Email marketing is dead. Or is it? The proliferation of spam and the increasing efficacy of spam blockers are an issue. Deliverability is a concern if your marketing strategy includes sending out regular campaigns to a mailing list. Facebook and Twitter are competition for newsreaders, email programs, advertising, and even online search.
So, should you be doing email marketing and what sort of future does it have, competing against social platforms? Here’s the lowdown: it’s all about improving email deliverability!
The Numbers (of Email Accounts) Have It
You can’t keep a good thing down. Regardless of the social media growth rate, email still boasted more than 5.5 billion accounts in May 2019. The numbers are still increasing.
Email is the mainstay of online communication, with 62% of adults using it daily to send or receive messages.
Staying Out of the Spam Folder
Landing in the spam folder is the biggest threat to deliverability faced by email campaigns. New filtering technologies use a range of identifiers to unmask promotional emails and send them to the junk box. Slip up on one or more of the best practices, and you’re wasting your time. So get expert help. Email marketing is not an area that you should be DIY-ing in.
Using the Right Language
Using the right language in your subject line and content is the most important aspect of deliverability. The right language means:
- Avoiding words such as free, hot, bargain, discount, and easy. See HubSpot’s full list of spam trigger words here
- Creating quality content that passes the strictest spam filters
- Writing messages that recipients want to read, so they don’t delete without opening
- Including a unique and interesting subject line that’s specific, personalized and short
- Using just enough images: email without images is boring, while too many images could trigger the spam filter
Building Your Inbox Cred
Credibility in the email marketing environment relies heavily on what users think of your communications. If too many subscribers don’t open your campaigns, the algorithms can conclude that you’re sending unwanted material. Not only will the emails end up in the junk folder, but your IP address could be black-listed.
Improve your deliverability by encouraging your recipients to add you to their Safe Senders list. Practice good mailing list hygiene and regularly clean up your lists by removing bounced email addresses. Use the right calls to action, preferably in an image format, so the sales tone of the call-to-action copy doesn’t set off the spam filters.
Prophets of doom have been predicting that spam will win the war for a while, and social media pundits gleefully embrace every new option as the next big thing. Email can still work for your business marketing, however, as long as you keep your head and follow these protocols.
