Sending Business Emails: How To Set Up Your Email Account So You Don't Get Banned
Email is dead, say the naysayers. But the truth is, it’s not that email marketing can’t get traction anymore. It’s just that, things are not as easy as hitting the send button anymore. Every day, a new technology that protects consumers from spam gets launched and ends up not delivering legitimate emails from businesses.
So what can we do? Despite the introduction of other forms of communication such as instant messaging, blogs, social media pages, email is still the most reliable communication channel for contacting clients and customers. According to research by Radicati, 128.8 billion business emails are sent and received every day.
If you’re having trouble getting your business emails delivered, here are a couple of things you can do in order to increase your email batting average.
Authenticate your email account
If you’re a new(ish) email sender and you don’t want to get your domain blocked, the first step is to authenticate. Authenticating your email account is like getting it approved for business. Once you get a license you’re on the way to delivering your products (in this case, your email.)
There are several types of authentication that you can use to send mass emails to everyone without getting a penalty to your email account. These are either SPF, DKIM, DMARC, or custom domains. You can choose whichever suits you best and whichever your tech has access to. Most of these settings can be accessed via the domain settings under your DNS (Domain Name System). These settings are defined by your server.
Head on to your provider’s FAQ and help page to choose the ones that you can do without pulling your hair out. Some are nice to have like DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance), but some are absolutely necessary like SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail). Setting these up greatly improves your email deliverability.
Make sure that you have a good sender reputation
Email service providers such as Gmail or Yahoo set up a Sender Reputation Score according to your domain and IP address. Meaning, if you want a good score, you gotta be good. One of the most common suggestions for newbies is to start low and slow. You got your authentication, you got your email addresses scraped, and you’re about to send your first email salvo to 10000 people. STOP! This is a recipe for getting your email on the lam. This might even end up with your email on the permanent block list.
Start by sending individual emails and having conversations. Do this for one to two weeks then gradually increase your number. This process increases your sender's reputation and creates a healthy email account for campaigns.
Keep track of your email sending
Especially at the initial stage, you should keep a list and record how many emails you are sending in a day. Even if you did get your email authenticated and you made sure that you warmed up your email account, not keeping track of your email sends can still get you blocked if you end up sending emails above the regular usage. Always maintain a sending quota. If you miss this and go over your limit, you end up attracting the attention of your email service provider and get your account blocked.
Don’t get listed on email blacklists
This seems obvious but for new accounts, it only gets painfully obvious once you get into one. IP blacklists are the list of addresses and domains that are being monitored for sending SPAM emails. Always check your domain and IP address health. If your domain or IP gets blocked, you will need to begin the process of warming up your email again. Domain-based blacklists are for those who frequently use their domain for sending SPAM or doing any phishing activities. Using IP addresses or networks used to send SPAM contents or abusive content also increases your risk of getting blacklisted.
Ask for feedback
If your email service provider allows you to collect a feedback form after unsubscribing recipients, take advantage of the service and gather solid data on what they did or did not like with your emails. This helps you have a meaningful engagement and create a plan on how to better contact them and increase your open rate as well. By doing this, the sender can also maintain a cleaner, more valuable list of recipients. In the long run, asking for feedback helps in email deliverability.
Build a verified email list
There’s a lot of emails that can be bought online but they are neither targeted nor verified. A verified email list decreases your bounce rate, increases your email deliverability, and also your sender reputation score. Having a verified list also avoids frequent bounces that can put your account in the time out corner by the email service provider.
Conclusion
Your email setup can affect your email deliverability. Get your emails delivered by following the best email setup practices before you start sending your campaigns. This maximizes your email deliverability, builds your sender reputation, and increases your domain reputation. Using a service such as the Linkedin Sales Navigator Scraper makes it easier to build a superior list because it has a built-in email finder that uses over a dozen databases and an in-built enrichment service to make sending business emails easier for you.