8 Tips to Improve Email Deliverability for E-commerce Businesses

Email marketing remains a crucial channel for e-commerce businesses. However, even the most compelling email campaign won’t yield results if your messages don’t reach your customers’ inboxes. In this article, you will learn factors that influence your message landing in subscriber’s inbox and how to ensure email deliverability.  

 

What Factors Influence Email Deliverability? 

Email deliverability is affected by various factors, including: 

• Sender reputation 

• Email authentication protocols (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) 

• Email content quality 

• Engagement rates 

• List hygiene 

• Technical infrastructure 

 

• Sender Reputation
  Your sending patterns, complaint rates, and bounce rates determine your sender’s reputation. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use this score to decide whether your emails should go to the inbox or spam folder. When you have high complaint rates, it leads to a poor sender reputation, which reduces email deliverability and can take months to repair. However, when you have a good reputation, email providers might extend preferential treatment, making it one of the most critical factors in email deliverability. 

• Email Authentication Protocols (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) 
  Authentication protocols tell receiving servers that your emails are legitimate and haven’t been tampered with in transit. Some protocols include  

• • Sender Policy Framework (SPF), which verifies the sending server,  

• • DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) adds a digital signature to email 

• • Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) ties them together while providing reporting and policy enforcement.  

Without these protocols properly configured, your emails are more likely to be flagged as suspicious, even if your content is legitimate. 

• Email Content Quality
  The quality of your email content directly influences whether ISPs mark your messages as spam or allow them to reach the inbox. Content quality includes factors like text-to-image ratio, spam trigger words, proper HTML coding, and overall professionalism of the message. Poor content quality can trigger spam filters even if all other deliverability factors are optimal. 

• Engagement Rates
  Engagement rates track how recipients interact with your emails through opens, clicks, replies, and time spent reading. ISPs use these metrics to determine whether your emails are valuable to their users, with higher engagement typically leading to better inbox placement. Low engagement can signal to email providers that your content isn’t wanted, potentially leading to decreased deliverability across your entire sending program. 

• List Hygiene
  List hygiene refers to the practice of maintaining a clean, up-to-date email list by removing invalid addresses, hard bounces, and unengaged subscribers. A clean list helps maintain low bounce rates and high engagement rates, which are crucial signals for ISPs. Poor list hygiene can lead to high bounce rates and low engagement, damaging your sender’s reputation and deliverability. 

• Technical Infrastructure
  Technical infrastructure encompasses your sending servers, IP addresses, DNS settings, and mailing platform configuration. Proper technical setup ensures your emails are sent efficiently and reliably, while maintaining proper sending warm-up protocols and volume consistency. Poor technical infrastructure can result in delivery delays, bounces, or complete blocking of your emails, regardless of how good your content might be. 

 

How Do You Increase Email Deliverability? 

Follow these strategies if you have completed all technical setups, like authenticating your domain, and your email deliverability is still low.

 

Tip 1: Implement a Double Opt-in Process 

Double opt-in is the gold standard for building a quality email list in e-commerce. This process adds an extra layer of verification, significantly reducing the risk of spam complaints and improving your email deliverability. Double opt-ins can increase engagement and maintain a positive domain reputation when implemented correctly. This ensures your messages land in a primary tab in the reader’s inbox.  

 

The process also helps you comply with various international email regulations, including GDPR and the CAN-SPAM Act. Most importantly, it ensures that every subscriber on your list is genuinely interested in your products and communications, leading to better long-term engagement metrics. 

 

When subscribers confirm their email address through a verification link, you: 

• Ensure the email address is valid and active 

• Confirm the subscriber’s intent to receive your communications 

• Create a paper trail of consent for compliance purposes 

• Reduce the risk of spam complaints 

 

Example double opt-in flow: 

• Customer enters an email on your signup form 

• They receive a confirmation email 

• They click the verification link 

• Their subscription is activated 

 

Tip 2: Clean Your Email List 

Email list hygiene is crucial for maintaining high deliverability rates and protecting your sender’s reputation. Studies show that email lists naturally decay by about 22.5% each year, meaning that without regular cleaning, nearly a quarter of your list could become invalid annually. An unclean list with inactive subscribers and invalid emails can damage your sender’s reputation.  

 

Implement these practices to clean your email list: 

• Remove hard bounces immediately 

• Monitor soft bounces and remove recurring ones 

• Delete invalid email addresses 

• Segment inactive subscribers (no opens/clicks for 6+ months) 

• Run your list through email verification services quarterly 

 

Tip 3: Segment Your Audience 

Audience segmentation is a powerful strategy that can dramatically improve your email deliverability and engagement rates. When you segment your audience effectively, you can create a more personalised experience that reduces spam complaints and unsubscribes.  

 

Modern e-commerce platforms provide rich customer data for sophisticated segmentation strategies based on users’ behaviours and preferences. When you send relevant content to specific segments, engagement rates increase, positively impacting your sender’s reputation.  

 

You can segment your email list by 

• Purchase history 

• Product purchased 

• Browse behaviour 

• Email engagement levels 

• Geographic location 

• Customer lifecycle stage 

 

An example will be creating a list segment for users who bought a product during your holiday promo. You can also have a segment of customers who engage – Open and click – promotional emails for 3 months. Your segment can be broad or very specific based on the type of emails and results you want to achieve. 

 

Tip 4: Send Engaging Emails 

Email service providers increasingly use engagement metrics to determine whether emails reach the inbox. The key to engagement is creating a consistent, valuable experience that subscribers look forward to receiving. Your email content strategy should focus on building long-term relationships rather than just driving immediate sales. 

 

Engagement is a key deliverability factor. Here’s how to create emails that recipients want to open: 

Write compelling subject lines: 

• Keep them under 50 characters 

• Use personalization when relevant 

• Create urgency without being spammy 

• A/B test different approaches 

Avoid trigger words: 

Stay away from terms that can trigger spam filters: 

• “Free” 

• “Act now” 

• “Limited time” 

• Excessive punctuation (!!!) 

• ALL CAPS 

Design an email template: 

• Maintain consistent branding 

• Use responsive design 

• Balance text and images (60:40 ratio) 

• Include alt text for images 

• Ensure proper HTML coding 

Use Call to Action: 

• Use action-oriented language 

• Make buttons prominent 

• Limit to one primary CTA 

• Ensure proper contrast and sizing 

 

Tip 5: Use Effective Email Marketing Tools 

The right email marketing platform can provide crucial insights into your deliverability metrics while automating many best practices. Modern email marketing tools offer sophisticated features like predictive sending times, automated engagement scoring, and real-time deliverability monitoring.  

 

Additionally, these platforms can increase your inbox placement rates through proper authentication and delivery optimization. Investing in quality email marketing tools allows you to build the infrastructure to maintain and improve your deliverability over time. 

 

Invest in reliable email marketing platforms that offer: 

• Authentication setup (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) 

• Deliverability monitoring 

• Bounce handling 

• List management tools 

• Analytics and Reporting 

• A/B testing capabilities 

Popular email marketing tools for e-commerce include Klaviyo, Brevo, Mailchimp, and SendGrid. 

 

Tip 6: Enable Global Unsubscribes 

Making it easy to unsubscribe improves overall engagement rates by ensuring your list contains only interested subscribers. A well-implemented unsubscribe process can reduce spam complaints, as subscribers are more likely to use the unsubscribe link than mark emails as spam.  

 

You can make it easy for recipients to opt-out by: 

• Including clear unsubscribe links in every email 

• Processing unsubscribes requests within 10 days (CAN-SPAM requirement) 

• Consider a preference centre for alternative engagement options 

• Honour unsubscribes across all email types 

 

Tip 7: Optimize for Mobile 

With the massive adoption of mobile devices globally, mobile optimization is no longer optional in e-commerce email marketing. Up to 75% of consumers use their smartphones to check email, so poor mobile optimization can severely impact your deliverability rates. Mobile users are more likely to mark non-mobile-friendly emails as spam, directly affecting your sender’s reputation.  

 

Additionally, most consumers delete emails that don’t render properly on their mobile devices within three seconds, leading to decreased engagement metrics that can harm your deliverability. 

 

Here are some steps to improve email mobile optimization 

• Use responsive design 

• Test across different devices and email clients 

• Ensure readable font sizes (minimum 14px) 

• Make CTAs thumb-friendly (minimum 44×44 pixels) 

• Keep subject lines short for mobile display 

 

Tip 8: Carry Out Email Deliverability Tests 

A regular email deliverability test helps you identify potential deliverability issues before they impact your entire email program. The email testing program should include multiple types of tests, from basic spam filter checks to more complex authentication and rendering tests across different email clients and devices.  Some tools include Gmass, GlockApps and Warmy.io.  

 

Email Deliverability Checklist 

• Authentication protocols configured (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) 

• Double opt-in process implemented 

• Regular list cleaning schedule established 

• Segmentation strategy defined 

• Mobile-responsive templates tested 

• Engagement monitoring in place 

• Unsubscribe process working properly 

• Spam trigger words reviewed 

• Deliverability testing tools integrated 

• Sender reputation monitored 

 

Hire a Digital Marketing Agency to Improve Email Deliverability. 

While these tips can significantly improve your email deliverability, partnering with a digital marketing agency can provide expert guidance and implementation. Digitezz offers dedicated email marketing specialists as part of our digital marketing services to help you improve deliverability and revenue performance.  

 

Book a free consultation to see how we can help you improve your deliverability with proven email marketing strategies for e-commerce businesses.