eCommerce Email Deliverability: Best Practices and Pitfalls to Avoid

The email has become an essential tool for eCommerce businesses to reach out to their customers and drive sales. However, with the increasing volume of emails being sent daily, ensuring that your emails reach your customers' inboxes can take time and effort. This is where eCommerce email deliverability comes into play.

Email deliverability refers to the success rate of emails reaching their intended recipients' inboxes instead of spam folders or being blocked altogether. A high email deliverability rate for eCommerce businesses is crucial to maintaining customer engagement, building trust, and driving sales. However, as of 2022, the email deliverability rate sat at a meager 84.2% and looked to be decreasing year on year.

This article will discuss the best practices for eCommerce email deliverability, the pitfalls to avoid, and tips for improving your email's chances of reaching your customers' inboxes.

Best Practices for eCommerce Email Deliverability

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Building a Clean Email List

Building a clean email list is one of the most critical steps to ensure high email deliverability. Your email list should consist of subscribers who have explicitly opted-in to receive emails from your business. Purchased email lists, fake email addresses, and inactive subscribers can negatively impact your email deliverability and result in many bounces and spam complaints.

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Opt-In Subscriber Confirmation

Establishing a clean email list starts with an explicit opt-in process. Your subscribers must confirm their contact information and intention to receive emails from your brand. This confirmation step reduces fake addresses and inactive users on the list, helping enhance email deliverability in the long run.

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Adhering to Email Marketing Laws

Staying compliant with email marketing laws, such as the CAN-SPAM Act in the US, is another critical step to ensure high email deliverability. These laws set the standards for commercial email and provide guidelines for sending emails, including what information must be included in the email, the process for opting out of future emails, and the consequences for non-compliance.

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Personalizing Email Content

Personalizing your email content has improved email engagement, leading to higher email deliverability. Personalized emails are more likely to be opened and read by subscribers, reducing the likelihood that they will mark your emails as spam or unsubscribe. Personalization can include using the subscriber's name, location, or recent purchases to tailor the email content to their interests.

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Monitoring Email Performance

Monitoring your email performance, including open rates, click-through rates, and bounces, can help you identify potential deliverability issues and make changes to improve your email's chances of reaching the inbox. This data can also provide insights into what type of content resonates with your subscribers, allowing you to tailor your email campaigns for maximum impact.

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Building trust and credibility

Building trust and credibility with your email list is an internal part of improving email deliverability. To achieve this, it's essential to ensure that your emails are authentic and trustworthy. This could include providing reliable contact information, having a consistent email design and voice, and striving to create meaningful customer experiences. If you need help figuring out where to start, you can create a signature for free using an email signature generator that includes your brand name and contact information, as well as any social proof and awards that you may have.

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Pitfalls to Avoid in eCommerce Email Deliverability

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Spam Filters and Blacklists

For eCommerce stores, one of the most daunting tasks is to ensure that their emails are not categorized as spam by email filters. Email filters exist to protect users from suspicious or malicious messages. If several people mark your communication as unsolicited mail, it can be automatically routed straight into their junk folder. To prevent this, it is essential to avoid words or phrases such as "free" or "earn money fast," which may trigger a red flag for many filter systems.

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Using a Shared IP Address

Small businesses commonly use shared IP addresses, which can negatively impact email deliverability. This is because multiple companies share the IP address. If one of them is sending spam emails, the actual IP address can be blacklisted, impacting the email deliverability of all companies using it. To avoid this, consider using a dedicated IP address for your email campaigns, which provides a more secure and reliable method for delivering your emails.

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Poor Email Content Quality

The quality of your email content can also impact email deliverability. Email content that is irrelevant, poorly written, or contains errors can result in high bounce rates, low engagement rates, and increased spam complaints. To avoid these pitfalls, focus on creating high-quality, relevant, and engaging email content that provides value to your subscribers.

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Ignoring Email Bounces and Complaints

Email bounces and complaints are crucial indicators of email deliverability issues. Ignoring these metrics can result in further deliverability problems and lead to your emails being marked as spam and sent to the recipient's spam folder. Regularly monitoring your email performance, including bounces and complaints, and making changes to improve your email's chances of reaching the inbox is essential for eCommerce businesses.

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Final Thoughts

eCommerce email deliverability is critical for building customer engagement and trust and driving sales. By following best practices and avoiding the pitfalls mentioned in this article, you can ensure that your emails reach their intended recipients and provide maximum value to your business. Just monitor your email performance regularly and make necessary changes to improve its deliverability. With the right strategies in place, you can ensure that your emails are delivered to the inbox and not marked as spam.

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