Email deliverability is a key component of successful email marketing. Inbox providers like Hotmail look at several factors to decide whether an email should land in the inbox or the spam folder.
Email authentication, email authentication records, email list hygiene, and subscriber engagement are just a few of the things that play an important role in inbox placement. Follow these 7 tips (tested and proven by Folderly) to improve your Hotmail email deliverability.
1. Optimize Your HTML
Email deliverability refers to the likelihood that your emails reach recipients’ inboxes. This is largely determined by email service providers, which monitor the quality of emails you send to ensure that they’re not flagged as spam or otherwise deemed as undesirable.
To increase your email deliverability, prioritize clean HTML code in your emails. This can help your emails look more professional, ensure consistent rendering across devices and email clients, and improve the overall user experience of your subscribers.
For example, use HTML to add a table of contents for your email or create a navigation bar that allows users to quickly access any section in the email. Also, make sure that your email’s font sizes are large enough to be easily read on 6-inch screens.
2. Optimize Your Subject Lines
Emails have to compete for recipients’ time and attention. That’s why your subject lines must grab their attention and convey enough information to encourage them to spend more time engaging with your content.
Using alliteration can draw your recipients’ attention by creating sound and visual cues that make your subject line stand out in their inbox. You can also use numbers to create a sense of urgency and evoke curiosity. Subject lines that include hard numbers are more likely to be clicked than those with vague or ambiguous figures.
Keeping subject lines short and sweet is important; people check emails on mobile devices and often swipe right past subject lines that don’t generate enough interest. Likewise, avoid using all caps; this can trigger the instinct that the email might be spam.
You can buy Hotmail Email accounts in bulk for email marketing from BulkAccountsSale.
3. Optimize Your CTAs
Ultimately, your email deliverability hinges on your ability to effectively drive desired actions from recipients. That means having powerful CTAs that can help you reach your marketing goals.
Compelling action words that play into specific customer motivations are critical, as well as a standout design and placement of the CTA button in your email. Ideally, it should be placed above the fold so it is visible without scrolling down.
Additionally, make sure that your CTA is relevant to the destination page you are sending them to. If not, recipients may complain that they are being spammed and impact your deliverability score. Also, be consistent with your send frequency. Sudden spikes in volume will hurt your overall deliverability score. Sticking to a steady, predictable frequency will improve your reputation with inbox providers and subscribers alike.
4. Optimize Your Images
Email marketers can do a lot to ensure their email looks great even when recipients view it image-off. They can, for instance, employ background colors beneath images/cells in order to maintain their brand’s design language and use ALT text when available.
Additionally, they can avoid using images with high pixel density (like PNG and JPEG) since these files are more likely to appear blurry when reduced in size. They can also utilize SVG files when possible as these are less likely to become pixelated when reduced in size and offer better file compression.
Email marketers should also be mindful of the color contrast between email texts, images and backgrounds to prevent any potential visual discomfort. In addition, they should be cautious of strobing or flashing images as these can trigger seizures in subscribers who are prone to this condition.
5. Optimize Your Mailing List
Optimizing your mailing list is one of the best ways to ensure your messages reach their intended recipients. This includes ensuring that your list is clean and regularly removing inactive or unresponsive subscribers. It’s also important to understand your subscriber preferences. For example, sending a daily email to a subscriber who only signed up for a weekly newsletter could result in them overlooking your emails and possibly flagging you as spam.
Other factors to consider include clearly branding your email with a friendly-from address and avoiding excessive urgency in calls to action (such as “Update now!”). These steps can help your email stand out among the spam folders and improve your Hotmail/Outlook deliverability rates.
6. Optimize Your Content
The content of your emails is a key factor in maintaining good deliverability rates. This includes the words, images, and overall message of your email.
Clearly brand your email with a recognizable friendly from address, and avoid excessively urgent calls to action (e.g. Log in right now, Update immediately!) as these can be a spam trigger.
Provide your subscribers with valuable, exclusive content that they cannot find on your website to increase engagement and increase the perceived value of your email. This can help you maintain a high sender reputation and improve your deliverability.
Ensure that your subscribers are really interested in your content by using a double opt-in subscription process and regularly validating your list. This will reduce hard bounces, which can negatively impact your deliverability rate.
7. Optimize Your Spam Filter
Email spam filters are a complex system of algorithms that determine whether messages will reach the inbox or be automatically moved to the junk folder. Understanding the nuanced criteria these algorithms use can help improve your deliverability and ensure emails are reaching your recipients.
A high spam score can indicate that your emails are getting marked as spam, so optimizing your spam filter is a crucial aspect of improving your deliverability. To do this, you can start by ensuring your emails aren’t using spammy phrases such as all caps, fishy words, or excessive exclamation marks.
Also, try avoiding massive follow-up campaigns over short periods of time as this can appear suspicious to email filters and increase your chances of being flagged for spam. Lastly, you can optimize your spam filter by managing your Safe Senders and Blocked Senders lists.
No comments yet