Delivered and Noticed: Improve Email Deliverability Before Christmas

Christmas is here again – a season to celebrate and have fun. While Santa is set to shower people with gifts, email marketers, retail brands, and online shops seek to maximize revenue. However, you need to ensure increased email deliverability before you can boost engagement, and ultimately, profits. 

But first, what is the definition of email deliverability? While most marketers confuse email delivery with email deliverability, there’s a significant difference. 

Email delivery is when an email successfully makes it to the recipient’s server, no matter where it lands (spam, inbox, etc.). In contrast, email deliverability is when the letter reaches the recipient’s inbox successfully.

Email providers can successfully deliver your emails to the recipient’s server. But that doesn’t mean your emails made it to their inboxes. This is where email deliverability comes in. Read on to discover why and how to improve email deliverability before Christmas.

Why Should You Plan Your Email Deliverability For Christmas?

It’s no news that email volume increases significantly during the holidays as numerous brands send more emails to leverage Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas sales. 

According to the Twilio SendGrid 2020 report, 5.8 billion emails were processed on Black Friday, while Cyber Monday recorded around 5.7 billion emails. Also, 2020 saw Cyber Monday become the biggest online shopping day in US history, with approximately $10.8 billion in online sales. 

Holidays are a big time for businesses as more people shop and spend money. While email marketers take advantage of this period to increase sales, it’s also a good opportunity for cybercriminals to plan phishing attacks. 

So while improving your marketing strategy, ensure you implement email protection measures to help prevent any malicious attacks.

Internet Service Provider ISPs (like Gmail, Hotmail, and Microsoft) don’t like spikes in emails. The growth in volume impacts their servers, resulting in longer email delivery times and more letters being blocked or filtered as spam. This can dent your sender reputation score, making you lose your edge over competitors. 

That said, planning your email strategy before Christmas is the smart move, but only if the emails reach your intended recipients’ inboxes. 

Be Consistent With the Schedule

While sending emails in high volume is not an excellent option, sending them sparingly is also not good for brand awareness. People can ignore your messages, delete them, or mark them as spam. 

All of these actions can reduce your email deliverability rate and result in your emails being sent to spam instead of inbox. So staying consistent with your marketing email schedule over longer periods is key.

You can start warming up your email list a few months before Christmas so that the ISPs get used to your volumes and treat the surge over the holidays as normal.

Email marketers need to find a balance between regularity and going MIA. You can start by sending one email per week for the first month, increasing it by one every month. While doing this, examine your customers’ reactions and regulate email volumes accordingly.

In addition, keep the sender address consistent to increase brand loyalty among your customers. Once you find what’s working, stay on track. 

Stay on Top of Your Email List Hygiene

Cleaning up your lists at least once or twice a year can impact your deliverability and engagement rates like a charm. You might think that the more subscribers you have, the better, but having inactive subscribers on your email list is bad for your sender’s reputation. 

Removing hard bounces (emails that are no longer active) from your list is a no-brainer, but don’t stop there!

Don’t send emails to people that won’t engage or open your message – it’s one of the ways to build a positive sender reputation and improve email deliverability. 

Savvy email marketers often send out emails asking their unengaged subscribers if they still want to get updates from them. This trick helps identify the health of your email list and clean it up. Create a separate audience segment with non-engaged subscribers and try activating them with a tailored campaign.

Implement Email Authentication Protocols on Your Domain

Email marketing is built on trust. When your customers receive your emails, they should be sure that no harm will come their way. Remember that the internet harbors plenty of cybercriminals aiming to impersonate your brand, defraud your customers, and cause losses. However, email marketers can avoid these damages by implementing email authentication protocols – one of the email deliverability best practices.

We have plenty of articles on our blog about SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. In addition to that, you can check out our tools or contact our sales team for more information.

Segment Your Mailing List Based on Location

One of the best ways to boost your engagement rate is segmenting your email list based on your customer’s location. It’s a valuable marketing tool, especially for businesses with multiple locations or international customers.

With location-based segmentation, you can create a tailored customer experience, which can increase open and click-through rates. When ISPs discover that more users engage with your emails, it boosts your IP reputation. 

To leverage location-based segmentation, you need accurate customer data about your customers’ unique preferences. You need to know where they shop, how often they visit, and even what they purchase. 

With that, you can easily create a personalized campaign just for them. Location-based segmentation can take longer than sending out mass emails, but it’s more efficient at increasing engagement rates and improving email deliverability. 

Our Verdict

Christmas is, indeed, a goldmine for email marketers and brands. Therefore, reaching customer inboxes is vital before you can entice them with fantastic offers.

While some methods of increasing email deliverability might not be a one-click fix, others are quite easy to implement. In any case, even if you’re late with DMARC implementation for this holiday season, cleaning up and setting your lists straight will no doubt help boost your deliverability and IP reputation.