Email best practices

Mailbox providers, such as Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook, are responsible for processing incoming email and determining whether it should be delivered to the inbox, filtered into spam, or blocked entirely. This directly affects the emails you send to your customers. They make these decisions in part by maintaining a sender reputation score for each business, which helps determine whether emails from that sender should reach its recipients.

In this guide, we provide insights into how sender reputation works, specifically in the context of volume and sending regularity, and offer recommendations for sending newsletters and other email content effectively.

Sender reputation

Sender reputation influences whether your emails land in a user’s inbox or their spam folder. It is determined by several key factors:

• Sending IP and domain reputations: The overall sending history of your sending IP address and domain. Reputation is assigned to both, but IP reputation is weighted more heavily than domain reputation. High bounce and unsubscribe rates, a high number of spam complaints, and low user engagement negatively affect sender reputation scores.

• Sending patterns: The consistency in email sending volume and frequency. Sudden spikes in volume or erratic schedules can trigger spam filters and harm your reputation.

• Engagement metrics: User interaction with your emails. High open rates, click-through rates, and low unsubscribe rates positively influence your reputation. Engaging content leads to better reputation scores.

Best practices for sending email

To maintain a good sender reputation and improve your email deliverability when messaging a large email audience, consider the following best practices:

• Maintain good audience hygiene — It’s essential to keep your email audience well-maintained. Regularly reviewing and cleaning helps identify inactive or invalid email addresses. Failing to do so can result in high bounce rates and may also lead to sending emails to spam trap addresses. This can seriously damage your sender reputation and increase the risk of being added to blocklists by major email providers. To avoid these pitfalls, implement a routine for audience hygiene, such as periodically assessing subscriber engagement and using tools to verify email addresses.

• Establish a frequent, consistent sending schedule — Consistent sending helps email providers recognize your patterns. We recommend emailing your audience at least every two weeks. If you only send monthly, split your audience into four segments and send to each segment 24 hours apart

• Avoid large, sudden spikes in volume — For any message, do not send to more than twice your past week’s average daily send volume. For example, if your past week’s daily average was one million, don’t send more than two million messages within 24 hours. Exceeding this limit significantly raises the risk of a message being rejected or flagged as spam. Split large audiences into smaller segments and send to each segment 24 hours apart. See Email in Engagement reports.

• Segment your audience — Tailor your content for different segments of your audience based on engagement levels. Send to your most engaged subscribers first to improve open rates and engagement. See Segmenting your audience.

• Monitor engagement metrics — Regularly review your open, click, and bounce rates. If you notice a decline, consider adjusting your content or targeting. Se Email in Engagement reports.

• Create engaging content — Focus on creating relevant and valuable content for your audience. Engaging content leads to higher open and click rates, improving your overall reputation.

• Test and optimize — Conduct A/B testing to see which subject lines and content types resonate best with your audience. Use the insights to refine your strategy. See About A/B testing.