The Perfectly-Deliverable Email
What is the Perfectly-Deliverable Email (PDE)?
It’s an email that has the maximum possible chance of being delivered directly to the recipient’s inbox with the absolute minimal chance of being:
Rejected by the email server
Put into Quarantine by the email server
Shunted into the recipient’s SPAM folder by the email server
So what does the Perfectly-Deliverable Email look like?
Well… it:
is plain text (no html or images).
has zero file attachments.
is from a properly-authenticated domain (passes DKIM, SPF, and DMARC tests with flying colors).
is from a dedicated IP address (not shared with spammers) that has been sending reasonable amounts of emails to consumer mailboxes for thousand of years.
Contains zero “spammy” words or phrases (or emoji) in subject or body.
Is addressed to a single addressee using the “To” field (not the BCC field).
Contains zero references/links to websites with a different domain than the sender’s email address.
But I don’t want to send plain emails that look like crap!
Nobody does… except maybe Craigslist. However, pretty much anything to add to your email beyond that “perfect” list will only reduce its chances of ending up in an inbox.
Use images sparingly.
Stick with default fonts, colors, and styles… no colored backgrounds.
Set up DKIM (priority #1) as well as SPF and DMARC (priorities #2) for every email-sending system you use … no exceptions
Choose your language content carefully and avoid known spammy words and phrases
Send emails on a one-to-one basis… don’t BCC 30 recipients in an attempt to simulate an email marketing system… get a real system like Mailchimp or Constant Contact, or Pardot.
Include a Plain Text version of the email - which is a good signal to send to recipient servers.
If you’re using a tracking pixel, you’ll be upping your “spam score” … but you can minimize this effect by configuring your tracking domain to match your email sending domain.
Summary
Look… Nobody really cares about your awesome-looking HTML email signature with fonts, images, and links. It always amazes me to see people in Sales choose appearance OVER deliverability… that’s YOUR COMMISSION on the line!
