Deliverability 101: Simple guide to understanding your deliverability

If you have done any type of email marketing then you’ve probably heard of the term “email deliverability.” But what is it and why is it so important to your overall email marketing strategy?

In simple terms, email deliverability is defined as: “the measurement of a sender’s success in getting their marketing emails into people's inboxes.”

In other terms, how successful you are in getting your emails delivered to the inbox.

Email deliverability is NOT to be mistaken for email delivery, which is the success of getting your email delivered from your email service provider (ESPs) to the inbox service providers (ISPs), such as yahoo, aol, and gmail. Email deliverability starts where delivery ends. When ESPs talk about ‘delivery’, they are talking about their part of the equation: sending your email out to the inboxes. Your ESP sends your email (delivery) to the ISPs. Once your email has reached the ISPs it must go through several filters (deliverability protocols) to pass before actually reaching the inbox. 

There are several factors that influence your deliverability and they are:

• Your domain reputation

• Your text records authentications

• Your list makeup

• Your sending practices

A) Your domain reputation

is the overall health of your business domain in accordance with the Inbox Service Providers (ISPs) such as Yahoo and Gmail. It is mainly influenced by your engagement level with your list, spam rates, and bounce rates. It’s important to note that when you are using an ESP (klaviyo, mailchimp, aweber), you are automatically sending from their domain. Make sure you set up your own dedicated domain (ex: instead of customers receiving emails from hello@brand.com via ksd2.klaviyomail.com, they will receive it from brand.com) to take control of your domain reputation and to build a quality domain instead of building your ESPs. 

B) Your email text records

are Domain Name System (DNS) records containing text information that helps inbox service providers identify your emails securely and prevent spoof/spam emailers from sending emails using your domain. There are three records that you need set up: 

1. Sender Policy Framework (SPF) -

   • This record tells ISPs that the mail server where your email is coming from is authorized to send on behalf of your domain. This record helps protect you from spam emails and is the first protection record that MUST be in place. 

2. DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) -

   • is an email digital signature that tells mail servers that the email is truly sent from your domain and wasn’t changed/altered after the send. This is the second protection record that MUST be in place. 

3. Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC)

   • is the third protection record and is NOT typically set up by your ESP. DMARC is an added layer of authentication to protect you from unauthorized senders (think spoofing) and helps mail servers to align your SPF and DKIM records. You can set policies within your DMARC record to let mail servers WHAT to do with emails that are NOT authorized to send on behalf of your domain. They are p=none (no action taken), p=quarantine (send to spam), p=reject (don’t deliver). 

Note: When you set up your dedicated sending domain (to start sending on behalf of your domain instead of your ESP’s domain) inside of your ESP, your ESP will give you instructions on how to enter your SPF and DKIM records where your domain is hosted (ex: godaddy, namecheap). Your DMARC record is typically not included in the instructions. Be sure to ask your ESP for instructions on how to set your DMARC record.

C) Your list makeup

is VERY important to your email marketing success. DO NOT ever buy a list (this is illegal) and always use proper opt-ins (including clear consent language) to ensure you are ONLY building a high quality, engaging audience. If users mark your emails as spam continuously you will damage your reputations with the ISPs, quickly landing you in the spam folder or banning you from their platform completely (blacklisted). 

D) Finally, your sending practices

matter. You must qualify your traffic through automations (learn more here), segment properly, and use highly engaging content that will set your domain up for success.  

Consider email deliverability practices as the backbone of your email marketing strategy. Without having clean practices in place, you can’t truly scale or profit from your email marketing channel.