3 Simple Ways To Get More Emails Into Your Readers Inbox

You’ve heard it before. Email is the key to your internet business. After all, once you’ve gained an email address if you treat the person right then they’ll become a raving fan.

But in order to do that, you need to make sure that your emails are getting into their inbox.

Here are 3 ways to improve your deliverability rate that you’ve probably not heard before.:

Make Sure Your SPF Record Is Set

SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework and your SPF records allow you to publish a list of IP addresses that are authorized to send email on your behalf.

You’re probably using a mailing service like GetResponse or Aweber at the moment, and when you send from one of these services they use their own IP’s to send you email.

When the email hits your readers inbox it looks like it has come from you because the reply-to address is yourname@yourdomain.com but…

…when determining if they should deliver your email to an inbox, providers such as Hotmail, GMail and Yahoo check to see if the SPF record allows your mailing companies IP to send and email on behalf of your domain.

If the IP address of your emailing company isn’t there then your deliverability is going to be worse.

This is done because spammers will send emails with a reply-to domain that doesn’t have permission from the domain owner.

Don’t worry if that all sounds confusing because all you need to do is ask your mailing provider which IP’s you should add to your SPF records and then, when they give them to you, ask your hosting company to add them to the SPF record for you. Job done.

It’s something very few users do but can make a dramatic difference.

Clear The Deadwood

List hygiene is becoming more and more important because email providers such as Hotmail, GMail and Yahoo are taking into account how many of your emails bounce and how many people open them to determine whether they should let them get into someones inbox.

That means if you’re getting a lot of bounces and/or nobody is opening your emails then less and less of them are going to actual get delivered to the inbox.

Every month you should do a clear out of your mailing list. Search for anybody that hasn’t opened, clicked or purchased something in the last 120 days and remove them.

You can put them onto a separate list and contact them a couple of times to try and re-activate, but stop emailing them regularly.

After all, if they haven’t interacted with one of your emails in the last 120 days then you can assume they no longer want to receive your content.

Doing this will keep your open rates and click throughs high and keep email providers happy to let your email into their users inbox.

Choose Your Mailing Provider Carefully

There are thousands of different providers who will happily take your money in return for sending your emails. Just some of them include InfusionSoft, Aweber, GetResponse, ConstantContact, MailChimp, iContact and the list goes on.

But, just because they provide a similar service doesn’t mean that they are all the same.

In fact, the deliverability rate can vary wildly from provider to provider. Which is why it’s very important to make sure that you choose the right provider to send your emails.

But how do you do that?

Unfortunately it isn’t easy, you will need to test and ask around your network to get other peoples opinions.

However, take other peoples opinions lightly. You should always test yourself.

I would suggest taking a months trial with a variety of services and comparing the results of your opens and clicks to see which is the best.

In summary…

If you aren’t already using email marketing in your business then you should get started straight away.

If you are already using email marketing then

1. Get your hosting company to add your email providers IP’s to the SPF record for your websites.
2. Clear the deadwood from your list once a month.
3. Test other providers to see if they perform better than your current one.