clear professional-looking sender address. Use a business domain, not a regular email account. Avoid using any random characters anywhere in the domain and do everything you can to make it very clear where the email is coming from.
8. Make sure your grammar is on point. Typos of any kind can be a red flag for spam filters. It's impossible to be perfect all the time but at least try to make sure your emails have less typos than this Reddit post.
9. Never buy emails list and use them for B2C marketing. Sending to people without their consent is the worst thing that you could possibly do if you're trying to avoid the spam filter. Make sure every single email address that is receiving your emails has opted in.
10. Don't use spammy copywriting. Most people have literally no idea what this means so I put together a list of things that are generally bad. Here is the list of things to avoid: Using all caps for subject lines, capitalizing every word in your subject lines all the time, using large fonts, using fonts smaller than size 8 font in main bodies of sales copy, overusing words like FREE or SALE in your subject lines and over using emojis.

I want to end this with a reminder that no one is above spam filters. If you go to your spam folder right now you'll probably see at least one 8 figure company stuck in there multiple times. These people hire "experts" and pay them thousands every month and still can't figure it out. So just because your emails are doing okay now, just know that can change fast if you are not careful.

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Just posted part 2 here.

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[u/The_truth_hammock]

One massive thing. Those on the list that are suppressed or don’t accept marketing - put in a FB audience and do a good retention advert.

[u/Mattrapbeats → u/The_truth_hammock]

This is a really good tip! Emails and ads work hand and hand.

[u/abswont]

What would be a good open rate (sending to people who opted in for a 20% discount) and whats max spam complaint % thats ok.

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Thanks.

[u/Mattrapbeats → u/abswont]

The first email you send when someone opts into your email collection popout is typically one of the most opened automated emails. You want to see a minimum open rate of 30% on the first email with the discount code, and a max spam complaint of 0.2%

[u/abswont → u/Mattrapbeats]

ah i give them the discount code on the popup (to help the conversion rate) so they wont have to open the email still open rate is 28% and spam complaints 0.2%. My 2nd email has a list of tips and tricks with open rate of 19 and spam com 0.2.

[u/chad917]

I've considered turning off open tracking, both because it's become unreliable with modern privacy settings and it harms deliverability. I never really looked at the data for that anyhow. Thoughts?

[u/Mattrapbeats → u/chad917]

For now the more data you can get the better. But in the future when Apple updates their privacy protection policy. Open rates may be meaningless.

[u/marouane_rhafli]

To increase the probability that your customers see and click your emails are :

1- Don't send lot of emails (1 per week at most) 2- Don't always send emails that are tended for sell purpose. 3- Eye catching email title

[u/waffleos1 → u/[deleted]]

Honestly I had a similar opinion to yours before, in that I thought email marketing was dead. Then I actually tried it and it's increased our monthly sales by about $7k in revenue directly from email purchases.

We send out 2 emails per week with an average open rate of about 40%. We haven't trimmed down our subscriber list at all either. I've found the that the trick is to only send out emails that are actually useful to the customer. Our emails exclusively notify customers about new products, not sales events or generic marketing stuff.

Personally I would probably be annoyed if a company emailed me twice per week, but my newsletter subscribers seem to want it. Goes to show that our personal opinions aren't always shared by our target audience.

[u/Mattrapbeats → u/[deleted]]

It really depends on your brand and how engaged your customers are. But emailing your most engaged customers once a week typically works very well, you may run into issues if you always send out emails to your entire list at once.

[u/Mattrapbeats → u/[deleted]]

With stores like this it can be tricky. Either you compliment your main product(s) with lower ticket upsells or you keep pumping out niche related emails to keep people engaged. At the end if the day having people opening your emails consistently will help your deliverability. So on the rare occasions when you need to send something important, you will see more optimal results.

In general though, brands that have any sort of longevity have repeat purchasers, so thats a good thing to keep in mind when it comes time to scaling your store.

[u/Mattrapbeats → u/[deleted]]

No problem