Hello,

I was reading a study about email. It said 20% of emails never make it to the inbox.

Crap… That’s like one out of every five emails you and I send!

So, tell me,

• Do your subscribers consistently receive your emails in their inboxes?
• Do they sometimes end up in the spam or get blocked entirely?

I know, I know… How would you even know if your email is going into the spam folder right?

“Email open tracking” is no longer reliable – it’s another topic altogether, so I don’t want to talk about it now.. (Reply to this email and tell me if you want me to cover it in another email..)

Let’s focus on email deliverability. Continue reading to learn the essentials, testing tools and habits.

With the right tools and some practice, you’ll be on your way to improving your email deliverability in no time!

Measuring and improving email deliverability:

First question is how do we even find out if our emails are going to the inbox?

There are tools and methods that help.

There are paid services for email warm-up, inbox placement etc – like MailReach. Their basic plan is affordable and lets you warm up one to five email addresses while providing additional features for email deliverability improvement.

What I love about MailReach is its top-notch user experience, easy registration process and a detailed dashboard that shows the performance of the email warm-up.

You can evaluate them if they suit your needs.

But my favorite method is a combination of “click tracking” and “asking readers to reply”. Add a few interesting links in every email – when people click, you know they got your email, read it and then clicked it. It proves that your email was valuable.

Similarly, an actual reply is the ultimate test of engagement. If someone takes time to answer your email, all email services (Gmail etc) think your email was important and should be given priority placement in future.

Since you’re already using Icegram Express, I highly recommend you upgrade to the Max plan – it has a ton of things that improve email deliverability.

• It verifies email addresses – so your list is clean
• You can use segmentation for more targeted and relevant emails
• Max plan automatically stops spam sign-ups
• It also shows “Engagement Score” for each subscriber – you can measure the most important metric of your email marketing…
• And, there is a built-in “Spam Checker” feature – before sending a campaign, you can check it for spam and edit content if needed.

All in all, the Max plan is the perfect solution to measure and improve deliverability.

But what if you can’t afford upgrading to Max yet? Then try one of these free spam test services.

• MailReach
• MailTester
• IsNotSpam

The way they work is that you send a test email to a special email address. And they’ll tell you it’s “spammyness”!

And BTW, you can send a test email before sending the campaign to the actual target list in all versions of Icegram Express.

Beyond spam checks…

We wrote a detailed guide on how to avoid landing in the spam folder on our blog. Apart from testing every email, here are some more things you’d need to do:

• Use a reputable email service provider – Icegram Express supports all of them.
• Avoid spam trigger words and phrases in your subject lines and content.
• Setup SPF, DKIM, DMARC and all other technicalities…

Yeah, some of this may sound too technical… Do you want to learn more about them and get detailed howtos?

Just reply with a “Yes for email deliverability” to this email, and I’ll plan something for you.

Now the winners…

Here are the people who get ‘Icegram Express Max’ licenses for a whole year (from April month’s draw):

• Corinne Balzer
• Mardie Caldwell
• Eunice Irungu
• Michel Pallier
• Paul Francisco

Congratulations! We’ll be reaching out to you individually with more details.

If your name is not on the list, don’t miss trying the next time.

Too long didn’t read?

The short version of this email:

• Use engagement scores – rather than simple open rates – to better judge results.
• Use Icegram Express Max plan (or another tool) to test every email campaign for spam score before you send it.

Using the right tool is like having a map while traveling in a foreign country. It will make your journey easier, successful and enjoyable.

Feel free to reply to this email with any questions or suggestions.

Good luck improving email deliverability.

Until next time,