Ask a Deliverability Expert: Four Deliverability Tricks That Actually Work

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There are so many tactics I see newsletters use to stay out of the spam folder, like asking readers to move their emails to the priority inbox or instructing them to whitelist their newsletter’s email address. Are any of these actually worth doing?

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Email is still a pretty young channel, but it has grown and changed quite a lot over the past 50 years. From spam filters making decisions by looking at an IP all the way to new forms of authentication to protect senders from spoofing, getting into the inbox is no easy feat, especially if you don’t follow all best practices. 

Over the years, senders have identified certain tricks to get their emails into the inbox. The mailbox providers, spam filters, and various blocklists then adapted to stop some of those tricks from working. 

Still, you’ve probably seen an email like this land in your inbox:

That’s an email sent for one purpose: To try to keep their newsletters in your inbox. But does it work? We often talk about red flags — tactics that might hurt your deliverability — but there are also green flags out there — tactics that help you land in the inbox. So let’s talk about some of these tactics, and figure out which might be worth trying with your newsletter.

Which tactics actually work?

Deliverability is all about knowing what your subscribers want to receive and sending that type of content to them. Spam filters and mailbox providers are looking to catch emails that are malicious or annoy their users, and if they spot one of these emails, they’ll stop them from landing in the inbox. But any tactic that generates a positive, organic action will help your sender reputation — and your deliverability.  

The best tactic to use: Sending great emails that readers love to open and click. (Of course, that’s easier said than done.) But there are four other tactics you might want to try, too:

Tactic #1: Asking subscribers to move your emails to their priority inbox

Asking a customer to move your brand’s email to the priority inbox is a great way to let spam filters and mailbox providers know that your emails are valuable. But it’s not always the quick fix it seems like. First, not every inbox offers different tabs, and not everyone uses them. (Many still see their emails in a chronological order.) Second, if you are sending emails to people who don’t have a strong relationship with you, prompting them to move your email to the inbox won’t save you from the spam folder, since they probably won’t take the action.

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Having emails moved to a different tab, in the long run, should help with deliverability, as your most active readers will continue to see your emails where they want to receive and, hopefully, continue to interact positively with them. This tactic is great when you are looking to stabilize or grow your engagement ratio — the ratio of engaged readers to emails sent. 

I’ll also note that this works great for certain business cases, but not in all situations. For example, if you are selling online courses and you have new students actively taking your course, asking them to move your emails from the Promotions tab to their main inbox tab will allow them to see your educational content among all their other important emails. But let’s say over time, your students finish the course, and now you’re mostly sending promotional emails to get them to purchase another course. Don’t be surprised if those emails land in the Promotions tab — that’s where the inbox believes that type of content should be.

Tactic #2: Adding the sender email to an address book

Asking your subscribers to add your email in their address book is a great way to show mailbox providers that your subscribers want to have a relationship with your brand. Some inboxes will prompt their users to do this when downloading the content of an email. That makes it easy for readers,as you don’t have to do anything — the mailbox takes care of it for you! In other cases, you have to prompt your subscribers to do this.

As every mailbox provider is different, so there isn’t a one-size-fits-all trick to help your subscribers do this in one click. I have seen brands ask this of their customers at sign up or within the first few emails. The thing to keep in mind is that having a passive sentence in your email that prompts your subscriber to perform this action probably won’t be enough. It’s just too big of an ask, even though it’s a simple one. Some readers won’t understand how to take this step, or they don’t have the time to do it, or they don’t clearly understand the benefit of why they should take the step. (The main benefit: They’ll see more of your emails, but that may not be enough for them.) 

If you’re going to ask a user to do this, try to make it clear why you’re asking. The more clear the benefit, the easier it will be to get a subscriber to perform this action. For instance, a reader might take the time to add an airline’s email address to their address book if they’re first reminded that they don’t want to miss important flight updates. 

Tactic #3: Asking subscribers to star or save an email for future reference

This action is one of the easiest for your audience to do. The star/save option is easy to find and is done in one click in most mailbox providers. Unfortunately for us senders, getting subscribers to star all of our emails is probably an impossible feat! Not every single email we send should be saved for future reference anyways. When using this tactic, we want to ensure that we are using it when it makes the most sense. For instance, stores can send coupons in their emails that can be scanned when someone shops in person. Prompting a reader to star that kind of email so they can find it faster in store would make sense. Prompting someone to star a “reset password” email might not!

Tactic #4: Asking subscribers to reply

It’s easy to forget as senders that our subscribers can write back to us right from their own inbox. Getting them to reply back to your email is a great green flag, even if it’s a tactic that’s underutilized. Let’s be honest: How many conversations in your inbox start from a marketing email you’ve received? Personally, the only times I can remember replying back was if I saw an issue within the email, content or otherwise, and wanted to politely let the brand know! 

Replies are great because they show that you’re a brand that cares about its customers and are open to starting a conversation with them. Replies boost your engagement ratios, and if subscribers are prompted correctly and see the value in replying back to your email, you can use this tactic to get reviews, pictures, comments, or other useful feedback! (The Not a Newsletter welcome series, for instance, uses replies as a way to learn more about subscribers, which helps steer the Google Doc’s content strategy.)

Don’t forget, email is a two-way street, and replies are a great way to engage directly with readers and improve deliverability all at once.

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Keep in mind…

Now, all these tactics won’t save you from the spam folder if you’re not a good sender following all best practices. These green flags, as powerful as they can be, will never compensate for spammy or clickbaity tactics. You still need to have explicit permission from subscribers to email them, and still need to provide real value within your emails — inboxes are going to look at clicks and engagement after someone opens your email.  Don’t underestimate how proper list practices and marketing strategies based on engagement can help you stay out of the spam folder, or how useful it can be to reduce your overall email volume by sending your marketing emails in a more targeted manner.

So, yes, you can try these four tactics, but don’t forget to focus on a few other key strategies to make sure you stay in the inbox:

• Authenticate your domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
• Show the value of your emails during the signup process
• Create a killer welcome email series
• Review how you segment and target your subscribers over time
• Make it easy to unsubscribe
• Create a sunset policy to automatically remove subscribers who’ve been on your list for a certain period of time and who haven’t engaged with a certain number of emails
• Clean your lists with list cleaners and by segmenting non-openers out

Do all of this — and send great emails on a regular basis — and you should consistently land in a reader’s inbox.

Have a question that you’d like Yanna-Torry to answer in a future edition of Ask a Deliverability Expert? Submit it here.

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