What You Need To Know About Email Deliverability You’re spending a lot of time each week crafting emails to your subscribers, but none of that will do you any good if you don’t have a decent delivery rate. If those email land in your potential customers’ spam folders, you don’t have much of a chance of making a sale or building a relationship with them.

Here are three tips that will help ensure that your email makes it to your subscribers’ inboxes.

* Set Up a Buffet ñ Instead of bringing the food to the table, you can use a long card table covered with a plane burlap table cloth, and a festive holiday runner down the center. Place all the food on top of the buffet. Decorate the wall behind the buffet with fall leaves and twinkle light garland.

* Stack Your Dishes ñ Dishes donít have to match to make a beautiful table. Most people like to get up and get seconds from the buffet, so stack the dishes on top of each other at each setting. You can find extra dishes at the Goodwill or other thrift stores. If you mix and match the table with sizes and colors, everything will look good.

* Set Up Stations ñ Another great idea is to set up different areas for different parts of the meal. An appetizer area in the living room, the main course in the dining room, dessert by the fire. Set it all up with some autumn dÈcor such as gourds, pumpkins, apples, pinecones, and fall flowers to set the mood.

You can set up areas of interest in different places. In the bathroom, hang fall-colored guest towels and put out fall-scented hand soap, and add little touches throughout the house. Add some garland to family photo displays, and set up some potpourri in areas that people congregate to bring in the feeling of fall in the air they breathe.

Use A Reputable Auto Responder Service  Using a reputable auto responder service is the single best thing you can do to improve your chances of avoiding spam folders. Companies like Aweber, Mail Chimp and Get Response work hard at making sure they are white listed with the big Internet Service Providers and email providers like Gmail. Most auto responder companies will list their delivery stats. In addition the good ones will make sure your emails are compliant and keep you out of hot water.

Set Expectations and Keep Them  Your chances of staying in the main inbox are high when your subscribers regularly open your email. The best way to insure that – outside of providing great content that your subscribers are looking for – is to set expectations from the beginning. Let your subscribers know early on when and how often they can expect an email from you.

You can even use “foreshadowing” in your messages. For example, toward the end of your current broadcast email, mention that they can look for another email from you next Tuesday.  Once you’ve set those expectations do what you can to meet them. Yes, things happen every once in a while.

In general though, do your best to keep your promise and email when your readers expect it. Doing this regularly will improve your open rates and thus your overall deliverability.  Clean Up Your List Regularly  Another good habit is to clean up your list regularly.

If subscribers haven’t been opening your emails for the past six month, chances are good they are no longer interested in what you have to offer.  Check your auto responder services manual or help files to see how you can go about deleting anyone that hasn’t opened an email from you in the past six months.

If that freaks you out, or you have a seasonal business, start by deleting anyone that hasn’t looked at your emails in the past year.  Following these tips and keeping an eye on email deliverability, in general, will make sure your emails are being read by your subscribers and that’s the point of email marketing, isn’t it?

Check your auto responder services manual or help files to see how you can go about deleting anyone that hasn’t opened an email from you in the past six months. If that freaks you out, or you have a seasonal business, start by deleting anyone that hasn’t looked at your emails in the past year.

Following these tips and keeping an eye on email deliverability, in general, will make sure your emails are being read by your subscribers and that’s the point of email marketing, isn’t it?