There’s a big difference between sending emails and delivering emails to your customer's inbox. Fortunately there are a few key things you can do to make sure that your emails stay out of the spam folder.
Get Permission
The first step to reaching people's inboxes is to get their permission. When you send emails to people who explicitly opted-in to your list, you get fewer spam complaints, higher engagement, and a better sending reputation.
Single opt-in is part of our Terms of Service. To learn how to set up an opt-in form on your website check out our Forms manual.
Double opt-in isn’t required but is highly recommended to prevent bots from signing up to your list and to show that people are enthusiastic about receiving your emails. It’s an extra measure of security for your list because it validates email addresses before entering your account and decreases bounce rates and spam complaints.
Craft Good Emails
The second step to reach people’s inboxes is to craft great emails, with relevant content. In Drip, you can easily craft your emails with our point and click Visual Email Builder. Consider the following when building your emails:
- Text to image ratio. Spam filters are suspicious of emails made up of mostly images.
- Thoughtfully add links. You don't want to add links more than 3 times in one email. Also, always verify that your links are working and send yourself a test email.
- Spam trigger words. Avoid using words flagged as spammy to stay out of the spam folder.
- Personalization. Use Content Snippets, and Liquid code to insert personalization into your emails and raise your chances of landing in the primary inbox.
- Email the right people. Use our segmentation feature to ensure you are sending to folks who want to hear from you.
Track Your Analytics
The third step is to track your analytics after you’ve sent out your email. Analytics are a crucial tool in understanding what the people on your list and their inbox providers are telling you. They show you which emails are landing in the inbox and which ones aren't.
Drip reports the most important information about your emails under the Analytics tab. While there are many helpful reports that you’ll find there, the ones you’ll want to focus on are the:
Email Metrics Report
The Email Metrics Report shows open, click, unsubscribe, and reply rates for each email in your account. These are the most important metrics for any marketer. Analyzing and maintaining benchmarks for these metrics can help you improve your marketing strategy and your deliverability.
Keep in mind that these metrics may vary depending on your specific audience, industry, and brand. For example, average open rates vary by industry.
Hard Bounces Report
Hard bounces occur when an email has been permanently rejected because the email address is invalid or it doesn’t exist. Not all hard bounces can be prevented, but by following the steps above you can make sure you’re doing everything in your power to get your emails into people’s inboxes.
Find the number of hard bounces within a given date range in your account under Hard Bounces. This is an important metric to track because if an email hard bounces once, Drip will no longer send email messages to that person.