Email deliverability is all about making sure your emails land in your recipient’s inbox instead of their spam folder.
Unfortunately, an estimated 14.3% of all B2B emails go missing, or are otherwise caught by spam filters.
A sobering number, especially since deliverability rates affect more than “just” open rates (and subsequent CTRs). They also greatly affect the scalability and ROI of your email marketing efforts—and can make it difficult to land paid sponsorships with top brands.
That’s why today we’re covering some advanced tips to help improve email deliverability for your B2B newsletters, so your email stay out of spam folders and reach more subscribers.
Your sender reputation is one of the primary factors affecting whether your emails land in the inbox or the spam folder.
This reputation is based on your sending history–and is directly linked to your domain and IP address. Typically, your reputation is based on metrics from:
In other words: every individual success metric contributes to your overall sending reputation.
Instead of waiting for issues to show up in your ESP’s email data dashboard after an email send, you can proactively use a tool like Litmus, which scans your emails and lets you know what issues should be fixed before you send it out to hundreds or thousands of inboxes.
Clean email lists are critical for good deliverability, but it can be a daunting task. B2B marketers especially often target multiple decision-makers or leads at a single company, relying on a wide net to catch the right person at the right time. Unfortunately, this means that employee churn and company acquisitions often wreak havoc to the health of your list.
Some common sense best practices to incorporate across editors and marketers on your team include:
Segmentation has a huge potential when it comes to deliverability, but all too often is underutilized. In fact, one company that I used to work with insisted that they only wanted three segments: leads, customers, and former customers.
Needless to say, those lists were incredibly bloated and full of unengaged subscribers, which cost the company a fair chunk in terms of visibility and money spent on paying the ESP for those subscribers.
Instead of over-simplifying the customer journey, you can maximize email marketing effectiveness by creating more intuitive segments, based off things like:
By targeting smaller, more relevant groups within your list, you increase the chances that recipients will engage with your content, which helps to improve your overall sending reputation, as well as increase click through and conversion rates for your email marketing.
Another foundational part of email marketing includes following email authentication protocols, which help prevent scammers from sending emails from domains that they don’t own.
DKIM, SPF, and DMARC are all terms to be familiar with, since the setup ensures that your domain is properly authenticated.
Domains that don’t have these protocols set up properly are in danger of being impersonated by spammers. They’re also at risk of being flagged by inbox spam filters.
On a personal note, I can’t tell you the number of professional emails I regularly receive in my inbox that come with a warning label that the domain could not be verified…and each time I cringe on behalf of the sender, who’s essentially sabotaging their trust with every email send.
Note: Authentication for Multi-Domain Companies
B2B companies often operate under multiple domains or subdomains (e.g., different product lines or international divisions), which lends an additional layer of complexity since each domain must be properly authenticated.
A few years ago, spam words reputedly played a huge role in triggering spam filters. While the spam-monitoring abilities of ISPs have definitely improved, you still want to make sure that your email terminology is powerful and effective when it comes to building trust and reputation with subscribers and ISPs alike.
Here, you’ll want to stay up to date on the latest compiled spam vocabulary lists to ensure your email copy is always supporting, rather than hindering, your deliverability goals.
The timing of your emails can make a significant difference in deliverability and engagement. Ideally, B2B newsletters should be delivered during business hours, with some consideration for global time zones. You can use data from previous campaigns to identify the optimal send times for your specific audience.
You’ll also want to maintain a consistent send frequency to help your recipients anticipate and look forward to your newsletters. Sending too frequently can overwhelm your audience and lead to spam complaints, while sending too infrequently can result in disengagement. Find a balance that works for your audience, then monitor and revise as needed.
ISPs track engagement metrics to determine whether your emails should be delivered to the inbox. If your emails consistently have low open rates, high bounce rates, or high spam complaint rates, your sender reputation will suffer. Improving engagement metrics through personalized content, segmentation, and subject line testing can directly impact your email deliverability.
Experiment with different subject lines, content types, and calls to action to see what resonates with your audience, depending on their job roles or industries.
At this point, we’ve covered the foundational aspects to help improve email deliverability for B2B marketers.
Here are a few more advanced tactics to add to your arsenal.
If you’re sending a high volume of emails, you might consider using a dedicated IP address, which allows you to control your reputation independently of other senders.
For example: most ESPs use IPs that are shared by multiple businesses. While affordable, your deliverability can be affected by the actions of other senders on the same ISP.
Businesses that send a high volume of emails, like daily or weekly newsletters, are ideal use cases for a dedicated IP.
When switching to a dedicated IP, warming it up is crucial. Start by sending smaller batches of emails and gradually increase your volume over time. This helps build a positive sender reputation. ISPs are cautious with new IPs, and a sudden spike in email volume from a fresh IP can trigger spam filters.
B2B email marketers face the added challenge of navigating corporate email filters and firewalls, which are typically more stringent than consumer email filters.
Many B2B companies use internal IT protocols to filter out suspicious or irrelevant emails, which makes even a slight infringement a cause for possible deliverability issues.
To avoid being blocked by corporate filters, focus on maintaining a strong sender reputation, make sure your email HTML is cleanly coded, and avoid overloading your emails with external links or large files.
You can also encourage recipients to whitelist your email domain during the initial sign up or welcome email onboarding.
To ensure your emails continue to reach inboxes, monitor key deliverability metrics such as delivery rates, inbox placement rates, bounce rates, and complaint rates.
Tools like Everest, Litmus, or your ESP’s built-in analytics can provide detailed insights into these metrics, allowing you to spot and address deliverability issues early.
Auditing your email campaigns regularly can help you identify problems before they escalate. By reviewing your email lists, sender reputation, and engagement metrics on a regular basis, you can ensure that your email marketing stays healthy and delivers consistently high results.
B2B email deliverability can be a complex challenge, but by focusing on list hygiene, sender reputation, content optimization, and engagement metrics, you can improve your inbox placement rates and get your newsletters in front of the right audience. Continually monitor your deliverability performance and be proactive in addressing issues before they impact your campaigns.
