5 deliverability tips for your next email newsletter

You put a lot of time and effort into your email newsletter every week, so I bet you want people to actually receive it…

Have you ever had someone tell you they aren’t getting your emails (when they’re clearly subscribed to your list)?

Odds are, your emails are ending up in their spam or promotions folder.

Improve your email deliverability with these tips:

1) Keep your list clean and fresh 🧼

Forreal: the actual term for this is List Hygiene!

Most Email Service Providers (ESPs) will give you a lot of info about your subscribers: who’s opening, who’s bouncing, etc.

If you have a list of 100 emails and 10 of them bounce (and 75 of them never open the message), spam filters say, “Hmmmm… something’s not right.”

It’s also a good idea to segment your list or tag your subscribers. (Ex: all of your school families get the tag #parent.) Then, when you announce your Parent’s Night Out event, you can just send it to #parents. It’s relevant to them, so they’ll likely open it – improving your list quality!

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2) All images = not a good idea

I see a lot of church and school newsletters that are just a wall of images – linked to various web pages and forms. This isn’t inherently bad, but beware:

🥷 Scammers figured it out first: they create an image displaying their scammy text instead of typing the actual words in the body of the email (since they know the text would get flagged right away).

Since these sneaky folks have figured out this “loophole,” email hosts have begun cracking down on images and links.

The funny part is: it’s not the images or links themselves that cause the problem. It’s the lack of text.

So, if you’re going to use images and links, make sure you include at least 500 characters of actual text in the email as well (this has been proven to be the threshold – read more here).​

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3) Keep your subject line authentic

Avoid: ALL CAPS, any exclamation points, and any words that are associated with a used car salesman 😜 (here’s a list of common trigger words).​

You’re not trying to be spammy, I know. But we can do this on accident, too…

👎 Example: FREE Parent’s Night Out THIS Friday!

^This subject line will, sadly, go right to spam.

👍 Example: We’re giving parents a night off

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4) Never send an attachment

Never, I repeat, n e v e r send an attachment in a mass email. Instead, host the document on your website or Google Drive and provide a link to it.

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5) Don’t embed a video

Although many ESPs provide an option to embed a YouTube video into your email, it is always better to:

• Take a screenshot of your video and insert the image
• Link the image to your YouTube video

Not using an Email Service Provider? It’s time, my friend. MailChimp and Constant Contact are common ones, but I like ConvertKit. I think it’s way easier to learn and it’s a little cheaper (in fact, it’s completely free for up to 1,000 subscribers if you don’t want the Pro features).

Give these tips a try and see if your Open Rate (the percentage of people who actually open your email) increases. I’d love to hear about what you find.