Have you ever tried to make a genuine connection in a crowded room? Everyone’s talking at once and sometimes it’s difficult to pay attention. Most of the time, you end up repeating yourself and your message gets lost.
If you really want to get to know someone, you need to have a one-on-one conversation. In fact, you need to have several. Marketing is no different, and that’s why email is such an effective tool.
Email marketing allows you to get to know your prospects and build relationships over time, but that’s only if your messages are reaching the inbox.
Let’s look at three email deliverability best practices that can put your Email Lead Generation strategy back on the path to success.
1. Schedule a data laundry day
It doesn’t matter if you’re using cold and purchased contacts or a list you’ve built from the ground up. Routine data cleaning is one of the essential email deliverability best practices. You wouldn’t go out with mud on your face, so why send your email campaigns into the world dirty?
Dirty data goes against email deliverability best practices. It also wastes time, money and resources and it’s a surefire way to tank your Sender Score.
Even the best email list decays at a rate of 22.5 percent annually (source: Hubspot) as people change jobs, abandon accounts and switch providers, which makes data cleaning one of the most important email deliverability best practices.
Take the necessary precautions to keep your email list clean by removing the invalid contacts and spam traps.
2. Don’t raise red flags
Weak content strategies that fail to connect with an audience can derail any great conversation. One wrong word can violate email deliverability best practices and land your campaign in the jaws of a junk folder.
If you’ve written your subject line in ALL CAPS, used excessive and unnecessary punctuation or odd symbols or emojis, it’s going to look like spam.
Certain words, in both your subject line and content, can also trigger spam filters. Variations on the words “urgent” and “free” being common offenders.
3. Don’t scream into the wind
If you were cold calling and you ran across a disconnected number, what would you do? You’d stop calling. That’s a hard bounce. The number is never going to provide a ROI.
Now what about the guy who answers, spews profanity and demands you to put him on the “Do not call” list? That’s an extreme opt-out. You’re not calling him back either.
Email deliverability best practices recommend removing hard bounces and opt-outs from your list immediately. Failing to remove opt-outs puts you at risk for spam complaints and could put you in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Some email service providers follow email deliverability best practices and will remove hard bounces and opt-outs automatically, others will not. So it’s important to monitor the process.
Bonus Tip: Why use Clickback’s email lead generation software?
Our software was designed with email deliverability best practices and CAN-SPAM compliance in mind.
Download our white paper to see how you can increase leads, while saving money.
