You can search the internet far and wide and you will find that there are no books, easy to copy strategies or step-by-step guides that will ensure your emails will reach the coveted inbox (though we do come close with our complete email deliverability handbook).
The reason there are no clear cut manuals is because each ISP has its own set of regulations, filters, and guidelines for determining whether or not an email meets their qualifications for inboxing.
While the specific guidelines each provider has remain unknown to the public (email marketers included), there are a few things that email marketers can depend on to improve their inboxing across all ISPs, and that’s having a high level of email engagement.
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3 ways to land in the inbox
So how do you improve your email engagement? By utilizing what we do that impacts inbox placement and making sure your campaigns are created in a way that maximizes inboxing potential.
Content is Still (and Forever) King
Inbox placement is the bane of a mailer’s existence. Especially since it appears ISPs requirement change daily, and email marketers are given zero insight into what changed, or how they can adjust campaigns to meet the new requirements. That being said, one thing is certain – engagement is key for high inboxing, and content is your key to engagement.
Content does more than determine if your emails will yield conversions. It has a long lasting impact on the overall success of your campaign and can play a serious role in the way the rest of the parameters impact your campaigns.
With the right content, engagement will follow. High engagement means that the content you are sharing in your emails is relevant to your readers. This is the key way to ensure that your emails will reach the inbox.
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Suffer from Poor IP Reputation? Check Your Content
Many times email marketers will report a poor IP reputation and will not think to look at the content. While it is important to continually make sure your emailing list is clean, and that bounce rates and complaints remain low, sometimes the reason IP reputation is suffering could be because there is low engagement with the recipients. The only way for this to change is by having good subscriber engagement, and the way to have that is by working on your content.
Engagement drives action. Even if the action is not a conversion, it helps increase email opens, click through rates, site traffic, and, of course, conversions. Email engagement can and will boost your IP reputation, and is a direct result of these factors that start with content.
Double-Opt In Users Mark You as a Spammer? Check your Content
Another main issue that impacts inboxing is the spam rate. Mailers often complain that their spam rate goes up, even when their subscribers have opted in and even double opted-in. So WHY are subscribers hitting the spam button? If your lists are clean, your subscribers legitimate, your promotions valid and everything else checks out, then content could be the culprit!
Despite opting in to a list, subscribers may mark your emails as spam if they feel that the content is not as relevant as they expected, the offers not as appealing or the email just not engaging enough. To solve this, email marketers can use analytics in order to further segment their lists and create more personalized content that can increase engagement and reduce spam rates.
Having a high spam rate, beyond reducing your list and impacting your IP reputation, also has a direct impact on your inbox placement. Because of this, email marketers need to be able to segment lists in order to ensure that the content each recipient receives is relevant to their particular needs. Email marketers looking to improve campaign effectiveness need to check their content first to see if that is the reason their spam rate is rising and their engagement declining.
In Case We Weren’t Clear, Content is Key to Inboxing
Companies looking to improve their inboxing should examine their content, and design engaging campaigns for their recipients. By analyzing past campaigns and split testing future campaigns, email marketers can test everything – subject line, header, length of text, CTA and more. Doing so will not only help them understand their campaigns, but it will give them insight into the content that drives their consumers to engage with their brand – and engagement is the first step towards higher inboxing (and conversion!).
Ongage can help you do that and more, click the button below to learn how we can boost your inboxing and ROI.
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