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July 31, 2024
Understanding Email Deliverability in B2B Cold Emailing: A Comprehensive Guide for 2024
Email deliverability is the rate at which emails are received by inboxes. When emails are sent they undergo various filters and permissions before getting to their respective receivers. This ensures no harmful emails reach people.
Understanding email deliverability is important because B2B cold emailing is one of the main sources of lead generation. It’s also one of the main ways prospects communicate with salespeople. According to Notta, 80 percent of prospects prefer talking over email.
Why is Email Deliverability Important?
Email deliverability is important because it directly impacts the success of your cold emailing campaigns. High email deliverability ensures that your messages reach the intended audience. It’s also a way to increase sales engagement metrics.
Additionally, it also helps maintain a positive sender reputation, which is crucial for long-term cold emailing success. According to data from ClearVoice, 66 percent of buyers prefer to be contacted via email. By focusing on improving email deliverability, you can maximize the effectiveness of your email campaigns and achieve better results.
What is a Good Email Deliverability Rate?
A good email deliverability rate is around 83 to 89 percent. These percentages are the average email deliverability rate. Anything over 90 percent is considered an excellent rate. A good email deliverability rate is achievable through a variety of factors.
Cold emailing campaigns are usually done through Google or Microsoft Mailbox. You can use a tool like Clevenio to integrate its IP to improve your email deliverability.
Factors That Affect Email Deliverability
The factors that affect email deliverability vary from email bounce rates to your technical setup. These components contribute to the effectiveness of sending emails and ensuring that they’re delivered to the right receivers.
Email Bounce Rate
An email bounce rate is the number of email addresses in your list that did not receive your message. There are two types of email bounce rates, these are hard and soft bounces.
Monitoring your email bounce rate is important because it can impact your sender reputation and deliverability. A high bounce rate can indicate issues with your email list hygiene or targeting. These issues need to be addressed to improve your email marketing performance.
Hard Bounce: This occurs when an email is not delivered due to a permanent issue such as an invalid email address or a non-existent domain. These emails are removed from your subscriber list.
Soft Bounce: This occurs when an email is not delivered due to temporary issues such as a full inbox or a server issue. These are typically redelivered to the receiver.
Email Content
Personalization and uniqueness are key components in ensuring that receivers are getting their emails. You have to make sure that your email doesn’t contain any spam words that may trigger any filters.
Furthermore, keep the email simple and easy to read. Email copywriting is important when making B2B emails, so you have to establish a straightforward email template for your prospects.
Spam Filters
A spam filter is a tool that sifts and detects unwanted and potentially harmful emails from entering someone’s inbox. It analyzes emails based on criteria like sender reputation, content, and attached links. Moreover, once the filter recognizes spam, it’s blocked or sent to the receiver’s spam folder.
Tips for Improving Email Deliverability
Here are tips to improve your email deliverability. These tips allow you to scale your email marketing and help prevent any issues moving forward.
Optimize Email Content
When you create content, optimize it to ensure high-quality emails are sent to your list. You can create personalized and targeted emails that provide valuable insight and offers. Furthermore, you should avoid trigger words that are usually associated with spam. Instead, provide crucial information and clear call-to-actions (CTAs) to stand out.
Improve Sender Reputation
Sender reputation or sender score is the rate email providers give based on several factors. These factors include receivers reporting your emails as spam, high bounce rates, or low-quality content.
Domain Name System (DNS) Record
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a decentralized system that translates human-readable domain names into IP addresses. This system allows computers to identify each other on the network. DNS makes it easier for us to access websites and other online services without needing to remember a series of numbers for each destination.
You need an appropriate DNS to ensure that you have high email deliverability rates. Since emails undergo various authentications and filters, a strong DNS can create authority in your campaigns.
Types of Email Authentication
There are three types of email authentication that you need to know to achieve high percentages of email deliverability. These protocols allow you to increase your authoritativeness and sender reputation.
Sender Policy Framework (SPF)
Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email authentication protocol that allows you to specify which mail providers (MPs) have the authority to send emails on behalf of their domain. SPF helps prevent spoofing, scamming, and phishing.
SPF allows the receiver’s mail provider to check and see if the incoming email is from a legitimate source. Implementing SPF helps businesses protect their domain from bad actors. It also increases the sender reputation and the email deliverability of your domain.
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is an email authentication protocol that allows a business to add a digital signature to an email. This certifies that the email was sent from an authorized source.
When DKIM is active, it improves your email deliverability because it provides you with the needed authenticity to get through spam filters. It also helps prevent email spoofing where an attacker tries to send emails by pretending to be an authoritative domain.
Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC)
Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) is an email authentication policy and reporting protocol that indicates that emails are using SPF and DKIM. This increases the authority of domains using DMARC because it tells the receiver that the email is from a high-quality source.
Furthermore, DMARC helps prevent spoofing and phishing attacks by allowing senders to specify how messages are handled if they fail authentication checks. It also provides visibility into how recipients are handling their emails.
What is the ISP Filtering Criteria?
The ISP filtering criteria are sender reputation, engagement metrics, URL reputation, and user feedback. These metrics allow ISPs and MPs to filter incoming email and remove spam and potential viruses.
Moreover, the filtering criteria operate through different techniques to ensure that only quality emails get sent to receivers. Knowing the filtering criteria can help you curate your emails to meet the expected parameters. This can increase the chances of message deliverability. Below is a comprehensive list of the different factors ISPs take into account:
Sender Reputation
Content Filters
Engagement Metrics
Permission Filters
URL Reputation
Rule-Based Filters
User Feedback
Challenge-Response Filters
Blacklist Filters
SPF, DKIM, and DMARC Authentication
Best Tools for Checking Email Deliverability
Here are the best tools for checking email deliverability for your B2B cold email campaigns.
MX Toolbox
MX Toolbox is an online network diagnostic tool that looks into your email deliverability rates. The program is commonly used by email administrators to troubleshoot email delivery issues and improve email security.
Moreover, the tool keeps track of the following records:
SPF records
DNS MX records
DKIM records
DMARC records
The tool can also perform SMTP diagnostics to help you troubleshoot your outgoing mail. It’s a handy tool for cold emailing to ensure that your emails reach their proper audience.
GlockApps
GlockApps is an email deliverability tester and analytics platform that helps email marketers test and monitor campaigns. The software helps users optimize their email deliverability by providing insights into how emails are handled.
Furthermore, here are some of the tool’s features:
Automatic Inbox Tests
Blacklist Monitor
Email Deliverability Tests
Template Editor
DMARC Analyzer
Conclusion
Email deliverability is an important internal metric for B2B cold email campaigns. It’s one of the best ways to generate leads and nurture them. According to DemandGen’s 2022 Lead Nurturing & Acceleration Benchmark Survey Report, around 50 percent of respondents state that sales emails are the best way to cultivate working relationships with prospects.
You can create a robust domain by maintaining clean email lists, adhering to regulations, and leveraging data. Furthermore, by choosing a good email marketing software, you can curate your emailing efforts to maximize reach and revenue.
