High deliverability is critical in email marketing because it directly impacts your campaign’s success. When your emails land in your customers’ inboxes (instead of their spam folders), they’re more likely to open and click through.

Zoho offers one of the most popular and high-performing email marketing software solutions—Zoho Campaigns. The software includes an intuitive drag-and-drop campaign builder, customizable email templates, list segmentation, and powerful automation capabilities.

Zoho Campaigns also integrates seamlessly with other Zoho products and numerous third-party apps, allowing you to streamline your marketing efforts and enhance your overall business efficiency.

How to improve email deliverability in Zoho Campaigns?

Email deliverability describes the frequency with which an email message reaches its intended recipient. If a mailbox service provider rejects or blocks your email, it’s considered undeliverable.

Several factors impact email deliverability:

• Reputation of the sending domain and IP address
• Email content
• List hygiene practices
• Email authentication protocols

Gmail, Outlook, and other email providers largely determine email deliverability by analyzing sender reputation. Maintaining a positive reputation and good standing with each provider is important to ensure your emails are delivered.

Here are some best practices you can use to improve email deliverability in Zoho Campaigns:

• Use authentication protocols. As previously mentioned, implementing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC improves email deliverability. Authentication protocols don’t just improve deliverability, they also protect your domain from being taken over to use for spam, phishing, and spoofing. In other words, using authentication protocols is one of the highest-impact implementations you can make.
• Optimize your email content. Design your email content with a balanced text-to-image ratio and avoid using spam trigger words. Zoho Campaigns’ drag-and-drop editor and template builder make it easy to create visually appealing, spam-free emails. This will also improve your conversion rate, making it critical to more than just deliverability.
• Clean your mailing list regularly. Remove inactive and unengaged subscribers as well as invalid addresses. This is the easiest way to improve email deliverability—you can do it right now.
• Customize your email’s “From” name and address. Zoho Campaigns allows you to set up custom sender details, ensuring your emails look professional and credible. You can also make this update in Zoho Campaigns right now (in seconds).
• Monitor bounce rates. High bounce rates can negatively impact your reputation and delivery.
• Personalize emails with segmentation. Grouping subscribers into specific audiences helps you send emails that are relevant to each recipient.
• Monitor email activity and engagement metrics. Track open and click-through rates to ensure subscribers are engaging with your emails.
• Monitor feedback loops and complaint rates. Make sure you’re monitoring complaints from mailbox providers, as well as unsubscribe requests from users.

How to build a clean email list

A clean list helps maintain high deliverability rates, increases engagement, and reduces the likelihood of your emails being marked as spam.

Let’s look at how to build a clean email list to avoid issues with deliverability.

1. Engaging Subject Lines

Create captivating subject lines that pique your recipients’ interest and encourage them to open your emails. In general, the best subject lines are between three and five words, with no more than 50 characters.

2. Interesting Content

Develop relevant, valuable, and engaging content that resonates with your subscribers. Ensure consistent branding across your social media, website, and email campaigns for a harmonious customer experience.

3. Targeted Campaigns

Segment your email list based on demographics, interests, and past behavior to send targeted campaigns. Personalized and relevant emails keep your subscribers engaged and reduce list churn.

4. Compliance

CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL require you to adhere to specific email regulations (e.g., honoring opt-out requests). Ensure you have the necessary permission from your recipients before adding them to your list.

Include an unsubscribe link, a physical mailing address, and a clear explanation for why the recipient is receiving the email. Compliance helps maintain your sender reputation and avoid penalties.

5. Domain and Email Address Authentication

To prevent spoofing and phishing, you need to use the following email authentication protocols:

• Sender Policy Framework (SPF)
• DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)
• Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC).

It’s also important to monitor feedback loops and complaint rates, which are reflected in your sender reputation.

6. Work with a Solid Email Service Provider (ESP)

Choose an ESP with a track record of high deliverability and strong anti-spam policies. A good ESP will offer list management tools, analytics, and support to help you maintain a clean email list and optimize your campaigns.

7. Monitor Email Metrics

Regularly use Zoho’s reporting features to review your email metrics, such as open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and spam complaints. Monitoring these metrics allows you to identify and address issues that may negatively impact your list quality and deliverability.

8. Avoid Common Mistakes

Here are some of the mistakes to avoid when building or growing your list:

• Buying or renting email lists from third-party vendors.
• Adding people who haven’t opted in.
• Using list-building plugins on websites without opt-in forms.
• Failing to adequately verify permission for email collection and use.

Avoiding these errors is fairly easy—all you have to do is follow best practices (i.e., don’t buy an email list) and automate subscriber permissions.

Tools For High Deliverability

Zoho Campaigns offers a range of tools and features designed to help you achieve high deliverability in your email marketing campaigns.

• List Management and Segmentation: Use list segmentation to group subscribers based on demographics, interests, or past behavior, and send targeted campaigns to improve engagement and deliverability.
• Email Authentication: Zoho Campaigns supports SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication protocols to help protect your sender reputation and ensure your emails reach the intended recipients.
• Drag-and-Drop Editor and Pre-Built Templates: Zoho Campaigns’ drag-and-drop editor helps you build engaging, on-brand emails quickly, while its library of pre-built HTML email templates makes it easy to create attractive and effective messages.
• Analytics: Zoho Analytics allows you to track key metrics, such as open rates, click-through rates, bounce rate, and spam complaints. You can use this data to optimize your campaigns for better delivery.
• A/B Testing: Optimize your subject lines, preheaders, and email content by conducting A/B tests using Zoho Campaigns. Analyze the results to determine which elements perform best and improve your overall campaign performance.
• Personalization and Dynamic Content: Personalize your email campaigns with Zoho Campaigns’ merge tags, dynamic content, and dynamic blocks.
• Autoresponders and Workflows: Set up automation workflows to send timely and relevant emails to your subscribers based on their actions, such as a welcome email series or re-engagement campaigns.

How to Handle Email Deliverability Issues

Throughout your email marketing efforts, you’ll probably see one or more of the following deliverability issues. Here’s how to solve them.

• Low deliverability: This could indicate poor list hygiene and spam traps. To fix this issue, regularly remove inactive subscribers or those who have marked your emails as spam.
• High bounce rates: This could be caused by invalid addresses or when a recipient’s mailbox is full or temporarily unavailable. To improve your bounce rate, make sure to verify email addresses before adding them to your list.
• Spam complaints: This issue can result from sending irrelevant emails or violating CAN-SPAM laws. There will always be a few subscribers who decide your email are spam. Still, you can reduce spam complaints by optimizing your content and following email marketing best practices.

Conclusion

Zoho Campaigns is a powerful marketing automation tool email marketers can use to ensure their emails are successfully delivered. By following the steps outlined in this article – creating captivating subject lines, developing interesting content, authenticating your domain and email addresses, monitoring metrics, and avoiding common mistakes, you can increase deliverability rates and improve engagement with your subscribers.

Not sure where to start with Zoho email marketing? Chat with us and let our experts help you get the most out of your software.