This topic is a big deal. It’s bigger than most people realize. And it’s especially big if you’re a small business doing your own marketing and you’re using email as part of that strategy. I see a lot of companies putting out emails, and they have no idea what the term “deliverability” means. So the bottom line is this: your email marketing is worthless if your emails don’t make it to the inbox of your audience members. And if you’re not paying attention to your domain reputation, and your IP address reputation then I can almost guarantee you that your deliverability is a severe problem.
If you’re wondering why your open rates are so low but you think your content is pretty good it’s probably because nobody sees the content because it’s not making it to the inbox. A huge percentage of your emails may very well be ending up in a junk folder. This fact does not always show up in your marketing platform analytics. You think your emails are being delivered, but they are going to a spam folder and not the inbox. Some marketing tools will even show you analytics that says the emails are being opened when in fact they went to a junk folder and were probably scanned and then discarded. The bottom line is, nobody sees your email messages.
And the main reason for all of this is that your web domain or your email server IP address may have ended up on a blacklist or a block list. Nobody sends you a notification telling you that your IP address is on one of these lists. It just happens and your email deliverability suffers. So you should be checking your reputation on a regular basis. (I will talk about how to do this in a future article).
The good news is you can remove your domain or IP address from many of these lists if you find yourself on one. It’s also fairly common to get on these lists from time to time so don’t be alarmed if you see this happening. The key is to pay attention to it and follow up if necessary. The other primary key is to take steps to make sure you’re managing your email marketing appropriately, so you don’t end up on one of these lists. I will also be giving you some specific tactics on how to do this in a future article.
Jim Anthony | So-Mark Founder