What are the deliverability implications of sending emails with multiple languages?
Summary
What email marketers say8Marketer opinions
Email marketer from HubSpot suggests that failing to personalize emails by language will result in lower engagement and higher unsubscribe rates. They recommend segmenting email lists by language and using dynamic content to display the correct language based on the recipient's preference. This ensures a more relevant experience, improving sender reputation and deliverability.
Email marketer from Email on Acid notes that deliverability can be affected if email content is not properly localized. They explain that not localizing content can lead to higher bounce rates and lower engagement, which negatively impacts sender reputation. They recommend using language detection to personalize content and avoid sending the same email in multiple languages to recipients who only understand one language.
Email marketer from Mailjet explains that sending multilingual email campaigns can affect deliverability if not done correctly. They recommend segmenting your audience based on language preference and using the appropriate character encoding (UTF-8) to ensure proper rendering of all characters. They highlight using correct language tags in the HTML and provide localized subject lines and preheader text to improve engagement. Additionally, they emphasize the importance of monitoring deliverability metrics for each language segment to identify and address any issues.
Email marketer from Reddit points out that sending emails in multiple languages without proper segmentation can lead to recipients marking the email as spam, which negatively impacts the sender's reputation and deliverability. They advise segmenting your audience by language and tailoring content to each segment to ensure that recipients only receive emails in their preferred language.
Email marketer from Campaign Monitor emphasizes the importance of list segmentation in order to avoid spam filters and improve engagement. Campaign Monitor says that segmenting by language is particularly important and provides the example to 'send a French version of your email only to your French subscribers'.
Email marketer from Sendinblue shares that one significant deliverability implication is spam filtering based on language. Emails containing multiple languages or languages that don't match the recipient's profile may be flagged as spam. They advise personalizing content based on language preferences, and testing emails to different email clients to ensure correct display, using dedicated IPs for different language segments if sending high volumes, and monitoring feedback loops for each language.
Email marketer from GMass highlights the importance of using UTF-8 encoding when sending emails with multiple languages or special characters. They state that not using UTF-8 can cause characters to display incorrectly, which makes the email look unprofessional and can lead to recipients marking the email as spam. GMass recommends always setting the character set to UTF-8 to ensure correct rendering.
Email marketer from ActiveCampaign shares that you should personalize emails based on the recipient’s language preferences to improve engagement. They also add that failing to send email in the correct language may lead to unsubscriptions, spam complaints, and negatively impact sender reputation, affecting deliverability.
What the experts say3Expert opinions
Expert from Word to the Wise shares that sending emails with multiple languages can introduce complexity and potential deliverability issues. They advise ensuring proper character encoding, using language tags, and segmenting your audience by language preference. This will help improve deliverability by ensuring that your emails are correctly interpreted and displayed by email clients and are relevant to the recipients.
Expert from Email Geeks explains that for accessibility and HTML correctness, you should use lang="en" for the container holding English text and lang="es" for the Spanish text, instead of putting both on the body. He also suggests double-checking character sets (UTF-8) to ensure technical cleanliness and setting lang="en" on the body and lang="es" on the Spanish container.
Expert from Spam Resource explains that spam filters often use language detection to identify and block unwanted emails. Sending emails with multiple languages can trigger these filters, especially if the languages are mismatched or not properly tagged. They recommend segmenting your audience by language and tailoring your content accordingly to avoid being flagged as spam.
What the documentation says5Technical articles
Documentation from RFC 5646 describes the standard for language tags in HTML and XML. It states that using the `lang` attribute (e.g., `lang="en-US"`) is essential for specifying the language of the content. The tag helps user agents (including email clients) render the content correctly and provides context for assistive technologies. Improper or missing language tags can lead to accessibility issues and potentially affect how email clients filter or display the content.
Documentation from Google highlights that sending emails in multiple languages without proper language tags (i.e. using HTML 'lang' attributes) can affect how their spam filters view your emails. Proper language tags help Google understand the email's content and target audience, which can improve deliverability.
Documentation from Litmus explains that incorrect character encoding can lead to garbled text and negatively impact deliverability. They advise always using UTF-8 encoding to support a wide range of characters from different languages. They add to ensure proper rendering in various email clients, use appropriate HTML language tags (e.g., `<html lang="es">` for Spanish) to help email clients and assistive technologies interpret the content correctly.
Documentation from W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) highlights the importance of using the `lang` attribute in HTML to specify the language of the content. They explain that it aids in accessibility, search engine optimization, and proper rendering by browsers and email clients. They also note that specifying the language helps ensure that text-to-speech software reads the content correctly, which is crucial for accessibility compliance.
Documentation from IETF says that proper language tags help ensure that software can correctly process, display, and handle emails in different languages, improving accessibility and user experience. IETF adds that it provides a structured approach to language identification, facilitating internationalization and localization efforts.