Email marketing is only successful if recipients receive your messages in their inboxes. Unfortunately, email deliverability can be quite difficult for marketers, especially when dealing with issues like being flagged as spam, having a high bounce rate, and having a bad sender reputation. SMTP, or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, and its related servers are one approach of overcoming these difficulties. But what is it, and how does it affect the deliverability of your emails?
What is an SMTP Server?
To understand how SMTP servers can improve your email deliverability, it’s essential to know what they are and how they work.
An SMTP server is a type of server that is responsible for the sending, receiving, and relaying of email-specific data. When you send an email, your email client communicates with an SMTP server, which reads all the data regarding the message’s transmission, including the senders, receivers, and domains, and carries out the delivery process.
In short, SMTP servers are essential for making sure that your emails reach their intended recipients. Your emails wouldn’t be able to get to their intended recipient without an SMTP server. SMTP servers assist in making sure that your emails reach their recipients’ inboxes without being classified as spam. Additionally, SMTP servers contribute to higher email deliverability rates, which increases the likelihood that your emails will be seen by the recipients you intend.
Furthermore, these use a variety of protocols to communicate with other servers. The protocols include the use of SSL/TLS encryption, which helps to secure the transmission of email data. SMTP servers also use authentication mechanisms to verify the identity of the sender and recipient. The safety measures make sure that emails are delivered to the intended recipients and help to avoid email spoofing.
SMTP servers, in a nutshell are an essential part of email communication. They are essential in making sure that your emails reach their intended recipients and aren’t marked as spam.
SMTP Servers and PowerMTA
SMTP servers come in many forms, but one of the most advanced options is PowerMTA, or Message Transfer Agent. PowerMTA is becoming increasingly popular with email service providers due to its specialized email delivery software, which is more suitable for high-volume email delivery than normal SMTP servers. PowerMTA allows greater control over email sending, IPs, and domains, making it easier to manage large email campaigns.
One major benefit of PowerMTA is that it can accommodate the use of several IPs, while a normal SMTP server can only use one. This means that PowerMTA is suitable for both small senders who desire one IP and larger senders who seek more IPs to achieve high-volume email deliveries. At Inboxroad, we use PowerMTA to provide our customers with the greatest possible email deliverability.
How Can SMTP Servers Improve Your Email Deliverability?
Utilizing an SMTP server, particularly one as sophisticated as PowerMTA, can help you increase the deliverability of your emails and get them into users’ inboxes. You may more easily handle sizable email campaigns and make sure that your emails reach your subscribers’ inboxes as opposed to being flagged as spam or getting lost in a clogged inbox by using specialized email delivery software.
Tips for Improving Your Email Deliverability
Now that you know how SMTP servers work and how they can improve your email deliverability, let’s dive into some additional tips that can help you get more emails into subscribers’ inboxes:
1. Build a Strong Sender Reputation
Your sender reputation is one of the most critical factors that ISPs, or Internet Service Providers, consider when deciding whether to deliver your emails to subscribers’ inboxes. ISPs use complex algorithms to determine whether an email is spam or legitimate, and your sender’s reputation plays a significant role in this process. A strong sender reputation is built by consistently sending relevant and engaging content to your subscribers, avoiding spammy tactics like using all caps or excessive exclamation points, and keeping your email list clean and up-to-date.
2. Monitor Your Email Bounce Rates
Email bounces happen when your email is undeliverable, either because the email address is invalid or the recipient’s inbox is full. High bounce rates can hurt your sender’s reputation and reduce your email deliverability. By actively monitoring your email bounce rates and removing invalid email addresses from your list, you can improve your email deliverability over time.
Tip: If you sign up for a free account at Inboxroad, you can easily download, directly from your dashboard, all your bounce data.
3. Segment Your Email List
Segmenting your email list means dividing it into smaller groups based on specific criteria, such as demographics, interests, or previous purchase history. By sending targeted emails to each segment, you can improve engagement and reduce the likelihood of your emails being marked as spam.
4. Use a Dedicated IP Address
Using a dedicated IP address can help improve your email deliverability by ensuring that your IP reputation isn’t affected by the actions of others. This is particularly important for high-volume senders who may be sharing IP addresses with other senders.
5. Partner with an Email Deliverability Expert
Partnering with an email deliverability expert like Inboxroad can be a game-changer for your email campaigns. By working with a team of experts who understand the ins and outs of SMTP servers, PowerMTA, and email deliverability best practices, you can maximize the effectiveness of your email campaigns and see better results.
Tip: If you sign up for an account at Inboxroad, our deliverability specialists team will be with you all the way through.
6. Create Engaging Email Content
Your email content is a key factor in getting your subscribers to open and engage with your emails. To create engaging email content, you should:
- Use a clear and concise subject line that accurately reflects the content of your email
- Use a personalized greeting to make your subscribers feel valued
- Use a conversational tone and write in a way that is easy to read and understand
- Include a clear call to action that encourages your subscribers to take action
7. Keep Your Email List Clean and Up-to-Date
Keeping your email list clean and up-to-date is critical for maintaining a strong sender reputation and improving your email deliverability. To keep your email list clean and up-to-date, you should:
- Regularly remove invalid email addresses and inactive subscribers
- Segment your email list based on specific criteria, such as demographics or interests
- Use a double opt-in process to ensure that subscribers have confirmed their email addresses
8. Monitor Your Email Deliverability Metrics
Monitoring your email deliverability metrics is essential for identifying issues and taking corrective action. Some of the key metrics to monitor include:
- Open and click-through rates
- Bounce rates
- Complaint rates
- Unsubscribe rates
By monitoring these metrics, you can identify issues and take corrective action to improve your email deliverability.
The Importance of Email Deliverability
Your email marketing campaigns’ success depends on email deliverability. You are wasting your time and money if your emails are not reaching the inboxes of your subscribers. The reputation of your sender, the email’s content, and the sanitation of your email list are just a few of the variables that effect email deliverability. You may raise the efficacy of your email marketing and get better results by taking efforts to increase email deliverability.
Summary: Achieve Better Email Deliverability with SMTP Servers and Best Practices
Your email marketing campaigns’ success depends on email deliverability. You may increase the efficiency of your email campaigns and get better results by utilizing SMTP servers, putting best practices for email deliverability into practice, and working with a trustworthy provider of email deliverability like Inboxroad. To increase your email deliverability, keep in mind to concentrate on developing a solid sender reputation, producing interesting email content, and maintaining a clean and current email list.
