Skyrocket Your Email Sender Score with these 7 Advanced Tips

Have you already tried different ways to increase your sender rep and still have poor score, with emails landing in spam folder?  You're not alone. Keeping sender reputation high is full of tricky pitfalls.

Yet, having a high sender score is a non-negotiable must-have if you want your emails to reach their rightful destination: your recipients' precious inboxes. On average, emails bring $36 for every $1 spent,  as long as you don't have any issues with email deliverability.

Now imagine how much money your business may loose by not paying attention to a poor sender score that makes it impossible to get it through spam filters?  You can use free email revenue calculator to get the precise number of potential money you could earn.

In this article, we've got some awesome tips from the Folderly email deliverability team to help you boost your email sender reputation and start earning the revenue you deserve.

So, let's dive in and check out these 7 non-intuitive hacks!

7 Uncommon Tips To Consider To Enhance Sender Reputation 

Email subscribers naturally degrade by about 22.5% every year. To remain relevant to your users, you will have to be competitive and persistent in sharing relevant content. While there is no universal approach for every instance of addressing email reputation, these 7 tips can help you skyrocket your sender reputation:

1. Sign up with all available complaint feedback loops
2. Segment your email list based on engagement data
3. Optimize your content strategy: optimal frequency and personalized content
4. Implement a strategy for dealing with inactive subscribers
5. Create the friendly-from (display name) address
6. Send quarterly opt-in emails
7. Do a comprehensive Email Deliverability Audit

Ensure your IP addresses and domains are enrolled in all available complaint feedback loops

Utilizing this approach will help the Internet Service Provider (ISP) to inform you of spam complaints submitted by recipients.  While 0.1% complaint rate is acceptable, the 0.5% rate is already too high.

The feedback loop ISPs use works through their feedback loop mechanism (FBL) and depends on the sending organization. Below are the major ISPs that provide FBLs :

You can either manually collect the information contained in the feedback reports (particularly the complainant’s email address) or automate the process with an email deliverability tool like GlockApps that extracts the email addresses of users and other custom header fields from FBL emails.

Segment your email list based on engagement data

Keeping a specific audience in mind when creating a campaign will get you better results from the start. Fact. However, segmenting based on engagement data will further improve your sender reputation. 

Focus on segmenting your user base by “click rate.” This will help you measure engagement effectiveness, and you can further segment the cohort based on whether they have clicked on your emails or not. A good practice is to segment customers based on the number of clicks on your emails using a specific time period, for example, 30 or 60 days. (Note that the average CTR is 2.37%)

Depending on the size of the segment, you can send targeted offers to reward or re-engage customers. Other metrics, including spam and bounce rates, could also help segment your customers based on engagement. 

Finally, bounce rate can help you clean up your subscriber base, as you will be able to remove uncontactable users.

Optimize your content strategy based on the optimal frequency and personalized content

Sending the optimal number of emails with relevant content is the make or break of any content strategy. The optimal number of emails is 6.21 emails per week. However, you should customize your schedule according to the need of your audience, as there is no universal optimal number of emails.

The best approach is to outright state how many emails your subscribers can expect from you. This can be done in the welcome emails that can create a 196% lift in unique click rate. In welcome emails, you can define the timeframe (weekly, monthly, etc.).

In addition, this will also help you schedule your promotions and special offers. If you're looking to automate this process, perform A/B testing to understand when your users engage with your content.

Expert tip from Folderly: Remember to choose one criterion for your A/B testing and choose a specific deadline. Otherwise, A/B testing has no value. 

Look to optimize cadence by following these rules:

1. Base cadence on customer life cycle;
2. Adjust cadence based on broader marketing goals;
3. Apply frequency-best practices globally;
4. Give subscribers control;

With frequency covered, you should next focus on personalizing your content. 

When creating personalized content, you can take the following into consideration: 

• Behavior - create content based on the subscriber’s recent behavior
• Location - use subscriber’s location to create reminders
• Interests - send content based on your subscribers' interests 

Implement a strategy for dealing with inactive subscribers

There is a reason a user interacted with your business. Perhaps the value proposition and the initial message struck a chord with the user. Not re-engaging such users and winning back lapsed customers is selling your business short. That's why we will give you a few tips to re-engage your inactive users: 

• Double-check your content 

Make sure you're delivering relevant content. Keep in mind that, on average, people receive over 122 business emails daily, so try and make your content stand out. Having polls, quizzes, or interactive content can reignite the spark with a user. 

• Offer discounts

Offering a discount targeted to inactive users will incentivize them to re-engage with your brand. Having giveaways or contests could be another way to get the users back. 

• Try a different channel 

If your users are not engaging with your emails, try contacting them through different channels (social media, telephone, etc.). This integrated approach can help you get users back to interacting with your emails and improve your email reputation score.  

• Be authentic 

You have to be consistent in your approach to users and the ways in which you provide value to them. If you are inauthentic, the trust will soon go out the door, and so will your email. 

• Survey subscribers

Perhaps the user's circumstances changed, and they can no longer keep track of the weekly emails that they initially opted for. This is where a survey comes in handy to help users refine their email preferences, and you re-engage them.

Use your full name + brand name in the friendly-from (display name) address

The "From" name, also known as the sender name, is as important as the subject line of an email. 45% of recipients say they are likely to read your email because of who it’s from.

Send quarterly opt-in emails

Although the average email opt-in rate is about 1.97%, it worth the loses. With opt-in emails, you tell your subscribers “your personal boundaries and time matter.  It is more efficient and ethical. Spamming your prospects will ensure you, your business, and your brand suffers. Having permission will improve the relationship you have with your audience and your sender's reputation. 

The quarterly opt-in emails may cover the following: 

• Invite users to interact - let them know about your online whereabouts 
• Encourage conversion - give them reasons to buy 
• Follow-up - if a cohort of users needs follow-up, you can use the opt-in email to reduce the number of mails 
• Send promotions - you can target quarterly promotions to go along with the opt-in request to increase conversion

Do a comprehensive Email Deliverability Audit

If you suspect something is wrong with your email deliverability, think about requesting a professional Email Deliverability Audit. It will help you clarify issues and ensure that your communication lands in the user's mailbox. 

Our email deliverability experts will help you detect weaknesses in your email deliverability by analyzing: 

📍 Your domain reputation;
📍 Your IP address reputation;
📍 Relevance of your content;
📍 Updated email lists;
📍 Frequency of your emails.

With this, a more in-depth analysis takes place, after which long-term recommendations are made. This approach ensures a long-term strategy that improves your sender score and ensures that deliverability is on point.

Final Words

Don't worry if you stumble along the way, we've all been there. Remember, every small step you take brings you closer to your goal, so keep pushing forward!  🚶‍♂️

Even if your sender score seems to be stuck, implementing just one of the non-intuitive tips and hacks we've shared can make a significant impact. 💌

Plus, you can find even more valuable advice in our guide to improving email deliverability - it's a real game-changer!

So keep calm, keep emailing, and keep crushing it! 💪