The journey of an Email: From sender’s domain to recipient’s inbox!

Ever wondered how an email sets out on an intricate journey just to reach an inbox? It navigates through a complex path so that the right set of information reaches the recipients at the right time. This article explores the trajectory of an email as it tries its best to land safely in an inbox.

Here’s how it starts!

Suppose you are an email marketer, Mr. A. To launch an email campaign, first of all, you will sit down, brainstorm and finalize the visual content and the email copy. A lot of research, creativity and revisions go into creating the perfect email sequences. From knowing the target audience to conducting full-fledged competitor research and finally curating the email content, an email marketer does it all to ensure the highest opening rates and engagement. 

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The more interesting part is yet to come!

What happens behind the scenes: Email’s version!

There are multiple things that you need to keep in mind to ensure that your emails reach the right inbox.

First of all, one needs to be mindful of all the email guidelines issued by major email service providers or ESPs (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc). Also, implementing DMARC or Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance is a complete non-negotiable if you want the email communications to stay protected from any kind of phishing or spoofing incidents. If you fail to set up the DMARC policy in the right way, your emails will end up reaching nowhere. Besides DMARC, you will also need to deploy SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) policies to ensure a smooth email campaign.

The next technical factor that you need to consider is the reputation sniff test. It depends on your previous email sending history. The sending reputation is based on multiple factors, such as blocklist history, domain or IP reputation, spam complaint rates and email engagement. To ensure that your emails reach their destination, it is necessary that all the major email service providers approve your email sending reputation. Also, make sure that the DMARC setup is on point.

If you’re wondering how to check your sending reputation across different ESPs, try free tools (Yahoo’s Sender Hub, Google’s Postmaster Tools, and Microsoft’s Smart Network Data Service) that are designed specifically for this purpose. Keep in mind that each MBP or MailBox Provider has its own parameter to measure sending reputation. So the best thing to do would be to track and monitor email reputation individually on different tools.

One must also take a look at the FBL or feedback loops. FBLs are considered to be the secondary level of email sending reputation information.

What next?

Once you are done with the DMARC and reputation checks, the next step involves the front door of the recipient’s inbox. 

Here’s what it means:

• The inbox can let the email in, send it to the spam folder or reject it completely.
• The inbox may have a routing rule set that will move the email to somewhere else.
• The inbox can already be full. In that case, your email won’t be accepted.

Even though you can be aware of these scenarios, it is true that you have very minimal control over what can be done.

But here’s a very basic thing that every email marketer must do before hitting that send button! Make sure that the email address you are sending your emails to is valid and active. Also, it is best to use a list cleaning service that helps you remove all the undeliverable addresses from your email list. 

Safely landed in the inbox—Now what?

First of all, congratulations on your email reaching the recipient’s inbox. But is it enough to just reach the inbox? No!

The purpose of a marketing email is to encourage the recipient to take a specific action. But what if the recipient lets the email sit in the inbox? What if they don’t open the email at all?

Here’s what you should consider so that your email’s adventurous journey turns out to be fruitful:

• Use a subject line that is highly inquisitive. Hyper-personalized subject lines also work really well.
• Make the pre-header interesting enough. When the recipient previews the email, they must get curious enough about the rest of the email content. This increases the open rate of your emails.
• Ensure that the images embedded in your emails are working perfectly.
• The links that you share through your email content must work correctly.

Once you ensure all these, consider your job done. From hereon, it is the recipient’s choice whether they wish to engage with your emails. You can’t control anything else apart from the journey that your email takes to reach the recipient’s inbox.