Mastering Email Engagement: Email Deliverability Series Part II

Ensuring emails reach your target audience is crucial for successful holiday campaigns. This is why it’s so important to understand how ISPs evaluate whether emails should go to the inbox or spam folder.

This blog post introduces the actions that ISPs consider when evaluating whether you’re a good or bad sender and presents three warning signs that suggest you might be having a deliverability issue.

• Positive email engagement actions include opening, clicking, and forwarding.
• Negative email engagement actions include marking messages as spam, ignoring emails, and deleting them without reading.
• The three warning signs that you might be having a deliverability issue are sudden drops in unique opens while delivery rates remain consistently strong, high bounce and block rates, and an increase in deferral rates.

The importance of masterful deliverability

In our first blog in this series on Email Deliverability for Holiday Campaign Success, we discussed why deliverability—rather than delivery—is such an important metric for marketers. We also discussed factors affecting deliverability and the benefits of fixing a faltering strategy.

In today’s installment, we highlight the actions that indicate positive or negative engagement and present three warning signs of a potential deliverability issue.

Actions that reflect positive email engagement

ISPs track recipient actions to gauge your credibility as a sender as well as your audience understanding. When an ISP notes positive engagement actions, it is seen as a reflection of healthy interaction, reinforcing trust in you as a sender.

Ultimately, these actions have the power to drive a positive lift in engagement and increase the percentage of messages that will be delivered to the inbox.

Positive email engagement actions include:

• Opening an email
• Clicking an email
• Moving the message from spam to inbox
• Prioritizing the sender
• Replying to or forwarding the email
• Adding you to the contacts list

Actions that reflect positive email engagement

Actions that reflect negative email engagement

While certain subscriber actions enhance email deliverability, others can negatively impact it. Knowing which actions hurt your sender reputation helps optimize deliverability and ensure emails reach recipients.

Negative email engagement actions include:

• Marking the message as spam
• Leaving it in the spam folder
• Ignoring an email
• Deleting without reading it

Actions that reflect negative email engagement

Is opting out a bad thing?

In the list above, we didn’t include 'opting out' because unsubscribing isn't considered a negative engagement. While opting out may reduce your database size, it’s far preferable to being ignored or marked as spam.

The journey to getting blocked

When marketers fail to adhere to best practices, ISPs may ultimately block their emails entirely, preventing delivery to recipients.

The journey to getting blocked

| | | | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | SMPT errors  You’ve been repeatedly sending emails to blocked addresses without properly suppressing them, as based on SMTP errors. | -> | Open rates  Delivery rates remain flat and consistent, but you begin to notice a decline in unique open rates. | -> | Deferrals When delivery and unique open rates exceed 100%, ISPs start throttling deliveries from your domain or IP. | | -> | Blocklist  You have been placed on a global blocklist after sending to a spam trap or malicious address. | -> | ISP Blocklist  Global delivery rates significantly low? Your delivery rates at < 5% daily with a specific mailbox provider? You've been blocked. | |

The 3 warning signs of a potential issue

Several warning signs may precede an email block. Here are three that every marketer should be aware of:

1. The numbers don’t add up: Since there is a direct correlation between messages sent and daily unique opens, a sudden drop or downward trend in unique opens while delivery rates remain consistently strong, likely indicates a deliverability issue.
2. High bounce rates and blocked users: If you haven’t cleaned your database, you may experience a high volume of bounces and blocked users, which ISPs view as a suspicious sending pattern. Consequently, they may delay delivery, and if the issues persist, they may outright block your emails.
3. An increase in deferral rates: Reflects concerns that the ISP is having due to high bounce rates, inactive email addresses, or spam-like behavior. It is crucial, therefore, for marketers to address the issue quickly if they are to maintain sender reputation.

Additional signs can be found in error reports, which provide valuable insights from ISPs about delivery issues. Analyzing this data helps marketers identify root causes and address problems.

In Summary

Recognizing positive and negative email engagement actions enables marketers to proactively improve their sender reputation with ISPs and enhance deliverability.

Understanding the three warning signs of an email deliverability issue and reviewing error reports allows them to take action before emails are blocked.

These steps are essential for boosting email performance and maximizing campaign impact.

Stay tuned for our next post, in which we’ll share field-proven deliverability best practices.

In the meantime, to learn how Optimove can help you improve deliverability rates and increase engagement, contact us to request a demo.