The Deliverability Index is a tool that allows you to understand how much the management of your campaigns, in all its aspects, complies with industry best practices.
The term deliverability should not be confused with the delivery rate (a metric that indicates how many messages reach the recipient's inbox out of the total sent), but has to do first and foremost with the concept of trust - between sender and recipient - and with that of the reputation – of who sends the email campaigns.
Inside MailUp you will find timely suggestions that will help you understand which activities can negatively impact the deliverability and performance of campaigns and what to do to intervene and improve the Deliverability Index.
What influences the Deliverability Index
The Deliverability Index consists of the evaluation of multiple aspects. Each of them, depending on how it is solved, is assigned a positive or negative score, defining a single final value for the entire platform. The actions that influence the Deliverability Index are:
How you acquire contacts (e.g. recipient consent)
How you manage contacts (for example by deleting unreachable recipients)
The compliant rate you receive (e.g. abuse reports)
The relevance and engagement of your communications (e.g. open rate and engagement)
How senders are authenticated
How do you organize the sending of domains
How to set up sending practices (volume/consistency) for IP reputation and delivery results
All of these aspects are evaluated based on campaigns completed in the last 30 days. For example, the deliverability index could be low if multiple campaigns were sent in the last month with an incorrectly authenticated sender while, with subsequent campaigns, it could improve simply because a different correctly authenticated sender is used.
How to improve the Deliverability index
Inside MailUp you will find some suggestions that will help you understand what influences your deliverability performance and how you can improve it.
These messages are placed in different sections of the platform, where you have the tools to monitor and intervene. So let's start from the problem, to understand where to find the suggestion.
Contact acquisition
The golden rule for sending massive marketing campaigns is to have the explicit consent of the recipient before adding it to any type of communication whether sporadic, continuous or repeated. Recipients are less likely to report messages as unwanted or offensive if they signed up voluntarily.
The Deliverability index helps you understand if you are implementing a good strategy by considering:
the acquisition and cleaning of contacts so as not to send, for example, to addresses with spelling errors or to "spamtrap";
the method of acquisition, with or without confirmation of registration;
the frequency of importing new subscribers and the main deliverability metrics of the first sending (opens, bounces, spam complaints).
If you're having trouble capturing leads, you can find suggestions on the Recipients > List page.
Reports of abuse
The rate of abuse reports is visible for each message sent in the Statistics section. These reports come from recipients who mark the message as spam directly from their inbox.
It is important to keep this rate to a minimum since ISPs (such as Gmail, Libero, Yahoo and others) according to internal rules can impose penalties - up to total blocking of delivery - for communications arriving from senders with too high a number of reports. The number of reports is therefore a factor that influences the Deliverability index score, even in an important way.
If you're receiving a high number of abuse reports that are jeopardizing delivery rates and Inbox bounces, you'll find suggestions on the Statistics > Email > List > Message Sent page.
Or, if you use the SMTP+ sending system, go to the Statistics > Email > SMTP+ Messages > Message sent page.
Relevance / Engagement
The importance of relevance and engagement has been confirmed by providers in various public conferences for several years now.
From a brand point of view, this aspect is important because:
Engagement with an email address tells us how the general public views our company
Engagement with providers provides information on how our recipients see our messages
Brand engagement gives us insights into how our customers see us.
If you're sending to a high rate of unengaged contacts (engagement rate) that's hurting your reputation, you'll find suggestions on the Statistics > Email > List > Message Sent page.
Or, if you use the SMTP+ sending system, go to the Statistics > Email > SMTP+ Messages > Message sent page.