Deliverability 201: Tips to Improve Your Deliverability

Since February 2024, major email service providers like Google and Yahoo have implemented changes to sending requirements. These changes have caused widespread issues.

We’ve put together this article to help you ensure you’re up to date with all the requirements and best practices, ensuring your deliverability is as good as possible.

Email authentication records

First, please ensure your DMARC/DKIM/SPF records are all in place. This requirement cannot be overlooked.

This process is done directly with your domain service provider and can vary from provider to provider.

We have an article that details this process, which you can access here.

Email providers requirements

Alongside the requirements for authentication records, each email provider has its own other requirements that all bulk senders should follow.

These requirements range from email content to domain settings and can be found in full on the following links:

Warming up your domain

For new domains or domains that recently added authentication records (DMARC/DKIM/SPF), it’s important to warm up your domain so that major inbox providers such as Google and Yahoo can detect the progression of your domain’s reputation.

This is an essential step to ensure a good sending reputation, but please bear in mind that this can be a lengthy process, taking weeks or months to warm up a domain properly.

We have more details on how you can do that in this article -> How to Warm Up a Sending Domain

Postmaster tools

Big email providers also have tools called postmaster tools that allow you to investigate how your domain performs on their platform.

These are great if you want more insight into your domain’s sending reputation and SPAM rates.

You can find these postmaster tools for the biggest email providers here:

Take advantage of these tools to monitor your domain’s health!

Summary of best practices

And finally, here’s a summary of best practices you can use to improve your deliverability and sending reputation:

Use a custom sending domain to identify the source of the email more clearly.
Ensure your sending domain is warmed up before sending emails to all contacts.
Have all three authentication records in place with your domain provider.
Keep your subject line concise and avoid all caps. Shoot for between 28 to 50 characters.
Keep your preheader concise. Shoot for between 40 to 100 characters.
Keep your email concise. Shoot for between 50 and 125 words.
Personalize your emails with merge tags. For example, include the subscriber's name.
Avoid spammy keywords like guarantee, opportunity, click, and winner.
Avoid using special characters like %, $, &, !, ?, @, and # excessively.
Avoid excessive use of images. Emails that use too many images or are all one image can trigger a spam filter. Using several lines of text to separate images helps avoid this.
Avoid using too many links or calls to action.

Periodically check into the postmaster tools of major inbox providers such as Google and Yahoo.