The start of a new year is the perfect time to give your email marketing program a little TLC. While there is a lot to consider in a successful email strategy, we recommend starting with the behind-the-scenes pieces that impact an email’s performance long before it ever reaches an inbox.

These are things like list hygiene, deliverability and testing. While perhaps not the sexiest elements of email marketing, they do have the power to make or break the success of your email efforts. So, before you invest in compelling email copy or a beautifully designed template, here are the areas to pay attention to first.

Email Deliverability
Email deliverability determines whether an email makes it to the recipient’s inbox or spam folder. A few things can stand in the way of reaching the inbox, most importantly: identification and reputation. The first relates to the technical aspects of mail delivery that protect against spam. The latter refers to the reputation score internet service providers (ISP) have given to you as a sender, which is determined by factors like bounce rate and attachments (always a no-no). A third consideration in deliverability is your content and its relevance to subscribers.

To improve email deliverability, you’ll want to focus on all three. Here’s how to get started:

• Maintain a clean email list. Inactive subscribers and bad email addresses can damage your reputation score. (More on how to cleanup your list in the next tip.)

• Offer an easy unsubscribe option. This will help keep your list clean and should lead to improved engagement metrics, which reflects positively on your content.

• Use a familiar sender name and include the recipient’s first and last name in the “to” field. This signals to the ISP that you know your recipient.

• Know the latest email laws, spam filter technology and ISP specs. This includes CCPA compliance and email authentication best practices like SPF, DKIM and DMARC.  

• Use a third-party tool to check your spam score. Know how your email rates before you hit send with a free resource like Postmark’s spam checker.

Email List Cleanup

Email lists decay by 20 to 30 percent every year. That means your campaigns are reaching a lot of people who are never going to open or read them. If your email marketing platform is charging by number of contacts, it also means you’re spending money unnecessarily.

A good rule of thumb is to clean your email list—also known as email scrubbing—a few times a year. But you also can look for signals that it’s time, such as declining open and click rates and increasing unsubscribes or spam complaints.

When it’s time for a cleanup, here are the groups to review and who to remove:

• Hard bounces.
  There are two categories of bounced emails: hard and soft. Soft bounces are due to temporary issues. Hard bounces happen because of a permanent error, such as the domain name or email address doesn’t exist. Sometimes these errors can be corrected—for example, an email address may be misspelled—so you’ll want to review addresses that “hard” bounced, make any obvious edits, then remove the others.

• Unsubscribes.
  Your email platform may automatically remove users who unsubscribe from receiving future emails. However, be sure these users are removed from your master contact list, too.

• Duplicate email addresses.
  Scrub your list for duplicates and remove. Most ESPs offer de-duping tools, or you can do this in Excel.

• Spam email addresses.
  It’s good practice to keep an eye on new subscribers. If you see an uptick in new subscribers whose email addresses seem suspicious (think: odd letter and number combinations), consider adding reCaptcha to your email opt-in form. This will keep unwanted spambots from creeping into your contact list.

• Inactive subscribers.
  This is a really important group. Before removing, see if you can win back these subscribers with a reengagement campaign. (Check out these effective ideas from Active Campaign.)

Test, Test, Test!

Email testing comes in two forms: Quality assurance and variable testing. Most email marketing platforms offer built-in testing tools for both so take the time to learn how to use them—we promise it’ll improve campaign performance.

QA testing is conducted before sending your campaign. This is when you’ll check all of the links in your email to ensure they point to the right URL. Design testing is part of this as well. This allows you to preview how your email will render across devices, apps and email services.

Variable testing is conducted after you click send. It’s how you learn what elements (variables) improve (or worsen) email performance. The most common variable test is an A/B test (aka, split test), which allows you to change one variable at a time. Here are the variables we most often test: 

• Subject line: About half of email recipients will decide whether or not to open an email based solely on its subject line, so it’s smart to test this element. Check out our subject line writing tips for guidance on where to start with A/B testing.

• Email copy: Consider testing personalization, copy length and calls to action.

• Call to action: Test different call-to-action buttons to learn which one drives the most clicks. For example, do your subscribers prefer to read more or watch more? Visit a product page or see a product demo?

• Send time: Test different dayparts and days of the week to learn when subscribers are most likely to open and read your emails. 

Identifying which variable to test in a given campaign depends on your goal. For example, if you want to boost your open rate, then subject line testing is important. Conversely, if you’re trying to increase click throughs or conversions, then it may make sense to test different call-to-action buttons.

By now, you’re probably sensing a theme: All of these efforts—list hygiene, deliverability and testing—depend on one another for optimal email performance. A clean database, smart testing strategy and compelling content will land your emails in inboxes and keep subscribers engaged and active.

It may all sound easy enough, but it takes time. Something we know brand marketing teams don’t always have a lot of. If you need help getting your email marketing efforts in order, just ask. Schedule a free consultation today.