Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to sell to clients offering returns over 40% higher than SEO and keyword advertisements, according to Oberlo. But what good is your email marketing plan if your emails aren’t landing in your customers’ and prospects’ inboxes? Here are five ways you can improve your email deliverability.
1. Use your real email address
Even if you use another service to send emails on your behalf, make sure all emails look like they’re coming from you. An easy way to do this is with a simple email domain verification process. Any email marketing service you use should be able to provide you with the information your domain registrar will need. Just ask your email marketing company for the nameserver or SPF records needed to verify the subdomain they’re using to send emails on your behalf—your IT person or website provider will be able to do the rest.
Avoid using a fake email address or a look-alike email address to send emails. This creates confusion for your customers and damages your brand reputation.
2. Write genuine subject lines
Open rates are 50% higher for emails with a personalized subject line according to research done by Yes Lifecycle Marketing. Even if you’re sending emails to a large group, write subject lines as if you were sending a message to just one person. These will feel more authentic to your recipients and be less likely to get marked as spam. Certain email providers classify emails with subject lines containing words like “free” or “discount” as spam. Instead, try asking a simple, genuine question like “Are you protected against flood damage?”
3. Send relevant emails
Before you send an email, think about who would benefit from the message you’re sending. Would you try to sell home insurance to someone who already has a homeowners policy with you? Filter out anyone who would find your email irrelevant or confusing before you send it. Doing so will help you avoid spam complaints and will increase your credibility with your customers and prospects.
4. Update your email distribution lists regularly
Keep good records of all your prospects and customers. Make collecting emails and other contact information part of your onboarding process. Ask for any updated contact information during renewals. If possible, download a list of all your invalid email addresses and make it a team effort to update them. If you receive a notice saying your email was unable to be delivered to a recipient, call or text that person to see if they’ve changed it. And if you don’t have their phone number, it’s better to stop emailing them. Sending emails to fake or invalid email addresses can damage your reputation as a sender.
5. Skip the graphics and stick with plain text
Emails with pictures consistently underperform compared to plain text emails. When comparing email click-through rates, emails that contained graphics had 51% lower click rates than those that didn’t, according to research done by HubSpot. Emails with pictures are more likely to end up in spam, so if you need to send an image, try linking to the graphic instead.
Photos in email marketing works well for some industries, such as clothing companies and other business-to-consumer retailers, but it doesn’t work well for insurance. When so many businesses are flooding their customers’ email inboxes with graphic-ridden emails, your plain text email will stick out—in a good way.