How to make sure your email messages land in inboxes

Let's face it, emails landing in the spam folder sucks!

You've just spent ages working on the latest campaign with the greatest insights for your subscribers, only for it to get lost and never read.

To make things worse, Google and Yahoo released new requirements around email deliverability starting in February 2024, directly impacting whether your emails get delivered.

But don't worry, I've got you covered. Just read on and you'll know what you need to do to make sure your emails continue to make it into inboxes.

‍

Quick check

Are you using a professional email when sending email campaigns to your list? E.g. kev@yourdomain.com

If you are great, make sure you have access to your domain name provider. So go ahead and login to your account, it's probably going to be somewhere like GoDaddy, Namecheap, 123-reg etc

If you don't have access then reach out to your developer or that techy relative that set it up for you all those years ago and get them to help you.

And if you aren't using a professional email to send your campaigns then get one, then come back to this page. (If you're sending from kev@gmail.com this will not cut it in 2024)

‍

First up: What's Changing?

The updates are centered around increasing email validation requirements to reduce phishing and spam. So in the long run its a good thing for everyone.

• Email authentication is now required using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
• Single-click unsubscribe is required so that all users can unsubscribe with one click
• Spam complaint rate limit must stay under 0.3%, or emails risk being sent to spam

‍

What do you need to do to be compliant?

‍

‍

‍

‍

1. Secure your emails with SPF, DKIM and DMARC

What the heck are those Kev?

They're whats called email authentication methods and they get added to the 'headers' of all emails that are sent. By looking at the code of the email you can check this info.

‍

‍

These must be setup in you domain name DNS settings.

For SPF and DKIM, most providers like Google Workspace will provide this information, just do a quick search.

For DMARC, this is a little trickier to setup. I recommend creating a free account with EasyDMARC. It's a great service and they make it realy easy to setup the DMARC record and show you how to add it to the DNS settings for most domain providors.

‍

2. Verify your domain name

Remember above when I asked if you were sending from a professional email address, using your own domain name. Well the next thing you need to do is verify that you own that domain and that you're email service provider (Active Campaign, Mailchimp, Convertkit, High Level etc) is allowed to send on your behalf.

Again you'll have to access the DNS settings of your domain to do this.

‍

3. Monitor your spam complaint rates

Make sure you're keeping an eye on these rates and if the numbers start to go above 0.3% then you need to assess why that might be. Could be that you're not asking permission to send to subscribers on your list.

E.g. you add a subscriber to your list who booked a call with you, but you didn't have an opt-in checkbox asking if it was ok to send them marketing emails. Then they're going to complain right.

E.g. If the subscriber was added to your list via an opt-in form to download a lead magnet then they'll expect to receive marketing emails and therefore won't complain. The worst thing they might do is unsubscribe.

So make sure you're doing the right thing and going about collecting email addresses ethically.

I like to tag those that have opted-in to receive marketing emails with a 'newsletter' tag. Then I can segment those subscribers and only send to them.

‍

4. Only send to engaged subscribers

Doing this helps reduce unsubscribes and spam complaints. Why? Because you're sending to those who are opening, reading and clicking your emails which is all positive feedback to the email providers that you are legit.

For those that have low engagement scores just archive them. They aren't reading your emails anyway!

‍

5. Make it easy to Unsubscribe

Under the new requirements you must have a 'one-click' unsubscribe link, clearly visible in your email somewhere. This simplifies users’ opt-out process and helps maintain your sender reputation.

What's a 'one-click' unsubscribe link? Well if you've ever unsubscribed from an email list and when you click that link you get taken to another page that then asks you to confirm if you want to unsubscribe and sometimes will ask you to confirm which list or all...well that's no longer allowed. The subscriber has to be able to click the link and be instantly unsubscribed.

Most of the big ESP's like Active Campaign, Mailchimp etc are making this easy by doing this for you. But it's still worth checking.

‍

If you need help setting up your DNS and checking you are compliant, just drop me a message. Always happy to help.