Deliverability
Get your email in check for the holidays
As the holidays approach, you’re bound to want to send more emails, but what should you consider before you send? We’ve assembled a quick tip list to double check you’re on the right track for the holiday sending season.
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As the holidays approach, senders shift into high gear, determined not to let any opportunities slip between Black Friday and the new year. From subject lines to designing the perfect holiday email templates, there are a dozen things to consider but don’t forget about your deliverability.
The holiday inbox is a competitive place and putting an emoji in your subject line may not be enough to stand out. So, here is our quick reference guide to ensure your email strategy is in top shape for the 2023 season.
Table of contents
Validate your mailing list
Grow and maintain your mailing list
Just because Santa has everyone on his list, doesn’t mean that you should. Email lists should be grown organically. This means not buying or renting email lists, or capturing emails and sending without user consent. Double opt-in practices are a really clean way to ensure that your email list is built on verified emails right from the start.
Once you have your list you should set up ways to monitor and maintain it over time. Sometimes people switch jobs, change addresses, or decide they no longer want to be subscribers, if you don’t catch these changes they could hurt you down the line. Here’s a few good ways to keep up:
Investigate any bounces. Bounces can be soft, usually network issues that correct themselves, or hard. Hard bounces will need to be resolved or those bad emails addresses removed.
It’s even more important to manage your list well now considering the upcoming mailbox provider updates from giants like Yahoo and Gmail expected in the new year. Learn more about the upcoming changes in our Gmail and Yahoo mailbox updates post.
Validate your mailing list
Email validation goes a long way to ensuring the delivery of your message. You should always validate an email address at sign up, and you can do this with Mailgun. Before you dust off a mailing list you used for last holiday season, it’s wise to validate your list again, and it's easy to do with our bulk email validations.
Validation services can help keep you out of the spam folder by checking the syntax, domain, and legitimacy of your contacts, removing bad addresses that can raise your spam complaint rate, and ensure you are sending to the optimal list of contacts.
If a spam filter is wreaking havoc on email delivery, check to make sure you’re not violating any of the national standards set forth by the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Next, try to reach your customers directly and ask that they add your domain name to their address book.
Monitor and respond to metrics
True or false: The more email “opens” you get, the better your reputation in the eyes of your Internet Service Provider (ISP).
ISPs will filter emails from senders that generate high numbers of bounce-backs, complaints and unsubscribe requests but that’s not the only thing they’re looking at. Engagement plays a huge roll in terms of your reputation in the eyes of ISPs. That’s why it’s important to only send to recipients that have opted in.
Relying on opens isn’t always the best metric. We assembled a panel for Email Camp: Mission Control to talk through this and other deliverability myths. Check it out below!
Provide useful content
In today’s digital world, we’re bombarded with emails, especially around the holidays. It takes time and data to ensure your emails are engaging. The connection starts with your ability to provide the user with something they need. Good opt-in management is the first step to relevance. You can also separate your transactional emails and your marketing emails by giving them their own subdomains and managing those lists separately.
Keep the emails about your user, not about you. Segment your users and send more personalized emails and direct users to a place where they can learn more with our post on email list segmentation!
Wrapping up
If email deliverability is a newer concept to you, you can opt to leave it to the pros. Sinch Mailgun provides Deliverability Services where real, geeky humans closely monitor your email delivery performance and help optimize your email programs for success. Especially around tricky days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
