deliverability

Good news:

The email assault of Black Friday / Cyber Monday is almost over.

Both my inbox and my wallet have taken a beating lol

Hopefully yours are faring better.

But something else that’s been suffering for the past couple of weeks are my open rates.

They suddenly dropped by over 10%.

And apparently, that’s because Gmail recently rolled out a new update in advance of BFCM to tighten the screws on trigger happy mailers.

So if your open rates have been falling faster than your ability to resist a big discount…

Here are 3 tips I’ve implemented to fix it:

***

1) Shorter subject lines

This decreases the chance of your subject line getting flagged by Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo.

(Morning Brew’s been doing this since the beginning.)

Plus they’re more likely to display fully on mobile.

2) Smaller mailing segments

Instead of mailing to everyone who’s opened or clicked in the last 90 days…

Consider dropping that to 60 or even 30 days.

At least temporarily.

The bulk of your engagement is coming from these segments anyway.

3) Fewer links

Having too many links can also set off alarms at the Federal Bureau of Deliverability.

So aim for 10 or less.

And if that sounds like a lot, make sure to double-check.

Because they can add up fast.

For example:

Beehiiv automatically adds social and share links to your emails.

So that right there can add 4-8+ links.

I’ve disabled these for now.

***

Anyway, there you have it.

Now, I’m by no means an expert on the technical aspects of deliverability.

But if your open rates could do with a shot in the arm…

I’m confident these will help.

Jim Hamilton

P.S:

Another tip to improve your deliverability is to use a testing tool like MailGenius.

You send a test version of your email to a custom inbox and flags everything affecting your Spam Score.

Along with how to fix it.

It’s pretty neat.

Check it out below:

Tap here to test your Spam Score with MailGenius