The entire world seems to be focusing on digital now that COVID-​19 has driven us all inside our homes. Businesses that previously relied on traditional advertising methods are finally making the switch to digital, particularly email ads. The problem is, that could make getting your client’s emails seen even more difficult. There are now even more messages cluttering their target audience’s inboxes. What can you do to help keep your client’s open rates up? The first thing to focus on is email deliverability.

Email Deliverability

Validity defines deliverability in its 2020 Email Deliverability Benchmark analysis as, “a sender’s ability to be delivered to the inbox.” Simple, right? Eh, not always. One out of every six emails sent never make it into any of a recipient’s folders. Instead, it goes missing. Where it goes, nobody knows; but it’s proof that you can’t just push the Send button and count the message as received.

Even if an email is delivered, there’s a chance that it didn’t end up in the recipient’s inbox. Emails still count as delivered when they end up in a spam folder AND when they go missing. That’s why an important factor in tracking email deliverability is the inbox placement rate. This placement rate will give your clients the exact number of emails that actually made it into recipients’ inboxes out of the total number of emails that were sent out.

Inbox Placement in the U.S.

Overall, email deliverability in the U.S. is pretty stellar. Last year, 82% of emails sent made it into their intended inboxes during most of the year. Missing emails made up 10% of messages in quarters one, two, and four, while dropping to 9% in the third quarter. Spam placement rates were the lowest last year, shifting between 8% and 9%. In total, inbox placement rates have fallen by 1% between 2018 and 2019, while spam placement has increased by 1%, and missing rates have remained the same.

Tips to Make it to the Inbox

There are a few tricks you can share with your clients to make their email deliverability scores higher.

First, they need to keep up to date with their inbox placement rates. By doing this, they will know if and when there is a problem with their deliverability that needs to be addressed.

Second is checking their email account’s reputation. As soon as an email is sent, the recipient’s mailbox provider filters the content to determine whether or not it is malicious or untrustworthy. If the email falls into either of those categories at the recipient’s gateway, it will be blocked from being delivered. According to Campaign Monitor, poor reputations are established by, “high bounces, low opens, and high spam complaints.” You can fix your client’s reputation by sending emails from the client’s own domain, sending email ads to a list of subscribed emails that is consistently updated, and ensuring that the messages are full of content that will prove useful to the recipients. If you want to know what kind of content your client’s target audience wants to receive from businesses, check out the Email tab in their AudienceSCAN profile on AdMall by SalesFuel.