How can I diagnose and fix deliverability issues in Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
Summary
What email marketers say11Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Return Path shares the importance of focusing on subscriber engagement. Sending relevant and valuable content that encourages opens, clicks, and conversions can improve your sender reputation and deliverability over time.
Email marketer from Litmus shares insights on deliverability troubleshooting by emphasizing the importance of regularly auditing your email program. This involves reviewing your data collection practices, list segmentation strategies, and engagement metrics to identify areas for improvement and potential deliverability risks.
Email marketer from GMass shares insight into monitoring your bounce rates and feedback loops. High bounce rates and spam complaints can negatively impact your sender reputation and deliverability. Monitoring these metrics and taking action to address any issues can help improve your deliverability.
Email marketer from StackExchange recommends that if you're using a dedicated IP address, properly warming up the IP address by gradually increasing sending volume is crucial. This involves sending emails to your most engaged subscribers first and slowly expanding to the rest of your list. If you are using a shared IP make sure the IP you are on has a good sending reputation.
Email marketer from Reddit suggests checking the email content for spam triggers such as excessive use of certain words or phrases, large images, and broken links. He also mentioned to ensure the emails are properly formatted for both desktop and mobile to improve the users experience.
Email marketer from Quora suggests segmenting your subscriber list based on engagement levels. Sending targeted and relevant content to specific segments improves engagement and deliverability. Avinash recommends using data from SFMC to understand subscriber preferences and behaviors.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares insights on diagnosing the root causes of deliverability issues, including checking data hygiene, sending practices, recipient behavior (spam complaints), and ensuring consistent volume and engagement. Stresses that warming up a new domain without addressing underlying problems will lead to the same issues.
Marketer from Email Geeks advises against immediately warming a new subdomain without addressing the root cause of deliverability issues, as the problems will likely persist. Highlights that fixing reputation requires time, effort, and patience.
Email marketer from SendGrid advises optimizing your email design for deliverability. This includes using a balanced text-to-image ratio, avoiding excessive use of spam trigger words, and ensuring your emails are mobile-friendly to provide a positive user experience.
Email marketer from Email on Acid stresses running pre-send checks on your email campaigns. Email on Acid offer a service that checks your email's content, rendering, and authentication settings to identify potential deliverability issues before you send. This includes checking for broken links, spam triggers, and rendering issues across different email clients.
Email marketer from Mailjet advises keeping your email list clean and up-to-date by regularly removing inactive or unengaged subscribers. They suggest implementing a sunset policy for subscribers who haven't interacted with your emails in a while to reduce the risk of spam complaints and improve your sender reputation.
What the experts say3Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise, Laura Atkins, responds that one of the biggest factors in getting email to the inbox is sending only to people who want it. Sending email to people who have not requested it is likely to get you marked as spam. So good list hygiene is vital.
Expert from Spam Resource explains the importance of SMTP authentication, particularly SPF (Sender Policy Framework). They emphasize that proper SPF configuration is crucial for telling receiving mail servers which IP addresses are authorized to send email on behalf of your domain, thus reducing the likelihood of your emails being marked as spam. They also advise regularly reviewing and updating your SPF record to reflect any changes in your sending infrastructure.
Expert from Email Geeks shares his experience with email address turnover, suggesting strategies such as quickly removing unengaged users, slow email delivery prioritizing engaged users, automated removal of bad domains, and creating a monthly 'soft-sell' email with high engagement. Also suggests reporting on deliverability metrics by domain.
What the documentation says5Technical articles
Documentation from Salesforce Help explains that ensuring good email deliverability involves several best practices. This includes authenticating your email with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC; managing your subscriber list hygiene to remove inactive or invalid addresses; monitoring your sender reputation using tools like Sender Score and Google Postmaster Tools; and segmenting your audience to send relevant content to engaged subscribers.
Documentation from SparkPost explains implementing proper email authentication protocols such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Setting up these protocols correctly helps verify that your emails are legitimate and reduces the chances of them being marked as spam by email providers.
Documentation from Salesforce Help details that utilizing Sender Authentication Package (SAP) helps improve email deliverability by branding your account. SAP includes dedicated IP addresses, branded domain for email sending, and a branded account domain for CloudPages, which helps build trust with ISPs and improves brand recognition.
Documentation from Google Postmaster Tools explains using Google Postmaster Tools to monitor your domain's reputation with Gmail users. This tool provides insights into your spam rate, IP reputation, and authentication status, helping you identify and address deliverability issues specific to Gmail.
Documentation from Salesforce Help advises regularly monitoring your sending reputation metrics. This includes tracking bounce rates, complaint rates, and unsubscribe rates in Salesforce Marketing Cloud. High rates in these areas can indicate deliverability issues that need to be addressed.