Email deliverability is one of the most important metrics that you need to improve if you want your email marketing to be successful. Email deliverability is the measure of how many of your emails actually land in an inbox.
Due to the widespread email scams and spam, internet service providers and email service providers have taken measures to vet emails. These methods do not violate any privacy rights. Instead, they look at things like the sender’s reputation, the age of the IP address from which the emails are sent, and other similar metrics.
If anything in these metrics suggests that the email might be spam or a scam, it will be blocked and not sent to the inbox. As such, your emails will fail to elicit any kind of response. As such, your email marketing will be completely useless.
In this guide, we will teach you some expert tips for improving your email deliverability in 2025.
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How to Improve Email Deliverability
Given below are five expert tips for improving email deliverability. You need to apply all of them to be successful.
- Setup SPF, DKIM, and DMARC Records
Emails are usually sent from a special domain with its own IP address. These domains can belong to email service providers, or they can be independent.
Regardless, you need to authenticate your email domain. What do we mean by authenticating? Well, to prevent malicious actors from spoofing your domain, you have to create some DNS records that tell all ISPs and ESPs who you are and which servers are allowed to send email on your behalf. It also includes instructions on what to do with spoofers who are trying to imitate your emails.
The three main DNS records responsible for this are SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Let’s take a brief look at all of them.
SPF (Sender Policy Framework)
This is a type of TXT record that lists all authorized servers that can send an email on behalf of your domain. ESPs will check the SPF record of a domain whenever they receive an email from it to see if the sending server is authorized or not.
Emails from unauthorized servers are immediately sent to the trash, while the real ones are sent to the inbox. This way, your sender’s reputation is maintained and spoofers cannot masquerade as you and damage your reputation.
DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail)
DKIM records help to ensure that the emails you sent have not been tampered with. Meaning that they arrived at their destination the same way they left.
Basically, the email is encrypted using public key cryptography. Then, a hash of the email is created, and the public key for creating that hash is published in the DKIM record.
When an email is received, the DKIM record is used to recreate the hash. If the hashes match, then the email is safe and accepted. If the hashes do not match, it means that the email has been tampered with and thus rejected.
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication and Reporting)
This is a special kind of record that tells email receivers what to do with emails that profess they are from a certain domain and IP but fail the SPF and DKIM checks.
DMARC can instruct receivers to stop the mail, put it in spam/junk, or put it in the inbox but warn the user about it. Another thing DMARC does is report back to the domain and tell it that a certain email at a certain time failed the checks and what actions the receiver took against it.
This reporting feature allows you to keep track of any emails that were rejected. You can look into it for problems, and maybe you will even catch spoofers trying to destroy your reputation.
Make sure these records are set correctly by doing a TXT record lookup with iplocation.io’s DNS records lookup. After all, your sender reputation and email deliverability depend on it.
- Ensure all Email Subscribers Opted-In Willingly
Email deliverability is also dependent on the email open rate. Open rate refers to the number of emails opened compared to the number of emails sent.
Even if a third of your emails are opened, then you can consider it a high open rate, provided that your sender reputation is intact. This can be achieved by making the email subscription process opt-in only.
This shouldn’t be a forced opt-in either (i.e., you force the user to opt-in to emails or you stop providing them the service they were using). A willing opt-in means that the customer is interested in what you have to say. As such, they will actually open the emails you send and possibly interact further as well.
On the flip side, make it extremely easy to unsubscribe from your mailing list as well. If someone no longer wants to read your emails, then it is better that they remove themselves from your mailing list on their own. This will reduce the number of unopened/unread emails. As a result, your open rate will stay high, which will contribute to your sender reputation.
- Avoid Writing and Sending Spammy Emails
Spammy emails are those that offer little to no value, are sent frequently, and are generally considered irksome by the recipient. Spammy emails remain unopened. If a significant number of emails from you remain unopened, then ISPs will naturally conclude that your emails are not useful and throw them into the spam folder.
That also affects your email sender’s reputation. A big enough hit could result in most of your emails being sent to the spam/junk folder or being dropped completely (i.e., no delivery at all).
To avoid writing spammy emails, consider hiring a dedicated writer. A good writer will be able to do the following for your emails.
- Create catchy and hooking subject lines.
- Write relatable and readable content that the audience can easily understand.
- Include CTA (calls to action) that entice your reader to act.
Other than that, make sure that you do not send emails every day. Once a week is a good cadence that does not outstay its welcome, and it does not feel like you have forgotten your client.
- IP Warming
IP warming is a process where new email servers send out only a few emails at first and gradually increase the number to their max capacity over the course of a few weeks or months.
This is necessary because a new email server has no reputation and no metrics or stats to gauge if it is a spam server or a legitimate one. The default reaction of ISPs is to assume it is a spam server.
So, if you were to send, say, 50,000 emails from a new server, the ISPs would block it instantly, resulting in all your emails getting dropped.
This is where IP warming comes in. You only send out a few hundred emails (or fewer) at first. The only people you contact are those who have a 90% chance of opening your emails.
Once you get some email opens, and this process repeats a few times, your email sender’s reputation automatically rises. Once the ISPs know that your server is legitimate, you can send the maximum volume of emails easily, and they won’t be dropped or blocked, thus improving your deliverability.
- Monitor Email Metrics and Clean Up Lists Regularly
Email metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates are used to gauge whether your email marketing strategy is working. If the metrics are not good, take a breather and reevaluate why this is happening.
You are probably sending the emails to the wrong clients. Or the frequency or content of your emails is problematic. The metrics will tell you exactly what is wrong.
To improve deliverability, you need to look at email open rates and click-through rates. If clients are not opening your emails, or they are opening them but bouncing, then your deliverability will suffer.
It is best to either cull your lists and remove such clients or, if you don’t want to lose them, improve your email quality and personalization. This way, you will have better metrics, resulting in improved deliverability.
Conclusion
Email deliverability is one of the core metrics that must be high for a successful email marketing campaign. Even without the marketing aspect, emails are a vital source of communication in the business world. If your emails were not being delivered, it could result in business consequences such as misplaced information, missed deals, and projects getting late.
With the expert tips that we have compiled, you can do away with this problem forever.
