How do email experts troubleshoot customer deliverability issues?
Summary
What email marketers say10Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Mailjet shares that monitoring your sending IP's reputation is crucial for diagnosing deliverability problems; low reputation scores with blocklists will cause delivery issues, and proactively monitoring and maintaining a positive reputation is key.
Email marketer from Email on Acid explains that maintaining a clean email list is important. Regularly remove inactive subscribers and those who have unsubscribed. Use double opt-in to ensure subscribers are genuinely interested in receiving emails.
Email marketer from SendGrid shares that proper email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is critical to ensure mailbox providers trust the sender and deliver emails to the inbox. Failure to authenticate can result in emails being marked as spam or blocked.
Email marketer from Email Geeks shares their experience of dealing with a customer service issue where a customer claimed not to receive mail, and after investigation, it was confirmed that the issue was on the customer's end.
Email marketer from Email Geeks shares an experience where a client was having deliverability issues due to a URL in their content, and after confirming with the provider, it was determined that the URL was indeed the problem.
Email marketer from GlockApps shares that avoiding spam trigger words in your email subject line and body can significantly improve deliverability. These words often flag your email as spam. Use a spam checker tool to find these words.
Email marketer from StackOverflow explains that monitor your sender reputation by tracking bounce rates, spam complaints, and unsubscribe rates, as well as engagement metrics such as open rates and click-through rates. Low engagement can signal deliverability problems.
Email marketer from Reddit explains that to troubleshoot deliverability, it's important to check if your sending IP or domain is blacklisted. Many free tools are available online to check your status against common blacklists. If you are blacklisted you need to contact the blacklist to get delisted.
Email marketer from Litmus explains that faulty HTML and poor email design can affect deliverability. Use responsive design and test email rendering across different email clients. Also ensure your code is clean and follows best practices.
Email marketer from Gmass explains that throttling back the number of emails you send within a certain time period can help to address deliverability issues. Sending too many emails in a short space of time may trigger spam filters.
What the experts say3Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that a fundamental step in troubleshooting deliverability is ensuring proper sender authentication. This includes implementing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to verify your identity and prevent email spoofing, ultimately building trust with mailbox providers.
Expert from Spam Resource shares that understanding and monitoring your sender reputation is key. This involves analyzing bounce rates, complaint rates, and engagement metrics to identify and address issues negatively impacting deliverability.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that they refuse to troubleshoot single mail delivery problems, as it's outside their job description and that they are the worst to deal with.
What the documentation says5Technical articles
Documentation from RFC specifies the technical standard for DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance), which helps email senders protect their domains from unauthorized use, commonly known as email spoofing.
Documentation from Microsoft Learn outlines best practices for avoiding spam filters, including authenticating email with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, using a dedicated IP address, and ensuring content doesn't trigger spam filters.
Documentation from Auth0 shares that an SPF record is a TXT record in your domain's DNS that specifies which mail servers are authorized to send email on behalf of your domain. This helps prevent spoofing and improves email deliverability.
Documentation from SparkPost explains the importance of setting up feedback loops with ISPs. Feedback loops provide information about subscribers who mark your emails as spam, allowing you to remove them from your list and improve your sender reputation.
Documentation from Gmail Help explains that to troubleshoot deliverability, bulk senders should follow Gmail's bulk sender guidelines, including setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, keeping spam rates low, and monitoring their reputation using Postmaster Tools.