By Steph Wells, founder of Formidable Forms, a drag & drop form builder for WordPress that empowers freelancers to create form-based solutions.
getty
When you own a business, it’s vital to ensure that your email marketing strategy is on point and brings you closer to achieving your marketing goals. It provides a direct line of communication between your brand and its target audience. Taking advantage of this method ensures that your business builds rapport with its customers and moves them through the conversion funnel.
Email marketing is a method proven to generate sales, build customer loyalty, drive traffic to your website and much more. Email campaigns make it easy to reach out to subscribers and entice them with your content and products so they’re eager to keep in touch with your brand.
Let’s look at four ways you can improve your brand’s email deliverability so your campaigns receive even better results.
1. Include a permission reminder.
One part of gaining access to users’ inboxes is getting permission to send them your emails. You can use a welcome email to not only welcome users to your subscriber list but also add a permission reminder so your emails don’t head to spam.
MORE FOR YOU
A permission reminder is a short blurb in an email that reminds users how and why they’re receiving your emails. Including this in your campaigns reduces the chances of people unsubscribing or marking your content as spam because it informs them from the start. It also improves your reputation as well as deliverability.
Permission reminders serve a few important purposes for your campaigns as they:
• Improve your campaign’s deliverability
• Build trust and a positive rapport with subscribers
• Let you personalize your message
• Comply with anti-spam laws
Your campaigns need to land in users’ primary inboxes and stay away from spam so they receive better conversion rates. You can have the best content in your industry, but if no one is seeing it, it doesn’t matter.
2. Improve your branding.
If users see an email pop up in their inbox and they don’t recognize the sender, they’re likelier to send it to the trash or the spam folder. The last thing you want is for subscribers to mistake you for someone else because it reduces the chances of them opening your emails. What’s worse, if it isn’t obvious that the email belongs to you, it could push them to unsubscribe and you’ll lose them forever.
Eliminate the chances of being sent to spam by improving your branding. When users see your email, they should automatically know it’s from you. The easier your business is to recognize, the better your open rate will be.
Make sure every email you send is consistent in its branding, which includes its look, tone of voice, color scheme and language. If you’re conversational in one email but overly proper in another, it confuses subscribers and shows inconsistency.
3. Use an SMTP configuration tool.
If you send emails through WordPress, you might come across an issue where your emails don’t send to users’ inboxes. They either go straight to spam or never get delivered. This is because WordPress uses the PHP mail function to send emails. The problem is that many hosting providers don’t have servers to properly configure PHP emails, which causes deliverability issues.
You can avoid this problem by downloading an SMTP configuration plugin. These tools ensure that all emails sent through WordPress deliver to users’ inboxes without issue. Its built-in SMTP mail provider integrations use the provider’s direct API. So, even if your web hosting service blocks SMTP ports, your email campaigns still send successfully.
4. Add an unsubscribe link.
You might think that not including an option to unsubscribe to your campaigns will improve your deliverability and open rate. In reality, however, it hurts your campaigns. Users want control over the content they get in their inbox. If you take that control away, it leaves a bad taste in their mouth and pushes them to unsubscribe through your website instead.
The more effort subscribers have to put in, the more frustrated they’ll be, which only hurts your reputation. They might mark your emails as spam which makes it even more difficult to get your content to users. On top of that, it’s against the law not to include this link in your campaigns according to the CAN-SPAM Act.
When you create your campaigns, always include the option to unsubscribe at the bottom. You’ll avoid litigation and frustrated subscribers who want to run away from your business.
You can make it even easier to unsubscribe by creating a one-click unsubscribe link.
You want your subscribers to feel comfortable receiving your content because it encourages them to engage with it further. If they know they can opt out at any time, it takes the pressure off and shows you want to bring them value. Building trust and credibility is essential to growing a successful brand with customer loyalty.
The email campaigns you send your subscribers can either strengthen or hurt the relationship you have with them. By following these best practices, you’re on the path to improving your email deliverability and closer to achieving your marketing goals.
