Even companies that invest seriously in email marketing — launching global campaigns for upselling and customer retention — often overlook important factors that can make or break their efforts.
How does email delivery impact businesses, and what steps can you take to ensure your emails actually reach your customers?
Email Delivery vs. Deliverability
In the US alone, 9.7 billion emails are sent out every day, so it’s important to understand the basics. Before diving headfirst into the topic, let’s clarify the difference between email delivery and deliverability.
Email delivery is about whether your email makes it to the recipient’s server. Think of it as the technical handshake — your email gets a “yes” or “no” from the server.
Most tools may test email delivery, and there is no best tool for every need. It all depends on your requirements, budget, and likes. To choose the most suitable tool for your business, try comparing different email marketing tools.
Email deliverability is about making sure your email lands in the recipient’s inbox, not their spam folder. It’s the difference between being seen and being ignored and left out somewhere in the junk folder. Deliverability should be monitored for every email account and even campaign. Still, tons of free or paid tools test emails for deliverability and even offer ways to improve it.
In short, delivery ensures your emails are sent; deliverability ensures they are read. Both things are important, have specific tools that test them and deserve separate articles, but we cover email delivery in this article.
Hidden Costs of Poor Email Delivery
Delivery can wreak havoc on your marketing efforts and contribute to substantial, often overlooked costs. Let’s start with the main things that suffer when your email delivery is poor.
Lost Revenue
The most direct and impactful consequence of poor email delivery is lost revenue. If your emails aren’t reaching your customers, you are missing out on potential sales and engagement opportunities.
Additionally, consider the operational costs: the salaries of the email marketing specialist, designer, and copywriter who work on every email campaign. All that effort and money go down the drain when emails don’t get delivered.
Damaged Sender Reputation
When your emails frequently bounce back or get marked as spam, it can hurt your sender reputation. The consequences here may be increased spam complaints (when users mark your emails as spam, it severely impacts your reputation) and even ISP blocking (Internet Service Providers (ISPs) might completely block your emails if they notice a high volume of undelivered messages.)
A poor sender reputation creates a vicious cycle in which fewer and fewer of your emails get delivered, amplifying your losses over time. Tools like Sender Score and Google’s Postmaster Tools can help monitor your sender’s reputation and take correct actions.
Increased Operational Costs
Poor email delivery isn’t just an inconvenience; it can force you to pour extra resources into fixing issues, analyzing data, and coming up with new strategies. There are two most popular examples of added costs:
- Monitoring and Testing: Using tools and services to test email for delivery can add to your expenses. For instance, subscribing to a comprehensive email testing platform might cost $500 to $1,000 annually.
- Consultant Fees: Hiring specialists to troubleshoot and resolve delivery problems can really hit the marketing budget. Imagine a consultant charging $100 per hour and taking 20 hours to fix a complex issue — that’s $2,000 right there.
When email delivery drops the ball, your bottom line takes a hit from increased operational costs and diverted resources.
Inaccuracies in Data Analytics
When your emails don’t get delivered, it throws a wrench in your data analytics, leading to misguided strategies and poor decisions.
Undelivered emails can drastically skew your open and click-through rates, giving you an inaccurate picture of campaign performance. You might think your emails are underperforming due to low open rates when, in reality, many emails never reached your audience.
Also, faulty data can mess up your customer segmentation, resulting in poorly targeted email campaigns. Picture this: you’re sending promos to people who aren’t interested because your segmentation data is off; that’s a lot of wasted effort and missed opportunities.
When email delivery issues lurk in the shadows, your engagement metrics, and entire data-driven strategy can take a nosedive, leading to wasted resources and missed chances to connect with your audience.
Compliance Risks
When emails fail to deliver, you run the risk of violating data privacy regulations, which can lead to severe repercussions:
- GDPR Violations: Failing to keep your email lists up-to-date could breach data protection laws, resulting in hefty fines.
- CAN-SPAM Act Non-compliance: Sending emails to outdated or inactive addresses can lead to legal penalties and fines.
When your email delivery is off, it’s not just about missed opportunities; it’s about keeping your business in the clear legally.
Operational Inefficiencies
Undelivered emails can pile on extra work for your team and lead to operational inefficiencies like:
- Customer Support Overload: When transactional emails don’t reach customers, your support team gets swamped with inquiries, stretching resources thin. Imagine your team spending hours answering “Where’s my order?” instead of helping customers with real issues.
- Administrative Burden: Extra time spent solving delivery issues means less time for productive tasks, dragging down overall efficiency. For example, your marketing team might spend days troubleshooting email problems instead of crafting new campaigns and effective SEO content to drive more engagement.
What Causes Poor Email Delivery? 8 Main Reasons
The first step in improving your email delivery is to understand why your emails aren’t reaching their intended recipients.
Here are some common culprits behind poor email delivery:
1. Invalid or Outdated Email Addresses
We’ve all been there — sending an email only to find out it bounced back. This often happens because the email address is either invalid or outdated. Common reasons include:
- Typos: Those little slip-ups during data entry.
- Inactive Accounts: People change email addresses, leaving old ones to gather digital dust.
- Unverified Addresses: Sometimes we forget to verify if the email addresses we’re collecting are valid.
The solution? Regularly verify email adresses that are in your mailing lists. Even if all the emails in the list passed the verification month ago, things may change, so it’s important to do verifications regularly.
2. High Bounce Rates
Seeing a high bounce rate can feel like a punch to the gut. It’s a sign that something’s off, and here’s why it happens:
- Hard Bounces: These are the bad boys of email delivery — permanent failures due to non-existent addresses.
- Soft Bounces: Think of these as temporary roadblocks like a full inbox or a server issue.
The solution? Keeping an eye on bounce rates and removing problematic addresses can save you a lot of headaches.
3. Spam Filters
Spam filters are the bouncers of the email world, and they’re strict. Here’s why they might block your emails:
- Spammy Content: Words like “free” (or worse “FREE”) or “guarantee” can raise red flags.
- Poor HTML Formatting: Messy code can look suspicious and get you flagged.
- Missing Unsubscribe Links: Legit emails always include a way to opt-out — this is law.
The solution? It helps to keep a checklist of things that can provoke spam filters and avoid making these mistakes.
4. Blacklisted IP Addresses
The IP you send from may be blacklisted. Here’s why it could happen:
- Past Spam Activity: Either you or someone else using the same IP might have spammed before.
- High Complaint Rates: Too many recipients marking your emails as spam.
The solution? Regularly monitoring your sender reputation can help keep your IP off blacklists.
How to check if you’re blacklisted? The easiest way is to use free online tools to learn if your IP or domain is blacklisted. Sites like MXToolbox, Spamhaus, and MultiRBL are good places to start.
Also, pay attention to bounce back messages in your emails. They often contain specific codes or messages indicating blacklisting issues. And finally, many reputable ESPs provide tools and alerts to notify you of any blacklisting issues.
5. Poor Sender Reputation
Your sender reputation is like your credit score in the email world. A bad score can really hurt you. Factors that can tarnish it include:
- Low Engagement Rates: If people aren’t opening or interacting with your emails. In fact, responsive emails are one of the trends of email marketing in 2024 important to keep up with.
- Frequent Complaints: Multiple spam reports can ding your reputation.
- Inconsistent Sending Practices: Erratic sending patterns can look shady.
The solution? Maintain a clean email list and engage your audience with relevant, high-quality content to boost open and click rates.
Ensure consistent sending practices and use email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to build trust with ISPs. Monitor your sender reputation regularly to catch and fix issues early.
6. Large Attachments
Big files can be a big problem. When your email has overly large attachments, servers might reject it. Here’s how to avoid this:
- Link to Files: Provide a download link instead of attaching large files.
- Compress Files: Use compression tools to make files smaller.
The solution? Keeping attachments light can help ensure your emails get through.
7. Misconfigured Email Server Settings
Technical glitches can mess things up and misconfigured email server settings can disrupt delivery:
- Missing DNS Records: Ensure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are set up correctly.
- Wrong Email Protocols: Incorrect SMTP settings can block sending.
The solution? Double-checking settings can prevent these issues.
8. Throttling by ESPs
Ever felt like your emails are stuck in slow motion? That might be throttling by email service providers (ESPs). Causes include:
- High Volume Sends: Blasting out too many emails at once. Pacing your sends and maintaining a steady volume can help keep throttling at bay.
- Unusual Patterns: Sudden spikes in email volume can look suspicious.
The solution? Control the number of accounts you send your campaigns to (if you have a huge mailing list, try segmenting it and sending out the campaign on separate days). Also, keep an eye on the volume of emails you send overall from your company’s account.
Conclusion
Poor email delivery isn’t just a technical hiccup — it’s a business risk that can tarnish your reputation, skew your data, and lead to significant financial losses.
But there’s good news: several ways to improve email delivery and set your business up for greater success.
Remember, email delivery isn’t just about getting your message across; it’s about protecting the very foundation of your email marketing strategy. Make sure your emails aren’t just sent, but seen and engaged with.
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