With most of the focus going to marketing emails it’s easy to forget another important type of emails and their deliverability rates – Transactional email. By this I mean communicational emails like “Order Confirmation” or “Important Account Update”.
Compared to marketing emails, the open rates tend to be a much bigger deal with transactional emails, since these are usually very important messages for your users and customers. There are several simple things you can do to help these stay out of the Junk folder.
1. Use a separate IP for your transactional emails
Yes, I know you take great care to keep your marketing emails relevant and performing well, and I’m sure don’t send spam, but the spam filter may disagree. If your marketing emails get ignored, it might hurt your overall deliverability, at least for that contact, and at most, for that ESP.
It’s important to keep your marketing campaigns separate from your crucial client communication, so start with using a separate IP address.
2. Don’t forget the Unsubscribe links
ESPs are pretty strict on this one, and may just flat out move you to the Junk folder if you don’t give ALL of your recipients opt-out links.
This one is a common mistake. Although you may think that your users wouldn’t want to unsubscribe from your notifications, you would think wrong. My suggestion is to have the unsubscribe link take them to a Notifications Settings center, where they can manage what kind of transactional emails they get from you.
3. Don’t overuse images
One of the first signs of spam for ESPs is having too many images, and not enough text. It’s hard to get the ratio right so it’s safest to stick to a general rule of thumb: don’t add any image you don’t have to.
Obviously, you’ll want to have a logo or signature in there, but you really don’t have to go beyond that. Stick to text and spam filters will send you on your merry way.
4. Send both html and text versions of the email
Simple enough – make sure to include a text version of your email content, to keep the filters happy. Your customers with older devices will also appreciate it.
5. Keep it relevant
I really didn’t think I have to mention this until I had someone ask me to take a look at their “Confirmation” email. They had everything in there but the kitchen sink: social links, promotional images and worst of all, spammy words. Try to stick to what’s important here. Keep it concise, on point, and skip any salesey(is that a word?) kind of text that filters hate.
There are plenty more tips to go around, but baby steps are the way. Do you have tips to share?